Rice and Corn Board

Also known as: RACB — the abbreviation of the Board's own name · RICOB — the styling carried in the National Food Authority's record · The Board — RA 3018's own in-text designation · The rice and corn nationalization board — the descriptive styling, from the statute it administered

Government

Definition

The Rice and Corn Board (RACB, styled RICOB in its successor’s record) was the Philippine regulatory board created by Section 5 of Republic Act No. 3018, approved August 2, 1960 — “AN ACT LIMITING THE RIGHT TO ENGAGE IN THE RICE AND CORN INDUSTRY TO CITIZENS OF THE PHILIPPINES, AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES,” effective January 1, 1961. The statute’s own words installed it: “There is hereby created a board, which shall be known as the Rice and Corn Board, hereinafter called the Board, which shall administer the provisions of this Act and shall study and recommend measures for the improvement and development of the rice and corn industry.” (LawPhil — RA 3018) The Board was chaired by the Secretary of Commerce and Industry, with the Secretary of Agriculture and Natural Resources as vice-chairman, the Governor of the Central Bank, the President of the Philippine National Bank, and the Chairman of the Development Bank of the Philippines, sitting beside six private-sector members — one for millers and warehousemen, two for planters or producers, one for retailers and wholesalers, one for the consumers cooperative, one for labor — appointed by the President with the consent of the Commission on Appointments. (LawPhil — RA 3018)

Historical register; defunct. The Board was an agency of economic nationalism, not of price administration: its statute barred persons who were not citizens of the Philippines, or companies not wholly Filipino-owned, from “directly or indirectly” engaging in the rice and/or corn industry — defined to include the “culture, milling, warehousing, transporting, exportation, importation, handling the distribution… or the acquisition for the purpose of trade of rice (husked or unhusked) or corn and the by-products thereof” — and gave the alien businesses already licensed wind-down periods of two years for trade and three years for milling and warehousing, after which no new alien license could issue. (LawPhil — RA 3018) The Board’s own career ran from its implementing Resolution No. 10 of November 21, 1960 to September 26, 1972, when Presidential Decree No. 4 transferred its “functions, personnel, properties, assets and unexpended appropriations” to the National Grains Industry Development Administration, “under which the Board shall continue to carry out the purpose of Republic Act Numbered Three thousand eighteen” — the succession the Supreme Court confirmed in 2015 when it held that the Administration “took over the functions of the Rice and Corn Board.” (LawPhil — Purina, Supreme Court E-Library — PD 4)

Identities

Source Type	Identity
Wikipedia	N/A — no standalone article (title verified missing this session); the Board is treated within the National Food Authority (Philippines) article as one of the two agencies PD 4 absorbed
Wikidata	N/A — no entity matching “Rice and Corn Board” (search verified this session)
DBpedia	Rice_and_Corn_Board — the resource URI exists only as an automated wikilink stub of the National Food Authority (Philippines) article, with no article or data of its own (verified this session)
ProductOntology	N/A
Wiktionary	N/A
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH)	N/A — LC authorities unreachable this session (HTTP 403)
MeSH	N/A
NCBI Taxonomy	N/A
AGROVOC	rice (c_6599) — the staple under regulation; no Board-specific concept verified
Google Scholar	Rice and Corn Board RICOB RACB Philippines Republic Act 3018 1960 nationalization rice and corn industry alien licensing liquidation by-products Resolution No. 10 Go Ka Toc Presidential Decree 4 1972 National Grains Authority National Food Authority
ConceptNet	N/A
OpenCyc	N/A

Also Known As

RACB — the abbreviation of the Board’s own name
RICOB — the styling carried in the National Food Authority’s record
The Board — RA 3018’s own in-text designation
The rice and corn nationalization board — the descriptive styling, from the statute it administered

Examples and Analogies

A regulator born of a nationalization act: the Board was not a price board — it was the administrator of a citizenship law, closing the rice and corn industry to aliens on a published schedule, in the same legislative family as the era’s other Filipino-first measures. (LawPhil — RA 3018)
An economic cabinet with private seats: four cabinet-level and bank chairmen sat with six sectoral representatives — millers, planters, traders, consumers, labor — the interest groups of the grains economy gathered into the regulator itself, at twenty-five pesos per meeting. (LawPhil — RA 3018)
Rules that reached the dialects: Section 6 ordered the Board’s implementing rules published in a Manila newspaper and “translated into the dialects spoken in the different regions” — regulation pitched at the barrio trader, not just the Manila lawyer. (LawPhil — RA 3018)
Verified statutory data:
Creating statute: RA No. 3018, approved August 2, 1960, effective January 1, 1961 — nationalization of the rice and corn industry to citizens of the Philippines (LawPhil — RA 3018)
Board: created by Sec. 5; Secretary of Commerce and Industry chairman, Secretary of Agriculture and Natural Resources vice-chairman; Central Bank Governor, PNB President, DBP Chairman, six private-sector members; per diem ₱25 per meeting; own personnel; ₱500,000 appropriation under Sec. 9 (LawPhil — RA 3018)
Coverage: culture, milling, warehousing, transporting, exportation, importation, wholesale and retail distribution, and acquisition for trade of rice, corn, and their by-products (Sec. 1) (LawPhil — RA 3018)
Wind-down: two years for trade and distribution, three years for milling and warehousing; alien capital pegged at declared levels; no new alien licenses (Secs. 2–3) (LawPhil — RA 3018)
Credit pairing: DBP revolving fund of at least ₱50 million at up to 7% for milling, warehousing, and marketing; PNB fund of at least ₱50 million at up to 6% for cultivation and production, with Central Bank rediscounting and FaCoMa priority (Sec. 4) (LawPhil — RA 3018)
Rule-making: rules and regulations within thirty days of approval, effective fifteen days after publication (Sec. 6); the Board’s Resolution No. 10 issued November 21, 1960 (LawPhil — RA 3018, LawPhil — Purina)
Penalties: five to ten years’ imprisonment and ₱5,000–₱10,000 fine, with deportation; the same penalty for a Filipino dummy; cancellation of naturalization for a naturalized offender; dismissal and perpetual disqualification for a culpable public officer (Sec. 7) (LawPhil — RA 3018)
End: PD No. 4, September 26, 1972, Sec. 27 — functions, personnel, properties, assets, and unexpended appropriations transferred to the National Grains Industry Development Administration (Supreme Court E-Library — PD 4)

Usage Scenarios

1. Administering the Nationalization

The Board’s daily work under RA 3018 was the licensing regime: registering the alien businesses of 1960, policing the two- and three-year liquidation windows, and shutting the industry’s door to new alien entrants — the statute’s machinery made operational by the Board’s rules. (LawPhil — RA 3018)

2. Rule-Making and the By-Product Litigation

The Board’s Resolution No. 10, defining “by-product” to include binlid, darak, corn husk, and corn meals, reached the Supreme Court: in Go Ka Toc Sons & Co. v. Rice and Corn Board (May 23, 1967) the Court upheld the resolution, holding that “only Filipinos and associations, partnerships or corporations 100% Filipino can engage even in the trade and acquisition of the by-products of rice and/or corn” and that the Board’s authority “to issue such rules and regulations implementing the law, proceeds from the law itself.” (LawPhil — Go Ka Toc)

3. Tracing the Succession into NGA and NFA

PD 4’s Section 27 did not repeal RA 3018 — it moved the Board’s mission into the grains Authority, whence it passed to the National Grains Authority and the National Food Authority; the Supreme Court’s 2015 Purina decision carries the National Food Authority as the agency still administering RA 3018’s purposes, down to its Resolution No. 193-98 divestment guidelines. (Supreme Court E-Library — PD 4, LawPhil — Purina, Wikipedia — National Food Authority (Philippines))

4. Distinguishing the Board from the Administration

Researchers must keep two sibling agencies apart: the Rice and Corn Board of RA 3018 (1960), regulator of the nationalized trade, and the Rice and Corn Administration of RA 3452 (1962), the price-stabilization and buffer-stock agency — the two-agency design PD 4 finally merged. (LawPhil — RA 3018, LawPhil — RA 3452)

Strategies

Nationalize by citizenship, wind down by deadline: rather than confiscate, RA 3018 fixed dated exits — two years for trade, three years for mills and warehouses — and let attrition and the license power do the transferring. (LawPhil — RA 3018)
Pair exclusion with credit: the same statute that pushed aliens out set aside at least ₱100 million in DBP and PNB revolving funds at six to seven percent for Filipinos entering the industry — exit financed by entry. (LawPhil — RA 3018)
Seat the stakeholders: the Board’s mixed composition made the regulated parties — millers, planters, traders — participants in the regulation, a corporatist design meant to make the nationalization self-enforcing. (LawPhil — RA 3018)
Regulate by published rule: the Sec. 6 publication and dialect-translation requirements tied the Board’s enforcement to rules the smallest dealer could actually read — a due-process floor under a harsh statute. (LawPhil — RA 3018)

Security and Safety Measures

Food security as citizenship policy: RA 3018 treated control of the staple trade as a matter of national economic security — the supply of rice and corn reserved to citizens as a standing defense of the population’s provisioning. (LawPhil — RA 3018)
Penalties with teeth: five to ten years’ imprisonment, fines up to ₱10,000, deportation of aliens, cancellation of naturalization, and perpetual disqualification of culpable officials made dummy arrangements and license violations criminally expensive. (LawPhil — RA 3018)
The treaty carve-out: Section 8 preserved rights granted to citizens and juridical entities of the United States under existing treaties — the statute’s own safety valve against diplomatic collision. (LawPhil — RA 3018)
Continuity across the transfer: PD 4’s Sec. 27 moved the Board’s functions, personnel, and appropriations whole, and kept RA 3018 alive inside the grains Authority — the safeguard that the nationalization regime survived its regulator. (Supreme Court E-Library — PD 4)
For researchers: the Board (RA 3018, 1960) and the Administration (RA 3452, 1962) are routinely confused and even conflated into one “rice and corn agency” — cite each to its own statute and check every secondary date against the LawPhil texts. (LawPhil — RA 3018, LawPhil — RA 3452)

Historical Context

The Board belongs to the Filipino-first economics of the late 1950s and the Garcia-era climate in which it matured. RA 3018 — approved August 2, 1960, effective January 1, 1961 — reserved the entire rice and corn economy, from culture to retail, to Filipino citizens and wholly Filipino-owned firms, and created the Board to administer the closure. Its Resolution No. 10 followed within four months, on November 21, 1960, and the Board’s rules were tested in the courts through the 1960s, the Supreme Court sustaining their reach over by-products in 1967. (LawPhil — RA 3018, LawPhil — Go Ka Toc, LawPhil — Purina)

Two years after the Board’s creation, Congress built its sibling: RA 3452 (June 14, 1962) created the Rice and Corn Administration to stabilize palay, rice, and corn prices with support buying and buffer stocks, so that through the 1960s the nationalization board and the price administration ran side by side. Martial law’s first week merged them: PD 4 of September 26, 1972 transferred the Board into the new National Grains Industry Development Administration — renamed National Grains Authority in 1978 and transformed into the National Food Authority in 1981 — and RA 3018’s purposes continued inside that lineage, the Board’s statute long outliving the Board itself. (LawPhil — RA 3452, Supreme Court E-Library — PD 4, LawPhil — Purina)

Challenges and Controversies

A Nationalization Board, Not a Price Board

Popular accounts assign the Board price-fixing margins and buffer stocks; RA 3018 gives it neither. Price stabilization and buffer stocks belonged to the Rice and Corn Administration of RA 3452 and, from 1972, to the grains Authority’s floor-and-ceiling regime under PD 4. The Board’s verified business was citizenship, licensing, and the liquidation schedule — a correction this wiki’s entries on the Administration and the National Food Authority keep consistently. (LawPhil — RA 3018, LawPhil — RA 3452)

Which Statute Created It?

The Board is sometimes credited to RA 3452 (1962) — the statute that actually created the Rice and Corn Administration. The Board’s creating instrument is RA 3018, approved August 2, 1960; the two agencies, two statutes, and two years apart are distinct, and their conflation corrupts every date in the lineage. (LawPhil — RA 3018, LawPhil — RA 3452)

By-Products and the Board’s Reach

The Board’s assertion that by-products — darak, corn husk, corn germ meal — lay inside the nationalized industry displaced long-established Chinese-Filipino processing businesses; Go Ka Toc sustained the reading, and the litigation record registers the human cost of a licensing regime drawn that broadly. (LawPhil — Go Ka Toc)

Two Bodies, One Trade

Running a nationalization board and a price administration in the same staple economy divided authority for a decade — the fragmentation PD 4 was written to end by absorbing both. The merger’s terms preserved RA 3018’s purposes while extinguishing the Board, a trade-off between regulatory continuity and institutional survival that the sources record without ever weighing. (Supreme Court E-Library — PD 4, LawPhil — Purina)