By Giselle P. Jordan

Ahead of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s State of the Nation Address (SONA), farmers’ groups listed a comprehensive set of demands, centered on land reform, rice policy and other agricultural concerns.

During their State of the Peasant Address 2025 on Thursday, farmers urged Marcos to certify the enactment of the Genuine Agrarian Reform Bill (GARB) as urgent. The measure aimed to benefit landless farmers and agricultural workers by restructuring land ownership and control to address inequalities that contributed to rural poverty.

The Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) claimed that a majority of the 195,000 certificates or land titles awarded to farmers from July 2022 to January 2025 were not for new land but only collective titles subdivided into individual ones under the Support to Parcelization of Lands for Individual Titling (SPLIT) program.

They added that the New Agrarian Emancipation Act (NAEA) did not completely abolish amortization charges and only forgave outstanding or existing debts and not future debt, which means farmers will still have to pay for the land in the future.

The group added that this only covered some 6 percent or a small fraction of registered farmers and had not done much to solve land disputes.

Both the SPLIT program and NAEA are also lagging behind their accomplishment goals, the KMP claimed. It said that as of 2022, only 28 percent of farm parcels were fully owned, with non-full-owners also increasing by 1.2 million since 2012.

With the top 1 percent of land owners in possession of 30 percent of the total farm areas, it raised concerns over a small elite still having a large share of agricultural lands, which defeats the purpose of land distribution and other agrarian reform efforts.

Enactment of GARB will accelerate the distribution of both new and existing agricultural lands for farmers and farm workers for free, without debt or amortization payments, the farmers said, while also providing access to credit, technology, infrastructure and markets.

No to land conversion

Farmers also advocated for a moratorium on the conversion of agricultural lands for non-agricultural uses.

Under the Build Better More flagship infrastructure program, they said that Central Luzon — the country’s rice granary — had become a land conversion hotspot. The projects include the 9,450-hectare New Clark City and the 2,500-hectare Bulacan Aerotropolis.

The Clark City project will displace 35,000 farmers and indigenous people while the Bulacan project will affect over 700 families who will lose their homes and livelihoods, they claimed.

The reduction of agricultural land potentially threatens food security in the country, they added.

Hacienda Luisita, meanwhile, is also being converted to commercial and energy uses, undermining agrarian reform achievements.

Support for rice

Farmers’ groups also demanded the suspension or repeal of Republic Act (RA) 11203 or the Rice Tariffication Law (RTL), which liberalized rice imports by replacing quantitative restrictions with a tariff system.

Since the law’s enactment in 2019, the country’s rice imports grew to a new record high of 4.8 million metric tons (MT) in 2024, topping the previous record of 3.86 million MT in 2022.

The United States Department of Agriculture has also projected that Philippine rice imports could reach fresh peaks of 5.4 million MT in 2025 and 5.5 million MT in 2026, although the Philippines’ Department of Agriculture has said these were “exaggerated.”

Farmers said that rising import volumes indicate that domestic rice production was not meeting demand. They criticized the government for failing to achieve rice self-sufficiency and said the reliance on imports had made the country vulnerable to supply disruptions, price fluctuations, and the policies of countries that export rice.

The RTL has also led to a greater financial burden for the government, they said, with state spending having grown to P32 billion from P7 billion before implementation of the law.

The promise of P20 per kilogram (kg) rice also remains unfulfilled, said the farmers. Instead of becoming more affordable, rice prices have increased since Marcos became President.

“Retail rice prices are now at P44 per kilo, far from the P20 per kilo promise and higher than the P39 per kilo during Marcos Jr’s inauguration,” the KMP said.

Monopolization and incomes

They also criticized the president’s move to lower rice tariffs to 15 percent from 35 percent, said to have facilitated rice imports and monopolization of the market.

“Rice importation and trade [have] become more concentrated. The top 10 companies imported 40 percent of total volume in 2024, from just 24 percent in 2019. Commercial rice traders held 56 percent of the total stock in 2024, from just 39 percent in 2022,” the KMP said.

Bantay Bigas spokesperson Cathy Estavillo, speaking in the vernacular, said “This has allowed traders, millers, and importers to monopolize the food trade, which primarily dictates price of rice in farms and in the market).”

“As a result, the farmgate price of palay dropped to P7 per kilo, causing further losses for farmers who were already in debt),” she added.

The reduced tariffs on rice imports also caused the government P34 billion of foregone revenues, the KMP said, pointing to data from the Bureau of Customs.

Measly incomes and poverty are additional problems with palay production cost said to be P60,000 to P70,000 per hectare, Bantay Bigas said.

In Bulacan, farmers earn just P4,942 per harvest or about P55 a day, the KMP claimed.

Aside from this, farmers also called for an investigation on the misuse of agriculture funds, as well as the urgent enactment of the Rice Industry Development Act that would provide the blueprint for a rice self-sufficiency program in the country.

Other agricultural issues

Farmers also called on the government to establish a people’s oversight mechanism for the Coco Levy Trust Fund to ensure transparency and accountability in the use of the fund.

They also urged the government to seek a reversal of a Supreme Court decision allowing commercial fishing within municipal waters. Not only will this protect small fisherfolks and their livelihoods but marine resources as well, they added.

They also called for the abolishment of the “pakyawan” wage system in agriculture, where workers are paid a lump sum for their work regardless of the time needed to complete it.

This leads to exploitation as workers often earn less than the minimum wage, especially when the job takes longer than expected to complete. They said that in Negros Island, for example, sugar plantation workers earn as little as P82 a day under the system.

They suggested enacting a national living wage instead, one that includes agricultural workers.

Published Date: July 28, 2025