Raffy Tulfo’s Call to Arms: Rewriting the Rice Tariffication Law to Rescue a Nation’s Farmers

By Louis ‘Barok’ C Biraogo — August 7, 2025

Lito Mangalindan lost money growing the rice that feeds millions of Filipinos.
The 52-year-old farmer borrowed 50,000 pesos last year to plant palay in Nueva Ecija, the Philippines’ rice basket. When harvest came, he sold his crop for barely 15 pesos per kilo—not enough to cover his costs, let alone feed his family. At dawn each morning, he still tends the same fields his ancestors worked for generations, but now he’s not just fighting weather and pests. He’s fighting an economic system designed to destroy him.

“The Rice Tariffication Law was supposed to help us,” Lito told me, his voice heavy with debt and despair. “Instead, it’s drowning us.”

Enacted in 2019, the Rice Tariffication Law (RTL) promised a bold fix for the Philippines’ perennial rice woes: liberalize imports, impose tariffs, and use the revenue to modernize farming through the Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund (RCEF). The goal was lower prices for consumers, competitive farmers, and a stable food supply.

Six years later, Senator Raffy Tulfo’s push for a review, spotlighted in an August 2025 Manila Bulletin report, signals a stark reality: the RTL has not delivered. Lito’s story, echoed across the archipelago, demands we ask: Has the RTL failed, and if so, why?

The Core Controversies: A Law Under Siege

Senator Tulfo’s call for reform hinges on undeniable failures: rice prices remain stubbornly high—47.41 pesos per kilo in 2023, nearly identical to 47.43 pesos in 2018—while farmers like Lito face ruin as cheap imports flood markets.

He cites palay prices plummeting from 19-20 pesos per kilo pre-RTL to as low as 15.36 pesos in 2019, costing farmers an estimated 60-80 billion pesos in losses by 2024. Tulfo also flags RCEF mismanagement, with local officials allegedly diverting aid to cronies.

Tulfo’s motives invite scrutiny. A populist senator with a knack for media, his campaign resonates with rural voters—a potent base in a nation where agriculture employs 25% of the workforce. Is he championing farmers or leveraging their pain for political gain? Likely both.

His focus on RCEF corruption is valid, backed by reports of nepotism, but it sidesteps the law’s deeper structural flaws, risking a narrative that fuels division rather than solutions.

Proponents, including the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA), argue that liberalization curbed smuggling and ensured supply stability. Imports surged to 4.68 million metric tons in 2024, averting shortages during El Niño.

They claim consumers saved up to 20 billion pesos in 2019-2021, when prices briefly dipped, and that RCEF has modernized farming, with 6,385 cooperatives receiving machinery, benefiting nearly a million farmers. Yet these claims falter when retail prices remain near pre-RTL levels and farmers’ incomes stagnate.

Underreported nuances deepen the controversy. Regional disparities reveal uneven impacts: in Mindanao, where irrigation is scarce, RCEF aid often fails to reach remote farmers, while Luzon’s cooperatives dominate. Corruption in RCEF implementation—barely audited until Tulfo’s outcry—has eroded trust.

The law’s restriction to inbred seeds, ignoring higher-yielding hybrids, stifles productivity gains by 20-30%, per IRRI studies. These oversights suggest a law crafted for urban consumers, neglecting the rural poor who grow the nation’s food.

Policy Analysis: Promises vs. Reality

To judge the RTL, we measure its outcomes against its goals: lower prices, competitive farmers, stable supply, and reduced subsidies. The data paints a grim picture.

Retail prices, at 47.41 pesos per kilo in 2023, are nearly unchanged from 2018. Imports, while stabilizing supply, are projected to hit 5.4 million metric tons in 2025, making the Philippines the world’s top rice importer. Domestic production dipped to 19.09 million metric tons in 2024 from 20.06 million in 2023, battered by weather and low prices.

The RCEF, funded by 46.6 billion pesos in tariffs from 2019-2021, was meant to bridge this gap. It delivered machinery and 2.89 billion pesos in loans to 65,000 farmers.

But a 2024 study in the International Journal of Economics found RCEF recipients gained 52% in income, while non-recipients lost 19%, highlighting uneven impact. Corruption—allegations of LGUs favoring allies—and slow disbursement have crippled its reach.

Yields remain stagnant, with first-quarter 2025 production at 4.698 million metric tons, barely up from 4.685 million in 2024.

Unintended consequences are stark. The import flood has slashed palay prices, pushing farmers like Lito into debt or out of agriculture, with over 100,000 jobs lost indirectly. Trader monopolies have filled the void left by a weakened National Food Authority (NFA), which no longer procures rice to stabilize prices.

Rural unemployment fuels migration to overcrowded cities, while agrarian unrest simmers, as seen in farmer protests. The RTL’s promise of competitiveness has drowned in a sea of cheap imports, leaving the Philippines vulnerable to global price shocks.

A cost-benefit analysis lays bare the inequities. Importers and traders have reaped windfalls, with tariffs fueling a 46.6-billion-peso RCEF that often misses its mark. Urban consumers saw fleeting savings, perhaps 10-20 billion pesos in 2019-2021, but face volatile prices today.

Farmers, meanwhile, have lost 60-80 billion pesos in income, with social costs—poverty, displacement, and distrust—mounting. The RTL’s winners are clear: those who control the import trade. Its losers are the rural poor, whose fields feed a nation but whose hopes it has drained.

Systemic Flaws: Design or Execution?

Is the RTL’s failure rooted in poor design or shoddy execution? Both. Its design assumes farmers could compete with global giants like Vietnam, where production costs are lower. Without robust safeguards—like seasonal tariffs or quotas during harvests—the law exposed smallholders to market forces they couldn’t withstand.

The RCEF’s inbred-seed mandate, ignoring hybrids, reflects a technocratic misstep, as hybrids could boost yields by 20-30%, per IRRI. The NFA’s diminished role left farmers at the mercy of traders, who dictate prices with impunity.

Execution has been equally disastrous. RCEF funds, meant to modernize farming, are tangled in bureaucratic red tape and local corruption. A 2023 study flagged inefficiencies in RCEF fund allocation, with reports of LGUs favoring traders or cronies over farmers, per critiques in the International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science and Senator Raffy Tulfo’s allegations.” [Guevarra, 2023, and Manila Bulletin, August 2025]

Compare this to Indonesia’s hybrid model, which balances imports with state-led procurement and invests heavily in irrigation and extension services. Indonesia’s rice self-sufficiency rate hovers near 90%, while the Philippines’ languishes at 75%. The RTL’s architects ignored such models, betting on markets alone to deliver equity—a gamble that failed.

Solutions: A Path to Redemption

Reforming the RTL demands pragmatism and moral clarity. Tariffs may cushion farmers, but without dismantling trader cartels, reforms are Band-Aids on bullet wounds. Here’s a roadmap:

Revive the NFA’s Role: Empower the NFA to buy palay at fair prices during harvests, stabilizing farmgate incomes without distorting markets. Indonesia’s BULOG model offers a blueprint.
Seasonal Tariff Adjustments: Raise tariffs to 35% during peak harvests to protect local farmers, lowering them in lean seasons to ensure supply. This balances consumer and producer needs, unlike the current flat 15% rate.
Overhaul RCEF with Transparency: Use blockchain to track fund distribution, ensuring aid reaches real farmers. Third-party audits and farmer-led councils can curb LGU abuses, restoring trust.
Embrace Hybrid Seeds: Amend the RTL to fund hybrid seed development, which could lift yields by 20-30%, per IRRI. This aligns with global best practices.
Invest in Rural Infrastructure: Beyond RCEF, fund irrigation and solar electrification to cut costs and boost productivity. Indonesia’s model shows infrastructure is key to self-sufficiency.

These steps blend data-driven precision with a moral imperative: food security is a right, not a privilege. The RTL must evolve—or face revolt from the fields it has betrayed.

Fields of Despair, Seeds of Change: Act Now for Farmers

Lito Mangalindan’s story is not just one farmer’s tragedy; it’s a warning. The RTL flooded markets with cheap rice but drained hope from the countryside. Its promise of progress has been squandered by design flaws and governance failures, leaving farmers to bear the cost of a policy skewed toward importers and urban elites.

If the Philippines is to feed itself with dignity, it must rewrite this law—not with populism or platitudes, but with a fierce commitment to justice for those who till the land. The question isn’t whether reform is needed, but whether leaders have the courage to act before rural despair sparks a reckoning.