Segmented markets, chokepoints, and the limits of liberalisation: Rethinking the Philippine rice economy

Despite being a nation of rice eaters, the Philippines’ smallholder rice economy remains structurally fragile. This talk asks why a country with a long history of rice crises continues to struggle to sustain domestic production, and advances two related claims.

First, importation has long served as the Philippine state’s principal instrument for managing rice crises, but this recurrent reliance has displaced rather than resolved the challenge of sustaining domestic production reform.

Second, this pattern cannot be understood by assuming a unified national rice market. The Philippine rice economy is better seen as a segmented field in which traders, millers, creditors, and other intermediaries control chokepoints that shape price formation, timing of sale, and the distribution of value. Dominant policy approaches have framed rice competitiveness too narrowly: they identify low yields, high production costs, and high gross marketing margins, but leave insufficient room for analysing the relations that systematically weaken farmers’ bargaining position in the market. Supporting rural well-being requires more than improved seeds or machines; it requires policy attention to mobility, bargaining power, reciprocity, and the social infrastructures of hanapbuhay.