Cyber-libel rice

"Sa langit, madaming bigas.”

I still remember reading this line in my older brother Leonie’s high school valedictory speech after nosing around our father’s filing cabinet when I was around 10 years old.  It was the answer of a farmer’s young child to my brother on what the boy imagined heaven to be. It was an innocent and bittersweet indictment of the state of Philippine agriculture then. I guess the boy’s answer stuck to Leonie, who subsequently devoted his entire life to try to help make the boy’s dream a reality in the country.

After graduating summa cum laude from the Ateneo, he went straight to join our father in the Federation of Free Farmers (FFF), one of the oldest and the most reputable farmer organizations in the Philippines. He has been with the FFF for over 50 years, served several terms in Congress representing the farmers and even became the secretary of agriculture in the early 2000s.

Leonie is now 77 years old and still trying. The other day, the police went to his house to serve a warrant of arrest. As the song goes, “…planting rice is never fun.” It could even land you in jail.

My brother and others in the farmer sector have been questioning why the Philippine Planter’s Products Inc. (PPI), which they claim appears to be like a government-owned and controlled corporation (GOCC), has been heavily importing rice to the country. Under current laws, particularly RA 11203 and RA 12078, government entities cannot freely import rice except under extraordinary emergency conditions authorized through specific executive orders or presidential action. Historically a fertilizer and agrochemical company, PPI hardly imported any rice prior to 2025. However, it heavily started doing so in 2026. This year, PPI has reportedly imported close to two million sacks of rice worth billions of pesos and has become the second largest rice importer in the Philippines. In response to my brother’s questions, PPI filed a cyber-libel case against him, claiming that it is not a GOCC.

What is interesting is that approximately 80 percent of the shares of PPI is held by Planter’s Foundation Inc. (PFI) which was created by the government. In 1974, the government placed most of PPI’s shares under the custody of PFI “…to be held in trust for millions of Filipino farmers.” PFI is chaired by the incumbent secretary of the Department of Agriculture (DA) who exercises voting rights and nominates candidates to the board of PPI. In a July 2019 post in its own website, the DA described it as “…a private agricultural company sequestered by the government a few years back and is now under the administrative control of the DA.” It has been reported that in several government directories, such as those of the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) and the Governance Commission for GOCCs (GCG), the PPI is listed as a GOCC. Do all these constitute or imply effective government ownership and/or control? I don’t know, you tell me!

I understand that a primary legal basis of PPI’s claim seems to be a 2008 Supreme Court (SC) ruling involving PPI vs Fertiphil Corporation.  According to some summaries I read, the SC noted that both PPI and Fertiphil Corporation were private corporations under Philippine laws as part of that decision. I find it ironic that the central decision of that SC ruling was to order PPI to return millions of pesos in “capital recovery” levy it had collected from Fertiphil Corporation during the martial law years.  It declared a 1985 Marcos Letter of Instruction (LOI) 1465, which authorized “…the collection of fertilizer levy to bail out and benefit PPI,” as unconstitutional and that to allow PPI to keep it would be “unjust enrichment.”

At the very, very least, PPI’s ownership structure; its apparent treatment as a GOCC by several government agencies and subsequent relevant laws such as the GOCC Governance Act of 2011 (RA 10149) all provide sufficient and good faith bases to question the real status of PPI and destroy any claim of an outright and malicious falsehood.

Moreover, the question is not frivolous and involves a clear and important public interest.  Why is it considered malicious for a farmer leader representing rice farmers to question such an entity’s huge imports that they believe threatens the welfare of the country’s rice farmers?

If we ask the young children of farmers today on what they think heaven is like, as my brother did over half a century ago, I wonder what they will answer now.

Sa Pilipinas, madaming imported na bigas?