Amihan National Federation of Peasant Women, Bantay Bigas, and Anakpawis Partylist held a protest on August 13 before the Department of Agriculture (DA) to condemn the US-Marcos regime for its grandstanding measures amid the worsening rice crisis. The regime’s latest gimmick is for the DA to sell 10 kilos of rice per month, at ₱20 per kilo, to ‘qualified’ farmers and farm workers.
The groups called this scheme a blatant insult and said it will not help farmers at all. The farmers timed their protest on the first day of the program’s implementation.
“Already beaten up, their livelihoods are knocked out due to the effects of the rice liberalization law for six years. What farmers need now is not ₱20/kg rice but for their palay to be bought at ₱20/kg,” Bantay Bigas spokesperson Cathy Estavillo said.
The DA requires a farmer to be cultivating no more than two hectares to qualify for the program. He/she must also be registered in the Registry System for Basic Sectors in Agriculture (RSBSA). Only about five million rice farmers and farm workers are registered in the RSBSA. The government’s downgraded statistics only covers 13 million registered farmers and agricultural workers in 2025.
The farmers’ groups also said that the 60-day import ban is not enough to help farmers recover from losses. No guarantee exists that the ban will lead to higher farmgate prices for palay during harvest time. The ban will start next month.
“The farmers call for production subsidy and strengthening of local production, to pull down farming costs and raise self-sufficiency, or the local supply for the people’s needs,” Amihan explained.
The groups are demanding the immediate scrapping of the Rice Tariffication Law, the strengthening of local production, and the cessation of all forms of agricultural land conversion.
