It’s no secret that Philippine agriculture has been facing its fair share of challenges in recent years, more so today. But let’s be honest: these challenges aren’t new. They’ve been with us for decades, recycled under different programs and promises.
Take Masagana 99. Launched in the 1970s, it was hailed as the silver bullet that would make the Philippines self-sufficient in rice. Farmers were encouraged, even pressured, to plant new high-yielding varieties. Credit was made readily available, fertilizers and pesticides were pushed, and for a brief moment, it seemed to work. Yields went up. The program was celebrated.
But I’ve seen the other side of the story, the side that doesn’t often make it to the headlines. As a lawyer for the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas years later, I handled foreclosures of farmlands from farmers who couldn’t pay back the loans they had taken under Masagana 99. I remember those cases vividly. The papers may have been full of numbers and land titles, but behind every file was a farmer and a family who lost the very land they tilled.
The inputs were expensive, the loans piled up, and when yields faltered because of pests, typhoons, or simply the unsuitability of the program to smallholder realities, many farmers were left drowning in debt. For them, Masagana 99 was not salvation. It was the beginning of dispossession.
Fast forward to today, and the echoes remain. Climate change has made farming more unpredictable than ever. Global competition from Thailand and Vietnam drives prices down. And government after government has made big promises to “support agriculture,” but too often the programs still follow the old playbook, short-term fixes, credit-driven schemes, inputs farmers can’t sustain without subsidies.
The lesson is clear to me now, both from history and from what I witnessed firsthand. We cannot build a strong agricultural sector on the backs of farmers saddled with debt. We cannot rely on quick-fix programs that look good on paper but hollow out lives in practice. What we need is a farmer-centered approach, one that starts with enabling them to produce sustainably and ends with helping them access markets at the least cost. Distribution, logistics, and fair pricing are just as critical as seeds and fertilizers.
The road ahead won’t be easy. But if we stop repeating the mistakes of the past and instead build systems that put farmers at the center, not as credit risks but as stewards of our food security. Then Philippine agriculture has a chance to really grow.