Starting August 13, warehouses of the National Food Authority (NFA) will open their doors not only to buy palay from farmers but also to allow them to participate in the “Benteng Bigas, Meron Na!”—a key initiative of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. where rice is sold at P20 a kilo.
“It is only fair that those who produce the rice we eat have access to the P20-per-kilo rice we make available to vulnerable sectors, including minimum wage earners,” said Agriculture Secretary Francisco P. Tiu Laurel Jr.
“There will be KADIWA-FTI booths in NFA warehouses that will sell P20 rice.”
The program will be launched in Regions 2 and 3 next month. Farmers listed under the Department of Agriculture’s Registry System for Basic Sectors in Agriculture (RSBSA) will initially be eligible to purchase up to 10 kilos of P20 rice per month. Currently, around 2.9 million rice farmers are registered under the RSBSA.
Secretary Tiu Laurel said plans are being fine-tuned, particularly logistics, to include fisherfolk in the subsidized rice program.
There are 2.8 million RSBSA-registered fisherfolk. The subsidized rice are now sold primarily through the KADIWA ng Pangulo centers and in participating government agencies and local government units.
The rice are sourced by Food Terminal Inc. from the National Food Authority, which is required by law to build a buffer stock with rice bought only from local farmers. As currently envisioned, farmers could avail of their monthly allocation in bulk.
“This means that if they want, they could buy a 50-kilo sack of the P20 rice to cover their allocation from August to December,” said the DA chief, who is also chairman of the policymaking NFA Council.
If all registered farmers avail of their monthly entitlement, the NFA will release approximately 520,000 50-kilo bags of rice from its stocks each month. To replenish these stocks, the agency will have to procure two bags of palay for every bag of rice released—creating more selling opportunities for rice farmers at better prices and helping stabilize palay farm-gate prices.
President Marcos has directed the DA to expand the coverage of the P20 rice program to benefit as many as 15 million households—or around 60 million Filipinos—by next year. The administration aims to sustain the program until the end of the President’s term in June 2028, fulfilling a major campaign promise to ensure accessible, affordable rice for all.
Secretary Tiu Laurel said an P18 billion budget has been approved by President Marcos for the rice program for 2026—an allocation that would supplement that P9 billion budget for palay procurement of the NFA as proposed in next year’s General Appropriations Act.
