The Philippines is an Agricultural Country, Yet Farmers Strive for Food, Contributed by @juvyjabian

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Ironic as it seems, but the Filipino farmers do not have proper food on their tables. It is so sad to think that the major producer of food in the market is the one belonging to the poverty line. The agricultural sector is one of the most marginalized groups of people in the Philippines, and the government seems to be insensitive to the case.

There are many factors contributing to the problem of poverty among the Filipino farmers. While they are interconnected with each other, they are listed according to their level of influence to the problem.

Landlessness

Majority of the Filipino farmers are landless and are working on the lands owned by the few landlords. According to the latest survey provided by the Ibon Foundation in the country, there are 75% of the total population of the Filipino farmers who do not own the lands they have been tilling for many years. Many of them are working as tenants and are underpaid. A great example is the Hacienda Luisita in Luzon, Philippines in which the tenants are hard to find decency being workers on the land.

There have already been many land reforms in the country, but none of them worked out. Landlessness persists, and many multinational corporations have kept on expanding on the lands tilled by the farmers. Even the Department of Agrarian Reform of the Philippines, 93% of the agricultural landholdings are private and are shared with the few names in the country. How is this connected to the poverty felt by the Filipino farmers?

When these lands are privately owned, the landlords would hire landless farmers with fixed salaries or according to the amount of goods produced from the human labor via 7-3 share in which the 7 shares go to the landlords while the remaining percent go to the workers. In fixed salaries, no matter how many goods a farmer can produce within a day, his/her below minimum wage would not be changed plus the exhausting hours exceeding the regular workhours.

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Debt-Ridden

This problem is an effect of landlessness to which the farmers with underpayment tend to lend money to be able to feed the family. Their income is not enough to supply the daily needs of their family. Such case causes them to seek jobs other than farming, but these jobs do not include those decent ones because most of them are uneducated and even illiterate.

Many of them only rent the farming equipment they use in the farm. When they cannot income enough, they would probably prioritize food rather than paying the rent, leading them to be debt-ridden.

Land Monopoly by Big Plantations

For instance in Bukidnon, Philippines where agricultural lands are so vast and majority of the settlers rely on resources found on the soil, multinational corporations such as the Del Monte Corporation and the Philippine Dole whose main operation is pineapple plantation are rampant. They keep on expanding their land coverage to lands tilled by poor farmers. From 2007 to 2016, big plantations grew up to 67% throughout the Philippines and, at the same time, 75% of the Filipino farmers have been displaced from their lands. Many of them are indigenous Filipinos living in the hinterlands and who only depend on farming (Ibon Foundation).

Poor Education

The educational attainment of the farmers is also a factor. Due to illiteracy and low education, these farmers cannot find decent jobs. At least they could have coped up with their problems as farmers if they could do other professional jobs. Jobs nowadays require such high educational attainment. Even college graduates are required to study master’s degree to be closer to getting hired. While majority of the Filipinos who are marginalized have poor education, the worst case scenario includes those who are in the agricultural sector.

7 out of 10 Filipino farmers lack proper education while only 1 percent of them reached college education (UMA, 2015). Moreover, these lucky farmers were only beneficiaries of scholarships offered by some politicians who are ambitious of higher positions in the government. The bad thing is that when these politicians fail in an election, this scholarship is gone with the exception of those who still maintain the funding and not regularly done. Many reports of these beneficiaries include delayed and cut allowances.

There are also foundations that support the Filipino farmers but only for their children to enrol in schools. Not to mention the names of these private institutions, nonetheless, one cannot sill lose hope for a better education.

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Little to No Support from the Government

There are many departments of the government that support the livelihood of these farmers. However, it seems like these are the ones putting them down into the realm of poverty. An example is the Department of Agrarian Reform that promised to redistribute lands to landless farmers as well as provide social and monetary services to starting farmers through the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program or the CARP.

It was never totally realized. Many vast lands were exempted from redistribution. These lands are mostly owned by the landlords who have positions in the government. There were only 20 percent of agricultural lands distributed plus these lands were already sold to big companies because the farmer could not sustain them due to lack of farming tools and poverty as well (KMP, 2016).

Bad Climate

Lastly, the Philippines is also part of the region where typhoons usually come across. Nearly 32 to 35 typhoons come to the country every year plus many storms (PAGASA, 2016). This led the farmers to suffer from crop destruction. Such case is a problem to Musuan farmers in Bukidnon who could barely harvest crops every 6 months when they are devastated with heavy storms. In other areas of the country, flooding happens in many rice fields.

Farming is the most important profession in the country, and the government should take care of every Filipino farmer. What is happening is that it is, instead, demoralizing them in a way that it allows landlords to monopolize the lands while displacing the farmers from their communities. Another hurtful fact is when the CARP of the government was used to attack the farmers, rather than helping them lift up their lives as what it should do to them. If the farmers could just be given importance, they could have improved the country’s economy better than any other sectors do.

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