00:00Isabella is widely known as the rice bowl of the north.
00:04Its land area of about 1 million hectares is mostly dedicated to the production of our country's food staple, rice.
00:13Napakahalaga po sa ating mga Pilipino ang bigas.
00:16Sa katunayan, noong mga bata pa po tayo, sinasabihan tayo ng ating mga magulang na ubusin ang kanin
00:23dahil bawat butil na natira ay isang araw daw sa purgatorio.
00:30That's how much we value rice.
00:33And that is why I stand here before you.
00:36The future of our rice farming industry is in danger.
00:42And our farmers are losing up to 54 billion pesos because of existing policies.
00:49There are even reports from some farmers' groups of farmers' deaths,
00:55allegedly linked to low palay prices.
01:01The clamor for the review of the rice tarification law is more than just ripe.
01:08Malapit na pong mabulok.
01:10As of last week, Malacanang and the Department of Agriculture are pushing Congress to revisit
01:17the rice tarification law, or RTL, and give more regulatory functions to the National Food Authority.
01:25But before we delve into the review of the RTL, let us go back to the why of the RTL.
01:36The rice tarification law enacted in 2019 was a significant step toward liberizing the rice industry in the Philippines.
01:45It aimed to stabilize rice prices and ensure food security by allowing the unrestricted importation of rice subject to tariffs.
01:57The RTL opened the floodgates to largely unregulated rice imports by private traders and stripped the NFA or its regulatory functions
02:09and confined its role to maintaining a buffer stock sourced from local palay.
02:16But of course, the RTL did not forget our local farmers because the tariffs collected from the imported rice were directed to what we call
02:25the Rice Competitive Enhancement Fund, or RCEF, designed to help farmers modernize through mechanization, input subsidies, and financial assistance.
02:38In December of 2024, the RTL was amended to extend RCEF funding until 2031, and tripled its budget to 30 billion pesos.
02:51However, while the amendment authorized the DA to import rice in cases of food security emergency,
02:59it did not reinstate the NFA's full mandate to manage and stabilize the domestic rice market.
03:07So much work has been put into the enactment of the RTL.
03:11And while it had good intentions and ideas, something clearly went wrong along the way.
03:20Did our prices go down since its enactment?
03:24The answer is hindi po.
03:27The promise of lower rice prices to consumers has not been fully realized.
03:33While there have been periods of lower prices, of course, the overall impact on consumer prices has been mixed.
03:42Wholesale prices of rice types also showed significant increases in 2024, with regular milled rice experiencing the highest growth rate at 28.95 percent,
03:56rising from 36.48 pesos per kilogram in 2023 to 47.04 kilogram in 2024.
04:07Did our farmers' productivity improve?
04:10That's the big question.
04:13If the overall performance, halos wala pong nagbago.
04:21The influx of imported rice has led to a significant drop in the farm gate prices to locally produced rice.
04:29Our farmers who rely on rice farming for their livelihood are struggling to compete with the cheaper imported rice.
04:37This has resulted in reduced income for our farmers and has threatened their ability to sustain their farming operations.
04:47That's why, instead of making local production, it's only our importation.
04:51In fact, Philippine rice imports are projected to hit a record high of 5.5 million metric tons in 2026,
05:03exceeding the highest rice import volume of 4.8 million metric tons recorded in 2024.
05:11This will maintain the country's ranking as the world's biggest rice importer of this household staple.
05:20It is sad to see us in this situation when we once thrived in our own rice fields, even exporting to other nations many, many years ago.
05:30This is based on the estimate of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Foreign Agricultural Service.
05:37We must review the wisdom behind the lifting of the quantitative restriction on rice imports.
05:46Because, without the NFA's involvement in rice procurement, traders face no real competition, enabling them to drive down farm gate prices and control market rates.
06:00Mr. President, after more than five years, our rice farmers by now should have felt the effects of the RCEP.
06:09Pero, wala.
06:13Umaalma pa rin po ang ating mga pobring mga magsasaka.
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