99-year land lease for foreigners
On 29 August 2025, Marcos Jr. signed Republic Act 112252, a law that liberalizes land leases for foreigners for nearly a century. This amends the previous Investors’ Lease Act, which allowed foreign investors to lease land for a maximum of 50 years, renewable once for another 25 years. The new law permits foreigners even without making an investment o lease land in the Philippines for up to 99 years.
The peasant group Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) vehemently opposed the new law, stating, “The law surrenders Philippine sovereignty and domestic interests at the altar of foreign big business and a few domestic big landlords. Circumventing constitutional limits on foreign land ownership, this law is an outright betrayal of the Filipino people’s interests, endangering the rights and welfare of millions of landless poor.”
The group also warned that the law “opens the floodgates to even more aggressive land grabbing. This means more evictions, harassment, and violence, especially against peasants, fisherfolk, indigenous peoples, and the urban poor, as developers and rentiers are further incentivized to grab land at all costs.”
Recent typhoons inflict billion-peso damages on peasants
Since July this year, five typhoons have already hit the Philippines, causing more than ₱1.38 billion in agricultural damage and losses across the country. Over 50,000 peasants and fisherfolk have been affected. The most recent, Typhoon Opong, devastated the Bicol Region, severely impacting the province of Masbate, displacing at least 20,000 people. Nationwide, nearly 400,000 have been affected across several islands in the central Philippines.
Tropical Storm Nando (international name: Ragasa), the most powerful storm on Earth this year thus far, ravaged northern Philippines. Its destructive winds and torrential rains threaten harvest-ready rice crops.
KMP warned of “catastrophic agricultural losses” and criticized the Department of Agriculture (DA) for its grossly inadequate disaster response. According to the group, the DA either provides insufficient subsidies or completely neglects the farmers. They lamented that instead of offering direct support and compensation, the DA merely offers loans to farmers.
KMP also strongly condemned massive corruption in nearly a trillion pesos’ worth of flood control projects, allegedly involving DPWH officials, contractors, and members of Congress and the Senate. In Bulacan, for example, 200 barangays were submerged despite an allocation of ₱118.5 billion for flood control–projects that now appear to be ghost projects.
The group stated, “While farmers drown in debt and suffer from losses due to successive typhoons, these corrupt officials and the DPWH have amassed billions of pesos from taxpayers.”
They also called for the investigation of EGB Construction Corporation, a contractor red-flagged by the government. EGB is responsible for 97 flood control projects in Region II (Cagayan) and other provinces such as Aurora, Kalinga, Ilocos Sur, Ilocos Norte, Bataan, Oriental Mindoro, and Zambales, amounting to ₱7.98 billion.
“Billions of pesos are being wasted on overpriced and defective projects while farmers continue to suffer from flooding and the absence of genuine rural support,” the group added.
Marcos Jr.’s monthly rice subsidy a grave insult to farmers
As part of his populist campaign, President Marcos Jr. launched the “Benteng Bigas, Meron Na!” (₱20 rice is available now) project in August. Under this program, rice farmers and farm workers can supposedly buy rice at ₱20 per kilo, limited to 10 kilos per month.
However, groups such as AMIHAN and Bantay Bigas viewed this program as a grave insult to farmers, who are calling instead for production subsidies and stronger support for local production to reduce farming costs and increase self-sufficiency.
They asserted that Marcos Jr.’s Rice Liberalization Law is “a plague on farmers, allowing imported rice to flood the country, which drove palay prices down.”
“If farmers earn enough due to lower farming costs, they can save enough rice for their own consumption and for the dry months. In this way, local consumers also benefit, as they can afford to buy cheaper local rice—rice that is not controlled by traders and big businesses.”
The groups called instead for palay (unhusked rice) farmgate prices of no less than ₱20 per kilo, production subsidies and compensation for disaster-affected farmers, the return of farmers’ lost capital, 100% irrigation system development and free irrigation, construction of post-harvest facilities, and increased local procurement of palay and selling of affordable rice by the National Food Authority (NFA).
They also urged the public to unite, hold Marcos Jr. accountable, and reject the Rice Liberalization Law and other policies that threaten the livelihood of farmers and the local rice industry.