Is Marcos admin’s P20/kilo rice push a response to failed food emergency?

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Three months after the food emergency declaration, the government is still struggling to dispose of NFA rice stocks

MANILA, Philippines – The Department of Agriculture announced on Wednesday, April 23, that it would pilot a P20-per-kilo rice program in the Visayas region next week.

It appears the Marcos administration has partly delivered on its campaign promise of cheap rice — the aspirational P20 per kilogram.

But a big factor why this is happening now (aside from the fact that it’s merely a few weeks away from the midterm polls) is that almost three months after the food emergency declaration, the government is still dealing with overwhelmed National Food Authority (NFA) warehouses.

They still need to dispose of rice stocks to make way for the new harvest. While the government was dealing with 300,000 metric tons of rice during the food emergency declaration, it is now contending with 358,000 metric tons.

“The other factor na kailangan din naming gawin ito sa DA, is because of talagang punong-puno pa rin ang warehouses ng DA ng bigas at palay,” said Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr. during a presser in Cebu on Wednesday.

(The other factor why we needed to do this in the DA is because our warehouses are really overwhelmed by rice and palay.)

“Rumarami rin talaga ‘yung stocks natin of palay and rice no and rice equivalent. So we really have to move out and dispose it,” he added. (Our stocks of palay, rice and rice equivalent are increasing. We really have to move out and dispose it.)

The food emergency declaration enabled the DA to sell NFA rice stocks to local governments. However, since February, only a handful local governments availed of the cheap NFA rice.

The agriculture chief’s announcement came after a closed-door meeting with President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and Visayas governors at the Cebu Capitol on Wednesday.

Tiu Laurel said the program will last until December and can be stretched until February. The hope was that this program will last until 2028. There is no clear timeline yet when this will be implemented nationwide, but DA sees pilot testing in the Visayas as a way to “sort out” the logistics.

“The President has given the directive to the Department of Agriculture to formulate this to be sustainable, ituloy-tuloy hanggang 2028 (to continue until 2028),” he said.

The price however is “artificially low” and “clearly unsustainable,” according to Raul Montemayor of the Federation of Free Farmers.

Montemayor said the government is set to lose P25 for every kilo with NFA buying palay at P24 per kilo and selling milled rice at P45 for each kilo to break even.

“Questionable whether it is a good use of scarce government resources,” Montemayor told Rappler.

In February, the DA announced a food security emergency to bring down prices and dispose of stocks inside glutted NFA warehouses. Earlier this April, NFA Administrator Larry Lacson said they will auction off rice from their warehouses to dispose of stocks.

The Cebu Provincial Government previously implemented a P20/kilo rice program in 2023, selling a maximum of five kilos of rice in a week per indigent family. – Rappler.com