Rice’s real price

The Department of Agriculture has trumpeted a new registry for the P20 per kilo rice program, announced with the usual buzzwords such as “efficiency,” “streamlining,” and “targeting.” 

Yet we overlook the more fundamental question: Why do we need a registry at all? Why should rice, the food that defines the Filipino table, require special eligibility categories and approval?

That was not the promise. The President said early in his term that P20-per kilo rice would be within reach of most Filipinos, a national goal and not a welfare program. 

Today, that promise has shrunk to a curated list that includes senior citizens, solo parents, persons with disability, 4Ps households, farmers, fisherfolk, minimum wage earners and transport workers.

All deserving, yes, but that is not the point. The point is, why has the country gotten to where affordable rice must be rationed through an administrative checklist? 

A promise intended for most has turned into a program of selectiveness. It reflects everything that is wrong with agriculture.

Cheap rice is now a concession. You apply for it as though you were applying for a scholarship. You prove need, and the government dispenses grace. 

This is poverty management, not poverty reduction. It follows the logic of the endless ayuda in the form of food packs, cash transfers, fare subsidies and fuel assistance. 

These measures quiet hunger for a day or suppress frustration for a week, but they do nothing to change the conditions that produced the hunger in the first place.

Agriculture is the most glaring of those conditions. The problems are old, chronic and shameful in a country that claims to honor its farmers. 

Farmgate prices remain low while consumer prices remain high, an imbalance maintained by middlemen who capture most of the margin. 

Production costs rise due to fertilizer, fuel, seeds and labor, but farmer incomes barely move. Irrigation systems, some dating back decades, are broken or incomplete. Only half of irrigable land is actually irrigated.

Likewise, credit remains inaccessible. Farmers without collateral turn to traders whose loans come with strings attached, including the right to dictate buying prices at harvest. 

Land fragmentation also worsens the situation. The average farm size in the Philippines is barely a hectare. No country can achieve efficiency when farmers work plots too small to benefit from scale.

The Marcos government points to mechanization through 27 new postharvest facilities under the Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund. This should help, but these are mere pieces of infrastructure placed in a system that cannot make them transformative. 

Machines do not fix irrigation failures. Machines do not weaken trader domination. Machines do not create strong cooperatives capable of negotiating fair prices or accessing markets.

Then there is the usual reassurance that rice stocks have increased. The Philippine Statistics Authority reports 2.35-million metric tons as of October, up from last year. 

Stocks do not guarantee stability. They do not guarantee that farmers earn enough to survive. Stability requires a functional production chain from irrigation to storage to milling to transport to retail. 

That chain has been rusty for years. The country still panics when typhoons threaten crops. It still scrambles for imports whenever global prices shift. It still depends on other countries to fill the gaps it refuses to address.

The P20 rice program, projected to reach 15 million families by 2028, is a mere stopgap measure with a marketing budget. It is, bluntly, “pakunswelo de bobo” (fool’s consolation).

It is a way of saying that the system cannot be fixed and that this is what can be offered for now. It acknowledges the need while avoiding the source of that need.

Rice will never cost P20 for everyone until the people who grow it earn enough to live with dignity. That truth can be confronted or avoided. We have been avoiding it for decades.

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