Diagnosing the nation beyond applause

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s 2025 State of the Nation Address, polished and applauded, was a triumph of performance over prognosis. But beneath its choreography lies a critical truth: the Republic is managing symptoms while ignoring the disease. And corruption—untreated—is metastasizing.

“We do not inherit the land from our ancestors—we borrow it from our children.” Today, as our fields wither and our farmers collapse, this proverb becomes prophecy.

The President heralded the rollout of ₱20/kilo rice as a victory. But in the communities I work with, farmers are selling palay at ₱8–₱10/kg, against production costs averaging ₱18/kg.

There is no dignity in growing food for a nation that prices you out of survival. No future when youth abandon the land, seeing only debt in the fields their elders once called sacred. This is a collapse beneath cheap rice!

Mechanization and subsidy narratives ring hollow without reforming trade cartels, strengthening buffer stock governance, and guaranteeing liquidity through sovereign Quedan systems. Without these, we are engineering the extinction of our food growers—and with them, our sovereignty.

Marcos Jr.’s silence on the country’s ₱16.8-trillion debt, 62% debt-to-GDP ratio, and a budget where 35% goes to debt service is more than omission—it’s evasion. Every applause line obscures the reality that we are borrowing not for transformation, but for continuity of broken systems. Low tax collection, ballooning deficits, and corruption in infrastructure are driving us to the edge.

Worse, there was no roadmap for revenue reform, procurement transparency, or anti-corruption architecture. Flood control “audits” and symbolic rebukes do not cure stage 4 corruption. They numb us to its spread. This is Stage 4 Fiscal Cancer  (Itals are author’s)

With farmers aging and young people leaving, who will plant, irrigate, and harvest tomorrow? Mechanized handouts mean little if there are no hands left. The SONA skipped systemic solutions to youth disinterest in agriculture—no curriculum reforms, no viability incentives, no dignity restoration.This isAbandoning the Next Generation

And while Marcos Jr. spoke of scholarships and infrastructure, he failed to mention Indigenous Peoples, ancestral domains, or historical justice—pillars of inclusive and regenerative governance.

What needs to be done? Transform rice governance from cartelized trade to participatory sovereignty; A national audit of subsidy distortions and flood control rackets; Protection of farmer income floors, not just consumer price ceilings; A Youth in Agriculture Agendar rooted in dignity, cultural relevance, and economic viability; A Truth Commission on corruption in public works and procurement. We cannot clap through collapse.

We must choose diagnosis over delusion, and sovereignty over spectacle. Let the applause fade. Let accountability start.

(Teodoro C. Mendoza (PhD) is a Retired Professor & UP Scientist II of the Institute of Crop Sciences at the University of the Philippines Los Baños.)