Kim’s Dream Orlan Ravanera
Not Just “Food Ayuda” But Ask Why There is Hunger?
It is quite paradoxical that this country, agricultural as it is, doesn’t even have food sufficiency and security, despite years of brandishing all kinds of modern agricultural technologies. How painful it is to see hungry children amidst the bounty of the land with vast plantations planted with high value fruits that only serve the consumerist lifestyle of the people in advanced countries oozing with obesity,
According to the report of the Food and Nutrition Institute, “28% of our children are malnourished while another 27% are underweight and 30% are stunted.” Yes, the number one victims of poverty are the children who did not ask to be born. What a pity that all we can do is to embrace and kiss them to show our deep affection and concern. Yes, the violence of poverty is glaringly manifested in the hungry look of the children and such hunger cannot be erased by just giving food like what the present dispensation is doing in providing food AYUDA. Hunger cannot be erased by just giving food to eat for one day as a palliative measure. That is just purely drama! The urgent call of the times is social transformation for people, planet, prosperity and peace. Let us dismantle oppressive systems and structures that breed hunger and poverty which have remained as formidable as ever. But first, it is essential and imperative that we must ask why they are hungry? Or why is it that in this country everyone is profiting from farming, i.e. the local compradors, the agri-chemical corporations, fertilizer and seed dealers and the usurers and not the farmers who are doing the back-breaking job of farming and have aged far beyond their years of existence, exposed to the excruciating heat of the sun and to harsh onslaught of climate change.
Well, we should refrain from asking these kinds of questions otherwise we may suffer the fate of the late Archbishop of El Salvador, His Eminence Archbishop Oscar Romero. The late Archbishop once said, “When I gave food to the hungry, they called me a Saint; when I asked why they are hungry, they called me a communist.” Well, that was in El Salvador but more so here in our country where “red-tagging” is so glaring. So, this could be the reason why we Filipinos are so buried in the fallacies of life, that the government is bent on spending billions of pesos under the AYUDA PROGRAM but never in focusing on uprooting the root causes of poverty, gross inequities, social injustice and hunger.
So better kiss the hungry children and support a rotten system called Neo-Liberal Capitalism known now as Corporate Globalization where money is used to make more money at the expense of the people and the environment, The fact is that this development paradigm centered on growth-at-all cost strategy and anchored on the so-called “trickle down” approach is only successful in sacrificing the people and the environment to the altar of greed and profit. This is happening everywhere in Mindanao through corporate globalization in cohort with power-that-be.
This is now happening in Amai Manabilang, Lanao del Sur where the Southern Philippine Development Authority (SPDA) has declared 26,000 hectares (16,000 hectares in Wao, Lanao del Sur and 10,000 hectares in Amai Manabilang as its own under the guise of promoting Agro-Industrial Development but in truth replacing thousands of Ilocano Settlers in favor of foreign corporations, in gross violation of the settlers’ prior right. Since last year, the farmers’ farmlands are being tractored daily, damaging their crops and livelihood and are now living in hunger and extreme poverty. While before, these Ilocano farmers, hardworking and nature-loving following nature’s and sustenance economy, were the ones supplying the vegetables to several provinces and cities. Now, they are being coercively evicted in favor of corporations in the presence of LGU and military personnel. Such is horrible travesty of the rule of law, human rights and social justice. The favored foreign corporation, the Kennemer Food International, is now converting the Filipinos’ farmlands into massive coffee and cacao plantation to supply STARBUCK. Another corporation to transform the area into massive plantation is the Asia Pacific Precision Agricultural Group This concretely shows that the enrichment of these corporations means the displacement and hunger of the Filipinos.
Such painful truism is worse in Butong, Quezon, Bukidnon where for 7 years now, some 1,000 families of the Manobo Pulangiyon Tribe have been living under shattered tents along the hi-way as their 1,111 hectare-ancestral domain has been land-grabbed by a powerful Kiantig Development Corporation, owned and managed by the Mayor of Quezon, Bukidnon. The displaced families are just eating once a day and all the children are sickly and malnourished. All the children have to be tied-up at night while their parents are sleeping as five children had already been hit by running cars. Glaringly, the tribe owns the land as certified by the National Commission of Indigenous Filipinos and no less than by the Supreme Court. But when they tried to enter even a 4-ha. vacant area nearby, a barrage of bullets met them, fired by the Corporation’s Security Force, hitting five women and children, done in the presence of military officials. But these officials did nothing to stop the 15-minute gunshots which happened on April 19,2022 when firing is disallowed as it was just one month prior to the day of the election. But how come the rule of law has not been followed? As has been said that in this country, no one is above the law, all must bow down to the majesty of the law because we follow the rule of law and not of men. But such statement is a great fallacy because what has been followed is the rule of the guns, the rule of power and of money.
The above narration is just a tip-of-the iceberg, so to speak, but somehow manifest concretely the painful truism why the occurrence of hunger in a land oozing with ecological resources is a great paradox. Glaringly, the transformation of our blessed land, the choicest into massive plantations. is the culprit, favoring the entry of foreign investors. Such is a mockery of Sec. 1, Art. 1 of the Constitution that declared, “In a democratic and republican State, sovereignty resides with the people and all governmental powers emanate from them.” Does sovereignty resides with foreign investors now?
While providing food to the hungry through the AYUDA PROGRAM seems great knowing that “a hungry man is an angry man,” but the call of the times is not just on such a palliative measure but on uprooting the causes of hunger as food is a basic human right –all for God’s greater glory!
