Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas
As President and agriculture secretary Bongbong Marcos Jr. marks his first year in office, farmers and rice producers again reiterated their demand for the government to legislate urgent food self-sufficiency bills to help achieve genuine rice self-sufficiency. We refuse to endure five more years of this situation under Marcos Jr. The government should heed the people’s demands.”
“Last year, when Marcos Jr assumed the DA secretary portfolio, KMP demanded him to revive the local agriculture and make domestic food production a priority by suspending conversion of agricultural lands, providing a P15,000 subsidy for Filipino farmers and fisherfolk, allotting 10% of the national budget for agriculture and ending reliance on importation of agricultural products starting with the repeal of the Rice Tariffication Law. However, he did the exact opposite and remained callous and indifferent to our demands.”
The Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) said the Department of Agriculture (DA) must also give up rice importation and instead extend full support to rice farmers to boost local rice production.
Despite surging rice prices, DA said the country has enough rice to meet the daily needs of Filipinos for the third quarter of 2023. DA said a 6-percent increase in rice production for the first six months of the year was recorded or 8.605 million metric tons (MT) of palay which is equivalent to 5.6 million MT of milled rice. However, KMP said that the lower annual palay production in 2022 or 19.756 million metric tons is a testament to the government’s seriously lacking support to the rice industry.
As of June 27, well-milled imported commercial rice is worth ₱40 to ₱48 per kilo, while well-milled local commercial rice is worth ₱39 to ₱46 per kilo. In April this year, DA projected that rice prices could go up to ₱5 per kilo.
“Marcos Jr. is far from achieving his populist campaign promise to lower rice prices to ₱20 per kilo. We have only seen rice price surges in the past year. Worse, the government has continued relying on the importation of other common agricultural items instead of strengthening domestic production to provide the people’s and country’s food needs.
“Pro-farmer and pro-people measures advocating food security and food self-sufficiency such as the Rice Industry Development Act and Genuine Agrarian Reform Bill remain pending in Congress. The increased agriculture budget has not translated to the well-being of farmers nor the improvement of the entire agriculture sector. There has been no substantial aid or ayuda for Filipino producers especially the poorest farmers and fisherfolk,” according to former agrarian reform secretary Rafael Mariano.
“Marcos Jr has persistently neglected farmers’ pleas to strengthen local agricultural production. Instead of strengthening the productive capacity of sectors to create sustainable jobs, the Marcos government hyped improved employment numbers without caring to address burgeoning informality.”
Mariano added: “Consistent with having no plans for pro-people economic transformation to ensure the people’s needs, sustainable utilities and services, and the country’s development needs, the Marcos Jr administration’s budget continued to be misprioritized for big-business infrastructure, debt servicing, and defense, and failed to allocate for genuine economic and social development.”
KMP will join the BAYAN-led mobilization at Mendiola tomorrow to mark the first year of the Marcos Jr administration. ###
Image CTTO.
