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

Wednesday 20th May 2026, 16:00 to 17:30 Canberra time (AEST) / 08:00 to 09:30 Central European Summer Time (CEST) / 14:00 to 15:30 Philippine Standard Time (PST)

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.

About the speaker:

Eric D.U. Gutierrez is an award-winning investigative journalist turned scholar-practitioner whose work traces how power, violence, and survival intersect across illicit economies, conflict, and agrarian change. His work has combined frontline policy engagement with field-based research across Asia and Africa, including major roles with international NGOs, SOAS’s Drugs and (dis)Order project, and a consultancy with the UNODC. His PhD at ISS–Erasmus University Rotterdam, awarded cum laude in 2020, became the basis for Rethinking Illicit Economies in Opium and Cocaine (Routledge, 2024). He was a Research Fellow in Political Ecology and Agrarian Studies at the University of Melbourne, working on hanapbuhay (search for life), agrarian frontiers, and the everyday politics of coping and survival. He is currently developing a research project entitled “Perfect Storms, Ruptures, and the Making of Order from Below” on how life adjusts, reorganises, and persists in ‘coping economies from below’.

Research presented in this webinar was supported through the ANU Philippines Institute Grants and Awards Scheme. For more information, see the ANU Philippines Institue's Website here: https://philippinesinstitute.anu.edu.au/grants-awards

The ANU Philippines Institute Research Seminar Series is a recurring seminar series that showcases the work of scholars working on political, social and cultural issues in the Philippines and the wider region, with the goal of encouraging greater exchange, collaboration and networking amongst the research community.

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