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"Protect our Filipino Farmers, Save Ourselves!"

"Protect our Filipino Farmers, Save Ourselves!"

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AgriTayo sa Healthy Harvest! started this petition to Office of the President of the Philippines and

“Let us never forget that the cultivation of the earth is the most important labor of man. When tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of civilization.” -Daniel Webster

An Act Liberalizing the Importation, Exportation, and Trading of Rice, Lifting for the Purpose the Quantitative Import Restriction on Rice, and For Other Purposes (REPUBLIC ACT No. 11203) or most commonly known as the Rice Tariffication Law (RTL) was signed by President Rodrigo Duterte on February 14, 2019 and took effect on March 5, the same year. The law removed government limits, called quantitative restrictions (QRs) on rice importation.

In line with the RTL, its proponents come up to the point that import liberalization would significantly lower domestic rice prices, regulated inflation, and moderate malnutrition, and poverty. While acknowledging that farmers would get hurt in the immediate term, they promised even larger benefits to consumers, including those farmers who were net rice buyers. In retrospect, local rice farmers are suffering and are on the losing end since the implementation of this law.

While waiting for the excess of supply to diminish, some business owners reported that they had to downscale or cease operations, lay off staff, idle mills, trucks, and other equipment, and restructure their bank debts. Some people are said to have abandoned the rice business and moved on to other business ventures.

Bantay Bigas, a rice-monitoring project under the National Food Authority (NFA), said that the law had a negative impact on Filipino farmers. “We have been warning against this prior to the enactment of the law, and now we are now facing the destruction of the rice farmers, the primary productive force of our national rice industry,” they said in a statement.

So, if farmers lost a lot, and consumers gained almost nothing, who won?


#JunkRiceLiberalization

#AbolishRA11203

#SupportFilipinoFarmers

References:

 

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