Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr. on Wednesday urged senators to amend laws he described to have weakened the farm sector and to support an increase in investments in the agriculture sector.
At the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Food and Agrarian Reform hearing, Tiu-Laurel said the Rice Tariffication Law (RTL) and the Local Government Code have stripped the Department of Agriculture (DA) of critical tools to manage supply and stabilize prices.
“As currently written, RTL does not reform the rice industry—it threatens to kill it,” he told senators, adding that the devolution of extension services under the Local Government Code left the DA like “a general without soldiers.”
He also laid out the urgency of modernizing the sector—from irrigation and logistics to market access and legislative support.
He added that there is a need for greater investments, noting that irrigation alone would require more than PHP1 trillion to cover over a million hectares of farmland.
Without it, he said, the country would remain dependent on imports.
Despite these constraints, Tiu Laurel highlighted recent gains, including near-full National Food Authority warehouses, the establishment of a Virology Center in Central Luzon, and the forthcoming launch of a real-time command center for market data.
He also pointed to support from foreign partners such as South Korea’s agricultural machinery complex and France’s farm-to-market bridges, alongside domestic programs offering faster crop insurance payouts, affordable credit, and youth agripreneurship initiatives.
Senator Francis Pangilinan, who chairs the committee, said the inquiry would not only look into ways of lowering food prices but also identify who should be held accountable for persistent price hikes and smuggling operations.
He recalled that previous Senate investigations had laid down recommendations such as stronger inter-agency coordination, digitized processes, and blacklisting repeat offenders.
“Let us stop pretending we do not know the problem,” Pangilinan said. (PNA)