P20 rice puzzle

A campaign promise of a “P20 rice” would have been relegated to the sidelines if the candidate had little chance of winning. But this came from the president-elect, who at that time held an unassailable lead over all his competitors based on major survey polls.

Now that Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is just waiting a few more weeks before formally assuming the country’s highest government post, his statements during the campaign trail are being raked up, and his “aspiration” of bringing rice prices to P20 per kilo has become a hot topic.

Many have shaken their heads in an attempt to bring some mathematical sense to this election promise, and not a few have tried to inject context in it. Recently, someone organized a press conference to announce that bringing rice prices to P20 per kilo was possible, and at the earliest by the first semester of 2023.

Fortunately (or unfortunately), we are in the Philippines where politicians can make campaign promises and not be seriously held accountable to them. Remember the outgoing President’s popular election promise in 2016 to wipe out drugs in his first six months of office? He wasn’t able to, and is still waging that war. What apparently matters is the effort, because deep in our hearts we knew that a successful all-out war on drugs was not going to be easy.

Therefore, it was no surprise that the incoming president, in a rare Q&A last month with a carefully selected media audience, clarified that the P20 per kilo rice campaign statement was an “aspiration,” and that his administration would do its best to “fix the value chain,” or whatever that meant.

Next DA chief

For sure, Marcos has a few thoughts on the sad state of Philippine agriculture, particularly on the need to attract the youth and more technology into farming, and to bring down the cost of farming inputs such as fertilizer.

Not having named yet the next head of the Department of Agriculture likely reflects the gravity that Marcos is giving to the issue of food security and Filipino farmers, although it could also be a problem of him not finding an acceptable candidate yet.

Whoever is named as DA chief will carry the burden of carrying through the president-elect’s promise to bring down rice prices to P20 a kilo, which many economists are already warning will need enormous amounts of government funds.

Numerous red flags abound this landscape, and some problems have complicated ramifications involving relationships of many lawmakers or local government officials with deep interests in land ownership and agriculture.

Some of the bigger problems have to do with remedying existing laws that limit agricultural productivity. Reviewing these and coming up with changes will require extensive networking to get the right laws passed. These alone will certainly not be done in a year’s time.

There’s more work needed: relevant farmer training, better seeds, mechanization, dryers, bodegas, farm-to-market roads, and even safety nets against failed harvests for a variety of reasons. The list goes on and on, all part of that grand vision to modernize Philippine agriculture and improve productivity and earnings of our farmers.

The new DA Secretary will have to win the trust of farmers, and rally all agriculture workers of government under one vision. Most importantly, he (or she) must have the full support of the president-elect and tirelessly work to revitalize the agricultural supply chain.

Clustering

If there is one good thing going for rice that the outgoing administration will bequeath, it is the unexpectedly high collections from import tariffs resulting from the implementation of the Rice Tarrification Law (RTL), which in turn has assured billions of pesos to support the Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund (RCEF).

The fund itself is forcing rice farmers to work through a clustering system to avail of farm inputs and machinery essential to increasing harvests. Clustering does not provide the ideal environment to produce optimum harvests, but it is a better work-around solution to the problem of small farmer landholdings not sharing borders.

Individual rice farmers working together in cooperatives need close watching and supervision, especially since their understanding of group dynamics is limited by their low educational attainment, and dimmed further by years of drudgingly repetitive farm work.

Flagship program

How the Marcos administration will push forward to achieve a P20 per kilo of rice price in the retail market bears close watching, especially if the incoming president decides to make it his flagship program and legacy. If he is serious about pulling this through successfully, Philippine agriculture will be in for some radical changes during his six-year term.

At the moment, all we can surmise on are the optional approaches that could be adopted, putting a price tag on the different models, and speculating on how open all stakeholders will be in supporting a working program.

A lot of work needs to be done to undo the malady of neglect over decades when previous governments chose to focus their efforts instead on other endeavors other than agriculture in a bid to fast track the nation to become an economic powerhouse in the region.

Deep in our hearts we may not be convinced that P20 a kilo of rice is possible even by the end of Marcos’ term in 2028. Still, it’s worth a try now that the talk about food security is fashionable. Let’s get on with putting the pieces of the puzzle together.

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