Peasants Rise Up Broadcast Series is tackling issues of landlessness, land grabbing, corporate capture and control in agriculture, and human rights, currently faced by the peasantry across the Asian region. In coming September, the United Nations (UN) is organizing the Food Systems Summit. But many civil society groups and mass movements have been critical of this Summit due to the obvious corporate interests dominating the process and thus likely the outcomes. With its bias towards corporate monopoly capital to supposedly achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, this UN Food Systems Summit is likely to not challenge but rather perpetuate the neoliberal policy. Already, many governments are using Covid-19 pandemic to further restructure food and agriculture along neoliberal lines to entice more foreign capital. These are among the reasons driving the farmers and other civil society groups and mass movements to organize their own Global People's Summit for a Just, Equitable, Healthy and Sustainable Food Systems.
rice bowl of the Philippines
Central Luzon region of the Philippines is incredibly significant for its food security and economy. This region is known as the rice granary of the Philippines because over 50% of the total rice production in the country is produced here by the farmers. But since the Rice Liberalization Law has been implemented, rice self-sufficiency of the Philippines has dropped from 90-95% in past decades to 79% in 2019, said Lester Gueta of KMP National (Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas - KMP - or the peasants' movement of the Philippines). According to 'Amihan' (national federation of peasant women in the Philippines), this fall in rice self-sufficiency has also resulted in losses of up to Pesos 90 billion for rice farmers. Many other crops are also produced here such as corn, root crops like cassava and sweet potato.
But only one in ten farmers own the land she or he tills. Arnold Gallardo said that farmers only get the "portion-to-hand" as only a portion of their harvest goes back to them because rest of it goes in paying back the agricultural debt. Another big portion of the harvest goes to pay taxes to the landowners. Lito Lumapas alerted on the rising costs of agricultural production particularly of fertilizers, pesticides, and irrigation. Some farmers also spend on the oil or gas needed for the water pumps or other machinery.
Build-Build-Build: but for whose benefit?
Lito Lumapas shared that the Build Build Build project rolled out by the government in the name of so-called 'development' is resulting in shrinking of agricultural land which was earlier dedicated to production of vegetables and other staple crops. Such a project is also brewing humanitarian crises for farmers and the urban poor. From big dams all over the region of central Luzon (over 20 planned new dams) to highways or expressways, or megapolis to aquapolis, such projects slice through the farmlands like a knife slices a pizza.
Lester added that instead of supporting community-led irrigation systems, government is rather undertaking construction of huge dams supposedly to irrigate farmlands. But these dams are rather wreaking havoc for farmers as dams convert agricultural land and divert or disrupt the river flow away from the farm and farmers, which is pushing lot of farmers towards bankruptcy.
Lito Lumapas highlighted another such infrastructure project called New Clark City which will convert more than 9450 acres of farmlands, mountains and forests; and displace 60,000 affected individuals. Some farmers are being coerced to sell their lands because developers must acquire permission from the farmers to convert the land use. Lito Lumapas rightly questions why the infrastructure built earlier for ASEAN Summit and southeast Asian games is lying without much use for the local people?
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