SMALL farmers deliberately skipped listening to the 2026 SONA because the most critical problem of agriculture at the moment is something beyond the problem-solving competence of the Marcos Jr. government. As such, and given the parochial mind set of most small farmers, there is no sense listening to a SONA that will not address a catastrophic event they currently face. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) , the El Niño that is drying up our irrigation dams, parching farmlands and crippling agriculture overall is the most horrific El Niño since a similar occurrence in 1877-1878. It is a global scourge, upsetting lives and economies across multiple continents.
If President Marcos Jr. has the policy nimbleness of a leader he recently met, Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney, perhaps he will come up with something and deal with El Niño through science-backed radical approaches, then incorporate these into his SONA. In crisis management though, he is not at Carney’s level. although I admit he is a thousand times more competent than the president-in-waiting — Sara Duterte.
At the rate agricultural productivity is being paralyzed by El Niño, we will probably hit 6 million metric tons of rice imports this year, a record high and likewise the world’s biggest rice importation for 2026. Corn and sugar productivity may go down as well. No amount of propagandizing by Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu-Laurel, perpetually cosplaying as an action man in his flak jacket, will ease the pain that the El Niño would inflict on the small farmers like myself and my neighbors. That a few crates of mangoes entered the European market, which the hype machine of Tiu-Laurel keeps on reminding us because he is running out of promotional gimmicks, is not salve to the deep wounds that small farmers are suffering from right now. Tiu-Laurel is also desperately clinging to ube issues to divert public attention from his astonishing incompetence.
This is not related to El Niño but I will have to take note of this. Brazilian and Argentinian farmers have been capitalizing on our failure to contain the African swine fever (ASF) and our flailing meat production, to increase their share of our country’s ever-surging meat imports.
What could have eased the irrigation water woes of small farmers during this dry spell — competitively priced diesel that powers shallow tube wells that pump water into farms during dry spells — is not an option. An autocrat wannabe, US President Donald Trump, helped Israel bomb Iran last Feb. 28, triggering the start of a war with no plan and until now, a war without a foreseeable ending. Tragically for us, the Gulf area that supplies us with 80 percent of our fuel requirements and much of the inorganic fertilizer badly needed by our farms, is at the epicenter of that war. The global consensus is this: the region most vulnerable to oil supply shocks is Asia and within the Asian region, the country most economically vulnerable to oil supply shocks is the Philippines. Hence, the immense suffering of an economy heavily reliant on imported gasoline, diesel, aviation fuel and bunker fuel — the main oil distillates.
In retrospect, the surging diesel prices that heavily impact on agriculture production is hardly a topic in the national conversation because the bulk of the suffering is borne by the transport, power and manufacturing sectors.
And just like the agriculture-ravaging El Niño, the whimsy of megalomaniacal Donald Trump — like what is now called his “forever war” in the Gulf region — is beyond the crisis management powers of President Marcos Jr. The Gulf war circa 2026 is a war that the US cannot win. Badly battered Iran has the ability to strike at US facilities in the Gulf and the facilities that represent the economic lifelines of US allies there. Cheap drones and missiles that Iran has stockpiled have reshaped 21st century wars. Trump is bombing Iran to kingdom come. We bear the brunt of the economic fallout from that senseless war and we can do nothing it.
Iran is right now restricting oil tanker movement in the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow passageway that handles 20 percent of the global oil exports sourced from the Gulf areas. A part of that 20 percent, tragically, represents 80 percent of Philippine oil imports.
The surging oil prices that impacts heavily on critical sectors like transport, food production, manufacturing and power is just the other half of the overall, war-related economic bludgeoning. OFW remittances, powered by around 2 million Filipinos working in the Gulf areas, has failed to meet its usually unfailing growth trajectory. For the first time, monthly remittance reports warn of either “low growth rates” or historically low growth rates.” Even the pandemic years did not bring down the growth of remittances to the current low levels.
OFW remittances are usually nine to 10 percent of nominal GDP, bigger than merchandise exports. The remittances, more than $30 billion last year, have been our economic lifeline from the last quarter of the past century.
Our sense of helplessness as we grapple with a horrific El Niño and the fallout from Trump’s war is something that President Marcos cannot state in the 2026 SONA. And that sense of helplessness, his lack of capacity to even confront the brutal wages of the actions of an autocrat wannabe and a historic El Niño, weighed heavily on the decision of small farmers like myself to just skip the SONA.