Breaking Monopolies, Reversing Liberalization Can End Rice Crisis in Philippines

By Jennifer H. Guste

IBON Features– As the government insists there is enough rice available for everyone, it is now looking at rationing rice to three kilos per family, and has secured the importation of around 2.2 million metric tons (MT) of rice from Vietnam, Thailand and the United States. This is the country’s biggest volume of importation since 1998.

From being a self-sufficient and rice exporting country in the 1980s, the country has become a net importer of rice since 1993. It is now the world’s top importer of rice, the country’s staple food crop.

Why this has become so can be traced to the backwardness of Philippine agricultural production and the exploitative relations of production, which are both exacerbated by globalization. Production tools are outdated, almost all farms are not mechanized, more than half are not yet irrigated, and most of all, seven out of 10 peasants are still landless. Despite three agrarian reform programs, land is still in the hands of few families who control not only land but also trade and marketing. Aggravating the condition are the globalization policies of trade liberalization, privatization and deregulation adopted by the government since the late 1980s.

Rice Production in Chronic Crisis

Philippine average rice yield per hectare is stagnant. Since the 1990s, the country’s rice yield has averaged at 3 metric tons per hectare even as it records yearly increases in production. According to the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), the required yield for the Philippines to sustain food security is 5.4 metric tons per hectare.

Philippine rice lands is only four million hectares compared to its counterparts in Asia. For instance, Thailand devotes more than 10 million hectares for its rice production; Vietnam has more than seven million hectares planted to rice.

Rice production remains small-scale and productivity is low. This situation is even worsened by the increasing instances of conversion of rice farms to commercial uses and conversion of crops from rice to export winners, which has put the country in constant state of crisis in its rice supply.
Meanwhile, landlessness and the absence of government support through production and price subsidies leave millions of Filipino rice farmers at the mercy of big land owners and traders.

Even with the use of hybrid rice that promises a boost in rice production with minimal lands devoted to rice farming, rice supply in the country is still under threat of shortage and government will always find reason to resort to rice importation to fill in its buffer stocks. According to the National Food Authority (NFA), the country can only supply approximately 90% of its total rice consumption; the rest, according to the NFA, would have to be imported.