There is something sinister about the so-called food security emergency that the Marcos Jr. administration has trumpeted as an action designed to reduce rice prices when bulk of the 300,000 metric tons (MT) it is unloading is still unmilled palay, which means the maximum volume that the National Food Authority (NFA) can get is 195,000 MT at 65% recovery rate, or a low 150,000 MT at 50% recovery rate.
At 195,000 MT, Agriculture Secretary Franco Tiu Laurel cannot flood the market since the daily national rice consumption is 37,000 MT, which is good only for 5 days. It is even worse at 150,000 MT, not enough for 4 days. So, what is the government trumpeting here? Proof that the Rice Liberalization Law (RLL) was designed to privatize the rice industry, toss the job of maintaining food security to smugglers and hoarders and prevent the NFA from holding buffer stocks to supply the market for at least 30 days, which has been cut further to only 9 days.
Under these circumstances, the NFA cannot fill up its warehouses with 1.2 million MT of rice, so it is a blatant lie to claim that NFA bodegas are full and stocks must be sold to government agencies and local government units (LGUs) to provide space for palay stocks as the harvest season has started. In truth, RLL defanged the NFA and stripped it of its role as supplier to temper price swings. Yet, how can Laurel and other officials of the Department of Agriculture (DA) explain why 600,000 sacks of palay were stashed away in Occidental Mindoro while rice farmers suffer from plummeting farmgate prices and grinding poverty. This is not just inefficiency — it is criminal negligence that deepens the country’s food security crisis—explained Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) chairperson and Makabayan senatorial candidate Danilo Ramos.
“It is unacceptable that while farmers struggle to sell their fresh harvest, hundreds of thousands of sacks of unmilled palay have been left to rot in warehouses. This is outright neglect. The DA and the NFA must be held accountable for this mess. President Marcos Jr. is equally responsible for this failure in governance,” Ramos argued. Since farmers do not have proper storage space, many of them have been forced to sell at rock-bottom prices or keep their harvest for family consumption. For its part, the NFA stressed that its hands are tied as it only has P9-billion for palay purchases, about half of the money needed to buy enough palay.
Yet, the DA has declared a food security emergency purportedly to allow NFA to sell its stocks and open up bodegas to store palay. Cathy Estavillo, AMIHAN secretary general and spokesperson for Bantay Bigas, emphasized that this disaster is a direct result of the RLL. “The NFA’s mandate to stabilize rice supply and prices has been completely gutted because of rice liberalization,” Estavillo, the 2nd nominee of Gabriela Women’s Partylist, explained. “Even if the government releases this palay for milling, it will not lower rice prices because commercial and imported rice in the hands of traders dictate the market prices.”
The NFA’s cannot hide behind the claim that millers had refused to bid for milling contracts due to unfavorable terms. If the 63% Guaranteed Milling Recovery (GMR) rate is not viable, then government must revise these terms or allocate funds to subsidize milling. Farmers should not be the ones to suffer from NFA’s failure to act. KMP and AMIHAN said NFA’s storage disaster is not new. In fact, most of the 300,000 MT bruited about to temper rice prices are unmilled palay, belying NFA’s claims of sufficient supply. Worse, 10,000 sacks of palay have been stored for over two years, well beyond safe storage limits and deteriorating, making them hardly fit for human consumption.
Based on safe storage standards, unmilled rice or palay must be stored under specific moisture conditions to avoid spoilage: For 2 to 3 weeks, palay must have 14–18% moisture content to prevent molds, discoloration, and respiration loss; for 8 to 12 months, moisture should be reduced to 12–13%, or else insect damage will ruin the stocks, and; for over a year, moisture must be 9% or lower, otherwise, the grain loses viability altogether.
“The irony is appalling: farmers cannot sell their rice, consumers are burdened with high prices, and yet NFA warehouses are overflowing with palay. This is the direct result of Marcos Jr.’s failed policies that prioritize importation over local production,” Ramos said. Both KMP and AMIHAN called on the Marcos Jr. administration to do the following: Scrap RLL, crisis and crippled local production; mill and release stored palay immediately and distribute fit-for-consumption rice for free to calamity victims and poor consumers, and; rice must not be auctioned to private traders, as the amended RLL dictates. “We need concrete solutions, not excuses,” Ramos asserted. “If Marcos Jr. continues to fail in addressing these fundamental agricultural issues, farmers and consumers alike will continue to bear the brunt of the rice crisis. Marcos Jr must take full responsibility for the never-ending rice crisis.”
