Ruel Amparo, the founder of Cropital, a crowdfunding platform that makes it easy for anyone to help finance Philippine farmers, says that by investing in farmers, we would be able to help them improve their production.

“[Farmers] are usually very credit dependent. They need credit for their production, for them to have the inputs, the seeds, the fertilizer,” he says. “They end up getting their credits from private lenders and these private lenders charge them as high as 20 percent per month which is too high.”

By investing in farmers, Amparo says that we would not only be able to assist their day-to-day processes, we can also contribute to making the Philippine agriculture sector as a viable market for investors.

Investing in Filipino farmers also means buying local. It’s been advocated for many times over, but sustainable lifestyle store EchoStore founder Chit Juan says that this simple practice is still not as widespread as it should be.

A few days after this statement, President Duterte gave a “verbal instruction” to import 250,000 metric tons of rice as a move to address the shortage. However, during the Congressional hearing in August, it was made clear how the NFA’s request for import was only approved by the NFA Council (comprised of 11 government agencies such as the Department of Trade and Industry) in May.

One opinion is ""There is no rice shortage. But there was indeed a spike in the prices of rice in the market, and this was caused by the delayed importation of NFA rice and even the commercial rice imported by the private sector,” Piñol explained."