Farmers’ Liberation from the Quagmire of Poverty
As an agricultural country where two-third of its population are living in the rural areas, engaged in agriculture or agricultural-related activities, any short or long-term development therefore can either be won or lost through agriculture. But all these years, the peasantry who are described as the “unsung heroes” or “the backbone of the nation” have been living in the quagmire of extreme poverty. Why is this so? It is so paradoxical that despite all the outpourings of agricultural programs worth billions, if not, trillions of pesos, poverty of the peasantry has even worsened, the reason why three of four young farmers have left farming and have gone to the urban centers to work as janitors, waiters or drivers and if beautiful, as dancers. The worsening poverty of the peasantry has been reinforced by a study conducted by the United Nations’ Food & Agricultural Organization (UN-FAO) that “Agriculture in the Philippines has only contributed .02% to the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the last decade.” Such painful truism is reinforced by a recent study that the “Philippines is the biggest rice importing country in the world.” What is so puzzling is why are we importing some 2.5 million metric tons of rice annually with a population of some 115 million Filipinos, even bigger than China’s rice importation of 2 million metric tons of rice annually with a population of some 1.5 billion people?
The root cause of poverty of the peasantry is CONVENTIONAL AGRICULTURE, intensively being promoted by the Department of Agriculture which has imprisoned our farmers to an economic paradigm that has benefitted everyone except the poor farmers. Indeed, who controls? Who profits? Who decides? Who benefits? Glaringly, the seed and fertilizer dealers, the usurers, the middlemen but not those who do the back-breaking job of farming – the poor farmers exposed to the excruciating heat of the sun and the coldness of the rain. Don’t you know that a bag of fertilizer such as Ammonium Sulfate or Urea is just being bought in Ukraine at P50 but when it reaches Mindanao it is already sold at P2,000? This is because everything sold in our country passes at least five marketing layers. Thus, the poor farmers are the ones bearing the brunt of these multiple marketing layers.
What Is so painful is where are now our indigenous varieties of rice such as Azucena, Tunawon, etc. which were grown by our forefathers organically but were replaced by so-called High Yielding Varieties (HYVs)? Well, I discovered that these organic rice varieties have been stolen by the Trans-National Corporations and being used by farmers in the United States commanding higher prices as these varieties are described as very healthy, devoid of any chemical-use
While other Asian countries are debunking conventional agriculture, our country is still so firm in adhering to the use of HYVs and heavy use of chemicals. Don’t you know that during the signing of the Asean Free Trade Agreement (AFTA) in 1997 in Cebu, Philippines, the King of Thailand upon returning back to Bangkok, took-off his robe and crown and worked with the Thai farmers, telling them never to use HYVs and chemicals as these kill the integrity of the soil and beneficial insects? He even told them not to use tractor as its greenhouse gas emissions would deplete the ozone layer but to instead use carabaos as their wastes can fertilizer the soil. Because of that shift to sustainable agriculture, the Thai farmers were able to lower than their production cost of rice to only P5 per kilo. The Filipino rice farmers are still tied-up to conventional agriculture producing per kilo of rice to at least P15 per kilo. Thus, when no less than Sen. Cynthia Villar passed the Rice Tariffication Law that allowed the entry of cheaply grown rice into our country, many rice farmers committed suicide DAHIL NABAON NA SA UTANG. That is how insensitive these senators are. But why is our country the biggest rice importer in the world when we have vast tracts of land that can be planted with rice for our food needs?
What could be more painful for our Indigenous Peoples than to see vast tracts of land that once their forefathers owned now converted into massive plantations as 70% of the choicest area of Mindanao are controlled by TNCs! These massive plantations are intensively using chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, some of which are already banned in other countries. In the computation of experts, the more than a million hectares of plantations are using tremendous amount of chemicals that as if we are dumping some 5,000 dump-trucks of toxic, non-biodegradable chemicals to our water-table every day. This Is the reason why many Mindanaoans have been afflicted with cancer and many new-born babies are born deformed. Because of this, Mindanao agriculture has become the center of contradictions, the focus of two conflicting paradigms. One side is the dominant market-oriented industrial agriculture pursued by the TNCs. Their drive is to promote conventional agriculture which is anchored on promoting cash crop to satisfy the market, increase production through chemical farming using HYVs including genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The TNCs’ in collusion with powers-that-be have transformed our blessed land into massive plantations to satisfy the consumerist needs of the obese people in advanced countries to earn millions, if not billions, of dollars while many Filipinos are starving, the reason why 85% of the Filipino children are malnourished. The non-stop heavy usage of these toxic chemicals has not only contaminated our watersheds but have intensively polluted our rivers and bays as 10 of the 13 major bays in our country are now biologically dead. This is the reason why thousands of our coastal communities are now living in extreme poverty and hunger. I know this painful truism as I have lived with them. When a fisherman-father would come home early, the children would know that there was no more fish to catch and they would just whisper, GUTOM NA NAMAN!
On the other hand, is the alternative paradigm promoted not by the government but by compassionate environmentalists together with the IPs and small farming communities which is anchored on the principle and practices of sustainable agriculture that trust on the innate processes of nature. They treat nature as like a “home” where their basic needs are provided for. For thousands of years, the IPs have shown oneness with nature, protecting the integrity of the blessed land, now massively degraded by the TNCs. Indeed, the IPs may be primitive but they are culturally and spiritually advanced. These rich and powerful TNCs and oligarchs may be advanced technologically but they are primitive culturally and spiritually whose essence is to maximize profit and consumer goods. How can this contradiction be resolved? Who will rectify the paradox in a country where the powerful TNCs as foreign investors are the ones prioritized by government? How puzzling it is to know that hundreds of thousands of hectares of the IPs’ ancestral domain have been land-grabbed by these corporations and when the IPs would resist, they became victims of Extra Judicial Killings. What Is so puzzling is when in the province of Bukidnon, some 46,000 hectares have been declared by the AFP as part of military reservation when glaringly these are the IPs’ ancestral domain. We discovered recently that the Mindanao Army Training Group has entered into an agreement with a TNC to convert an area which is already a community where the farmers have been farming since the fifties in Sitio Kibaritan, Malinao, Kalilangan, Bukidnon into Banana Hybrid Plantation.
History tells us that social wrongs and social injustices can only be rectified by the people themselves when they take responsibilities for their communities and take the future into their own hand. But first they must be awakened as they have been deeply buried in the fallacies of life through outpourings of lies. In the United States, it is called a compassionate revolution from despair to action with a firm belief that even a small group can initiate social transformation by telling the truth. This is based on the biblical declaration, VERITAS LIBERABIT VOS (The Truth shall set us free). It can be likened to the Gandhian SATYAGRAHA meaning LOVE-FORCE. Through love, truth, unity and spirit of service which is the essence of humans who are created in the image of likeness of God, the people will finally prevail!
To all those who have awakened on why the peasantry are wallowing in hunger and poverty in a land once called a paradise, an Eden, but Is now transformed into hell by these TNCs and the oligarchs in cahoots with power-that-be, let us now forge our oneness to liberate our farmers from the quagmire of oppression, hunger and poverty. With a firm belief that darkness cannot defeat the light, that inner values are more powerful than material values, no way can these TNCs, oligarchs and powers-that-be continue their egotism, brandishing AYUDA for the hungry to eat just for a day or two but forever be wallowing in hunger and poverty. The Ayuda Program is not the solution but to uproot the cause of hunger and poverty which is CONVENTIONAL AGRIULTURE! TAMA NA PO ANG PANLOLOKO SA SAMBAYANANG PILIPINO! PAG SILA PO AY NAGISING, MAGTAGO NA PO KAYO. And the awakened Filipinos will surely win because THE PEOPLE UNITED, CAN NEVER BE DEFEATED – ALL FOR GOD’S GREATER GLORY
