Missing pork price

A hog raiser in Iloilo pockets PHP 170 for every kilo of pork you paid PHP 360 for at the wet. You paid PHP 360 for it. That PHP 190 gap – more than the farmer earned – went somewhere. Nobody in government seems to know exactly where, or nobody wants to say.

The Sangguniang Panlalawigan of Iloilo voted last week to investigate this. Good. But let us not pretend a committee referral is the same thing as an answer.

Pork Producers Federation of the Philippines president Rolando Tambago put it plainly: by the time a pig leaves a farm, it passes through at least five hands before it reaches consumers. Traders buy from piggeries, hand off to viajeros, who sell to consolidators, who supply the slaughterhouse, who sell to the wet market retailer. Each layer takes a cut. A 2025 veterinary science study published in Frontiers ranked the presence of these intermediaries as the single most important problem in the Philippine swine supply chain, describing the heavy reliance of backyard producers on middlemen as a direct restriction on farmers’ bargaining power. They cannot easily go around the system because they were never given the infrastructure to do so.

And then there is the import question, which is where this story gets political.

After Executive Order 62 lowered pork tariff rates, Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr. said the move had encouraged over-importation. “Farmgate prices have fallen sharply, yet consumers have not felt any relief,” he said. “During my market visits, I have seen liempo still selling for around PHP 400 a kilo.” That was November 2025. Seven months later, Iloilo raisers are still getting PHP 170. In the first quarter of 2026 alone, 1.2 million kilograms of imported and shipped-in pork entered Iloilo. Cheaper imports, lower farmgate prices, same retail cost. Somebody is profiting from this arrangement. It is not the farmer, and it is not you.

Data from the DA showed that out of 130 pork import quota holders, just 22 traders controlled 70 percent of the total minimum access volume allocation. That concentration should disturb anyone serious about market fairness.

The DA had agreed with hog industry groups in November 2025 to set a minimum farmgate price of PHP 210 per kilogram for live hogs, with production costs estimated at PHP 170 to PHP 180 per kilogram. That floor was supposed to keep raisers above water. SINAG executive director Jayson Cainglet said it plainly: importers are capturing the profits when tariffs are low but retail prices remain the same, and neither consumers nor producers are benefiting. Yet here we are. The floor exists on paper. Iloilo raisers are still at PHP 170, which means they are either at or below production cost depending on their feed prices that week.

Feed alone accounts for 57 to 70 percent of total production cost for Philippine hog raisers, climbing toward 80 percent for backyard operators buying commercial pellets by the sack. These are not people with room for error. In Iloilo, backyard and small-scale raisers account for 91.77 percent of the province’s swine inventory. That is the demographic absorbing all the risk of ASF, all the pressure of import competition, and all the margin squeeze of a supply chain built around traders, not producers.

The Sangguniang Panlalawigan’s inquiry should do one thing above all else: follow the money. Not just describe the gap, but name the traders, examine their licensed operations, and demand that DA-Western Visayas explain what enforcement of the PHP 210 floor has actually looked like in this province. Vice Governor Nathalie Ann Debuque was right that food security is about ensuring producers can keep producing. But that principle requires more than a statement – it requires the province to push the DA and the national government on tariff policy, demand supply chain traceability from the National Meat Inspection Service, and explore whether a provincial trading post model can give small raisers a direct channel to public markets.

The committees should also look at what the national government has already attempted. Food Terminal, Inc. was tasked with cutting out middlemen by buying hogs directly from farms, delivering them to slaughterhouses, and supplying the market –  a structural intervention the DA floated in mid-2025 when retail price cap compliance fell below five percent. Whether any of that reached Western Visayas is worth asking.

The farmer raising your pork is not failing. The system surrounding the farmer is. And right now, that system is taxing both ends of the supply chain – the raiser who cannot sell above cost, and the consumer who cannot buy below a premium – while the middle remains comfortably opaque.