Law needed to set palay floor price, says Makabayan bloc

A law is needed to truly enforce the floor price of palay prices and to guarantee that farmers will benefit from such a scheme, opposition lawmakers Antonio Tinio of ACT Teachers party-list and Sarah Elago of Gabriela party-list said Tuesday.

The Makabayan lawmakers were responding to Executive Order 100 issued by President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr., ordering the Department of Agriculture to establish a floor price for palay (unhusked rice) and introduce trigger mechanisms for its implementation to protect Filipino farmers from unfairly low farmgate prices. 

“If 90% of their produce is bought by the same group of private traders who buy the palay at a pittance, then the EO won’t make a dent. We need a floor price for palay, but EO 100 does not set the floor price,” Tinio said in a press conference.

“Kailangan talaga ng batas na ipapasa para magtakda ng floor price so farming rice remains viable, and farmers will have sufficient earnings because they need to recover the production cost for producing rice,” Tinio added.

(We really need a law for that so farming remains viable.)

A law setting a floor price on palay, Tinio said, should also include punitive action against those traders who won’t comply with the floor price.

“The private traders comprise the local monopoly, which is why the farm gate price of palay goes down to as low as P5 per kilo. We don’t see sanctions for these under EO 100,” Tinio pointed out.

Elago said a law on setting a floor price should be part of a nationwide policy for rice industry development to ensure that the farmers are also given enough support to make up for their losses from natural calamities.

“Without such law, we are not really addressing the concerns of our farmers. The financial assistance we granted them for production subsidy under the 2026 budget, for one, is just P7,000. It should reach P15,000 to P20,000 to have an impact on them,” she said.

Elago was referring to the P7,000 aid for each of one million rice farmers under the proposed P6.7 trillion budget for 2026 approved by the House on third and final reading under House Bill 4058. 

In announcing the said aid, Speaker Faustino “Bojie” Dy III of Isabela said many farmers in his home province of Isabela sell palay for as low as P8 per kilo, far below the P16 to P18 needed to recover production costs.

After Dy announced the aid in a public hearing in the House of Representatives, a farmer from Nueva Ecija named Danilo Bolos said the insufficient aid from the government somehow makes them feel like beggars because nothing is being done to increase the floor prices/ farm gate prices of palay. 

“Bagamat kumakain po kami ng tatlong beses sa isang araw, e hindi naman po sapat 'yung aming kinikita. Papaano na po iyong pag-aaral ng aming mga anak? Kaya sana po... Tulad nang nabanggit po kanina ni Speaker na magbibigay na naman po ng ayuda na halagang P7,000. E ang nangyayari po, para kaming pulubi. ‘Yung ayuda, hindi naman po talagang sapat para kami umahon. Ang mahalaga po sa amin talaga ay 'yung presyo lang ng palay, ‘yung aming produkto,” Bolos added.

(Yes, we eat three times a day, but we don’t earn enough. How can we send our children to school? The Speaker said we will be given a cash aid of P7,000. But what is happening is that we are like beggars. The cash aid is not enough to lift us up. What really matters to us is the price of palay, our produce.) —LDF, GMA Integrated News