WHEN 2022 presidential election candidate Ferdinand Marcos Jr. made his campaign promise to bring down the price of rice to P20 per kg, his opponents dismissed this as empty rhetoric.
Since that day three years ago, President Marcos has never wavered on his pledge, ignoring the doubter’s sarcasm and jeers from the opposition.
He decidedly took the helm of the Department of Agriculture (DA) to fix its institutional “leaks” and “weaknesses” and prepared it for the task of bringing quality and affordable food to the masses.
In November 2023, when the chief executive turned over the DA’s baton, the challenge of delivering on the pledge was also passed on to the new agency head.
The DA under the new leadership declared in 2024 that it would modernize farming, digitalize the sector, and improve the income of farmers. And at the heart of this masterplan was the steely resolve to finally bring to fruition the promise of affordable quality rice.
Agriculture Secretary Francisco P. Tiu Laurel Jr. was very clear in his agenda when he took over: “It’s important to address the decades-old inequity where farmers and fishers do not really benefit from the fruits of their labor.”
‘Now, the Filipino people will have something to be glad about every time they lift the lid of their rice cooker – steaming hot staple food that is light on the pocket.’
In 2025, the DA took its grand plan a notch higher by targeting a record rice harvest of 20.46 million metric tons (MT) while boosting post-harvest infrastructure to increase production.
The DA already made strides in food security through the launch in 2024 of “Walang Gutom” program focusing on increasing production, particularly rice.
The program already served 300,000 households and is programmed to reach more than a million by 2027.
Rice production is peaking in recent years, a far cry from the 16.82 million MT yield in 2008, which was already thrice the harvest recorded in 1970 at 5.32 million MT.
Irrigation has also been improving at an annual pace of 8 percent from 2016 to 2021, which translates to 51,877 hectares of new irrigated land per year, data from the National Irrigation Authority (NIA) showed.
The NIA, an agency under DA, reported that as of December 2021, more than 70 percent of the country’s farmland had been irrigated, with an additional 1 million hectares undergoing completion.
Our farmer’s average income has also risen while the poverty incidence among farm households has declined, says the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS).
The basic income of farmers has increased since 2016, with the daily wage now averaging P322.23.
And now comes the icing on the cake: the culmination of the presidential promise to have a P20 per kg of rice made possible under the present DA leadership.
When rice priced this low appeared daunting, the DA quietly went to work, ran models on production and pricing, and came up with the answer.
Aside from its initial rollout in the Visayas, the P20 per kg of rice will also be made available to marginalized sectors through Kadiwa centers and in some key LGUs starting May 2, Friday.
The last time rice was selling at P2 per kg was in the 1990s. Finally, it’s making a comeback in 2025.
Skeptics are undermining its significance, or what it means to the country and the Filipinos.
In achieving something seemingly as impossible as selling rice at P20 per kg in this day and age, one must buckle down to work instead of counting the odds.
Now, the Filipino people will have something to be glad about every time they lift the lid of their rice cooker – steaming hot staple food that is light on the pocket.
