‘Imports should complement domestic harvests, not crush them.’
AGRICULTURE Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr. is right: the Rice Tariffication Law of 2019 has outlived its purpose.
Conceived to stabilize prices and improve farmers’ competitiveness, the law instead stripped the Department of Agriculture and the National Food Authority of the very tools needed to steady supply and shield the nation’s staple.
But the world that shaped the law no longer exists. In 2019, liberalization seemed pragmatic. The Philippines could draw from an abundant global market. Then the pandemic struck. Borders closed. Supply chains buckled. Naturally, nations hoarded.
Rice, once readily shipped across oceans, became hostage to scarcity and soaring prices. The COVID-19 years drove home a truth too easily dismissed in Manila: dependence on imports is perilous when every nation guards its granaries and profits first.
Before the Senate, Tiu Laurel did not mince words. “As currently written, the Rice Tariffication Law does not reform the rice industry — it threatens to kill it.” That warning is not hyperbole. It is the truth.
Farmers, already shackled by poor irrigation and weak logistics, now face competition against cheaper foreign grain. Consumers at large, meanwhile, still bear the burden of rising prices despite promises of affordability.
The law’s defenders point to the Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund as a cushion for mechanization and seed support. But progress has been uneven and painfully slow.
The country still needs more than P1 trillion in irrigation alone to unlock productivity. Extension services, devolved under the Local Government Code, remain fragmented. Trade was liberalized without laying the ground for resilience.
To revisit the law is not to retreat into old inefficiencies. It is to recover balance. The state must have the ability to intervene in emergencies, steady prices, and safeguard food security. Imports should complement domestic harvests, not crush them.
Rice is too vital to be surrendered to global headwinds. The lesson of the pandemic years is unambiguous: food security cannot be outsourced. Reform must be bold, investments massive, and the law recalibrated to reflect a harsher reality.
The Rice Tariffication Law had its moment. That moment has passed.
