Women farmers demand calamity compensation amid flood losses

By DANIELA MAURICIO 

Bulatlat.com

BULACAN – Women farmers in Laguna, reeling from floods that destroyed their rice fields and left them with losses of up to P20,000 ($340) per hectare, are demanding calamity compensation and higher palay prices, as their crops are not covered by insurance and government rice policies continue to draw criticism.

Successive storms in the past month affected 4.6 million people nationwide, with reports showing that agricultural damage from Typhoon Emong alone reached P430 million ($7.31 million).

According to Amihan National Federation of Peasant Women, Laguna-based women farmers lost P10,000 to P20,000 ($170–$340) in flooded rice fields. 

Women farmers in the said province reported losses from flooded rice fields, with Venus Nequinto estimating around P21,000 ($357) in damages from her submerged parcels of land and Leny Espiritu citing about P20,000 ($340) in losses from a hectare of planted rice.

The women farmers said that their palay was not covered by crop insurance as the Philippine Crop Insurance Corporation (PCIC) requires crops to be at least two months old to qualify for full compensation of losses.

“The call for compensation is justifiable because farmers have already spent on land preparation, planting, and spraying inputs, but all those expenses were practically washed away by the flood. Once the flood subsides, they will have to repeat the process starting from land preparation,” said Cathy Estavillo, secretary general of Amihan.

Estavillo called for higher farm gate prices so that farmers can recover from their successive losses. “If the price of palay remains low this harvest season, we might not plant anymore.”

In 2025, average year-on-year farmgate price of palay (unmilled rice) fell 31.8% in June to P16.99 ($0.29) per kilo, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA). The June drop was steeper than the 28.9% year-on-year decline recorded in May, while on a month-to-month basis, prices fell 4.3% from May.

Amihan women earlier criticized the Marcos Jr administration for its failed rice policies, calling them “superficial measures that do not address the depressed farmgate price of palay and the rising price of rice.” The group reiterated its call to repeal the Rice Liberalization Law, which many critics say jeopardized the livelihood of local farmers.

Republic Act 11203, or the Rice Liberalization Law (RLL), signed on February 14, 2019 by former President Rodrigo Duterte, changed the country’s rice policy by removing quantitative restrictions on rice imports and replacing them with tariffs. The law opened up the market to unlimited rice importation, with the goal of stabilizing supply and lowering consumer prices. However, critics stressed that it harmed local farmers by driving down palay farmgate prices and weakening the role of the National Food Authority (NFA) in supporting local rice production.

“The government should ensure the production subsidy and irrigation services development to increase local rice production,” the group said in a statement. (AMU, DAA) 

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