How oil price hikes burden our farmers
When oil prices hit the three-digit mark, most people worried about the impact on drivers and commuters. The oil price hikes will definitely increase fare prices and spiral into other necessities and goods. But there is a certain marginalized group that is also at the receiving end of the crisis, quietly and painfully carrying its burden—our smallholder farmers.
The ongoing oil price hikes immediately took me back to the stories of rice farmers in a barangay in a municipality in Laguna province, where I conducted fieldwork about three years ago. Fuel is a critical component in rice production for many of our small-scale rice farmers, and one of the major problems they lamented was the rising production cost driven by oil. Many rice farms in the province still lack irrigation canals, which could provide farmers with an abundant and steady water supply year-round. In that barangay, farmers use diesel-powered shallow tube wells that operate nonstop for days just to submerge their fields, especially during the dry season.
A farmer told me he would need to spend P10,000 on diesel to irrigate his two-hectare land, and this was during the postpandemic spike in oil prices. Farmers also rely on oil to power their other farm machines and equipment. This might have been a manageable problem if other farm inputs were not equally expensive. Farmers shoulder everything from rice seedlings to fertilizers. Most farmers in that community do not even own the land they till, only leasing it from landlords. These compounding problems in farm production weigh too heavily on farmers, forcing many to succumb to usurious lending arrangements that push them even deeper into debt.
Since they do not have their own vehicles, most farmers in that community rely on rice traders or middlemen to reach markets and sell their harvest. They also depend on these traders for drying their palay, as they still lack postharvest facilities, such as drying and storage. All of these processes consume oil, and the added costs can be exploited by opportunistic traders, who will inevitably pass them on to the rice farmers.
When I asked the farmers how else they cope with the volatility of fuel prices, they mentioned that a private foundation had been generous enough to build a solar-powered irrigation system in their barangay. However, the majority still depend on diesel-powered irrigation to continue their cultivation. I also asked about the assistance they receive from their municipal agriculture office, and they shared that while some support is extended, it falls short of what they truly need.
The rising cost of rice farming has pushed many farmers to reconsider it. They are seeking nonfarming activities to augment the little income left after input costs and loan repayments. Some have also begun discouraging their sons from entering rice farming, encouraging them instead to pursue more lucrative opportunities, especially in the cities.
If this trend continues, the future of rice farming and production, not only in Laguna but across the country, will be at serious risk. The government’s solution to address the declining food supply has been to import rice from other countries. Although this ensures that the country has enough of its staple food, it does not address the root cause of the continuous decline in local rice production. More and more rice farmers are turning their backs on it, because they no longer see it as a reliable source of livelihood.
The current crisis is also opening up conversations about national policies that further exacerbate the problem. Neoliberal policies such as the oil deregulation law put us at the mercy of private oil companies because the state does not systematically intervene in pricing, rarely imposes price ceilings, and has long failed to maintain a national oil reserve that can be used during emergency crises. The persistence of the rice liberalization law also places local rice producers at a disadvantage by prioritizing importation over strengthening local production through greater and more substantial subsidies. Infrastructure investments, such as irrigation canals, also remain critically important if we are to ease the financial burden that farmers are left to carry largely on their own.
These problems show that, even though there are international geopolitical issues beyond our control, we can cushion ourselves from their severe impacts through carefully planned national policies. But beyond policy debates—and especially for the privileged who rarely feel the weight of these crises—may we be reminded that there are farmers who face each day with uncertainty, not knowing whether they will be able to continue planting for this nation.
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John Patrick P. Habacon is a graduate student of sociology and a social science professor at the Lyceum of the Philippines University Laguna.
