From farmers to importers: How Filipino rice growing went wrong

[Lee]

Quote

 

MANILA (Thomson Reuters Foundation) — Alex Quinones has been a rice farmer in the Philippines for almost five decades — last summer was the first time his field dried up, forcing many of his neighbors to swap farm life for street sweeping.

“We were not able to harvest any rice. This drought was unlike anything we experienced before,” Quinones, 62, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation from his farm in Oriental Mindoro province, southwest of Manila.

Farm groups blame a dangerous cocktail of high imports, low trade prices and an ill-planned subsidy scheme for crippling the rice sector, pushing many small growers out of business.

Quinones leads an association of about 300 local rice farmers and said some had now become builders, street sweepers and waste pickers just so they could eat or pay off debts.

Along with fast-changing weather patterns, he said a deluge of foreign rice – imports have risen by nearly 60% since 2020 – has also hit income in recent years, with traders buying local rice near production costs.

The government said the El Nino phenomenon had cost the farm sector 9.5 billion pesos ($161.70 million)in damages as of May, as climate change slashed rice production.

Although one in four Filipinos work in farming, the country has now become the world’s top importer of rice, according to the United States Department of Agriculture.

To feed its population of more than 113 million, the country lifted a cap on rice imports five years ago, imposing tariffs of 35% to 40% to cushion the new, competitive blow.

The country is projected to import a record 4.7 million metric tons of rice this year, rising to 4.9 million metric tons in 2025, surpassing major importers such as China, Indonesia, the European Union, Nigeria and Iraq.

But farmers’ groups said the high imports and a lack of disaster aid had displaced farmers, trapped rice growers in poverty and left the country dependent on foreign food.

“It’s high time to junk the law that for the last five years had consistently failed our rice farmers and consumers”, said Cathy Estavillo, who represents a local group of peasant women and the rice watch group Bantay Bigas.

Super Typhoon Enteng, the Philippines‘ fifth tropical cyclone this year, caused more than 2.2 billion pesos in damage to agriculture and livestock, affecting over 59,000 farmers and 37,000 hectares of agricultural land.

In the Bicol region, in the northern part of the country, rights group said about 90% of rice farms that were then ready for harvest was damaged by September’s typhoon.

Estavillo said farmers hit by this run of climate disasters had yet to receive any government compensation.

Impact on farmers

The Rice Tariffication Law was supposed to help Filipino farmers by channeling import taxes into a Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund (RCEF) worth 10 billion pesos a year.

The fund aimed to finance new farm machinery, seed development and propagation, among other initiatives.

But Filipino farmers lost an estimated 90 billion pesos during the first year of the new law, data from the National Federation of Peasant Women in the Philippines shows, as traders pushed down prices on the back of all the new imports.

During this period, farmers earned barely half the cost of living.

In Nueva Ecija, once the nation’s rice basket, many farmers went into bankruptcy as prices for rice tanked to new lows.

Local production

Last year, the government reaped a record 30 billion pesos in tariffs on imported rice — money that advocates said did little to help struggling Filipino farmers.

Under the law, Manila allots 5 billion pesos a year for cooperatives, associations and local government units to buy agricultural equipment.

As of March, Manila said it had delivered over 26,000 units of agricultural equipment, benefitting a million farmers.

But Estavillo said many small-scale farmers were not part of cooperatives or groups so were excluded from the distribution.

“A bigger number of farmers still rent tractors and harvesters. The 10 billion a year is not enough to slash the cost of rice production to 50%’, said Estavillo.

Farmers also complained of insufficient fertilizer handouts, and of seeds being distributed too late or too old.

“In reality, the tariffs that ideally should be returned to farmers through machines, fertilizers, and pesticides to lower their production costs were not significant and failed to make them competitive,” said Estavillo.

In comparison, Thailand last year approved 55 billion baht ($1.60 billion) of support for its rice farmers: seven times the amount pledged to their Filipino counterparts.

Estavillo said about 100,000 farmers had signed a petition urging the government to scrap the law, strengthen rice production and help farmers earn a decent income.

With nothing to harvest, farmers like Quinones now struggle even to take out loans to finance the next planting season in June — putting all his future earnings into jeopardy.

“The government promised to loan us 35,000 pesos each for production. Until now, we have not received anything from them and we don’t know how to start over,” he said.

From farmers to importers: How Filipino rice growing went wrong

 

 

[JJReyes]

Agrarian reform distributed farmland in the Philippines to poor farmers who have no capital.  Sizes are small.  It is difficult to grow enough rice to feed a family, much less for others.  The debt to feed the family is large and the interest rates are high.  The collateral is the land, which they eventually forfeit to the money lender. 

Rice growing in Texas which I saw involved hundreds, sometimes thousands of acres.  Water from irrigation ditches and large pumps flooded giant fields.  Small aircrafts would spray seeds, fertilizers, and herbicides as needed.  Harvest was done using giant tractors trailer equipped to cut and thresh the rice at the same time.  I haven't seen Thailand and Myanmar, but the system is probably between the Philippines and Texas.  These two countries are rice exporters.

 

[scott h]

11 hours ago, JJReyes said:

Sizes are small

History repeats itself. In the 1920's the new Soviet Union got rid (polite way to put it) of the large land owners and gave the farmland to the "people", who in turn produced enough to feed their families, but not enough to export to the cities. But they got the land from the evil landowners. The result? Between 5 and 9 million died of starvation.

When overseas producers can undercut local farmers in price despite high tariffs, or smugglers can still make a profit despite the risks and costs it just goes to prove that Philippine small farmers are not competitive. 

The solution should be obvious. Allow and encourage the large corporations to buy and consolidate all these small farms, modernize and invest with the caveat that the land sellers are employed as corporate employees. 

Seems like a no brainer to me, better to be an employee with a guaranteed wage, than a "land owner" who works as a street sweeper to make ends meet. But as the saying goes "Pride goeth before the fall."

[Lee]

24 minutes ago, scott h said:

History repeats itself.

It certainly repeated itself in Zimbabwe. 

In 2000 President Mugagbe ordered the confiscation of farmlands that had been owned by (white) farmers for perhaps a 100 years. Many of these families were killed or ran out of the country. The best lands were kept by politicians with the rest being divvied up between barely scratch out a living farmers.

The agrarian infrastructure quickly failed causing commercial agriculture to drop by 75%. This shrinkage caused a drop of the countries GDP by 40%. Food shortages and famines were soon to follow.

In the last year or so the government has promised these kicked to the curb farmers would get paid for the loss of their farmlands if they would come back.

Zimbabwe is broke now so there is little to entice anyone to return.

Edited Monday at 11:47 PM by Lee
clarification

[graham59]

There does seem to be more and more roadside former rice-paddy being offered as small lots for sale, up in our area these days. 

[JJReyes]

Instead of "Let them eat cakes," the Philippines has "Let them eat rice."  So long as the peasants have sufficient rice, they will continue to vote for the incumbent political party.  The annual harvest of palay is purchased by the government, milled, and resold at a cheaper amount than purchase price.  Middlemen, warehouses and wholesalers make huge profits because they operate like a cartel.

The rice can be eaten for breakfast, lunch and dinner with a couple of small, salted fish and tomatoes.  It fills the stomach, but there is very little nutritional value.  The cheap, subsidized rice is used with cheap, subsidized sugar to make all kinds of sweet.  No economic or dietary value.  There is little incentive to switch away because rice is so cheap and abundant due to government subsidies.  If the harvest is poor, you import rice, at a tremendous cost to the country's foreign exchange reserves.

[Mike J]

13 hours ago, JJReyes said:

The rice can be eaten for breakfast, lunch and dinner with a couple of small, salted fish and tomatoes.

My wife tells me that rice was a rare treat when she was a little girl.  They grew most of there own vegetables but the primary source of calories was ground corn.  Calories must have been scarce, even growing their own produce, because my wife was the tallest in family at just a little under five feet ( approx150 cm). 

[scott h]

51 minutes ago, Mike J said:

rice was a rare treat

I would be interested to know Mike since your wife's family did not grow up eating rice everyday if they are plagued with "high blood" like the majority of Filipinos.

[JJReyes]

51 minutes ago, Mike J said:

My wife tells me that rice was a rare treat when she was a little girl.  They grew most of there own vegetables but the primary source of calories was ground corn.  Calories must have been scarce, even growing their own produce, because my wife was the tallest in family at just a little under five feet ( approx150 cm). 

The primary source for protein in Asia is tofu or soybeans, now mostly grown in the United States.  It's a popular snack item in the Philippines called, "Taho."  Vendors would roam the streets and buyers, carrying cups or bowl, would come outside their homes to buy.  

I recall that ground corn is popular in Cebu and eaten as a replacement for rice.  Haven't read anything explaining why.

[Mike J]

9 minutes ago, scott h said:

I would be interested to know Mike since your wife's family did not grow up eating rice everyday if they are plagued with "high blood" like the majority of Filipinos.

I know that papa and mama were being treated for hypertension and I think the eldest brother is also being treated.  Two brother have already passed, one to cancer, one to motorcycle accident and not wearing a helmet.  So far my wife BP is normal.