I sometimes think that to maintain rationality, one must submit to irrational. Otherwise the world will stop rotating on its axis until the irrational has managed to explain itself in a manner satisfactory to rational people.
December 17, 2008 was a date memorable to some, insiginificant to most. On that day the House was filled to the brim with people, some in celebration of the Christmas season, some mourning the loss of their livelihood and their way of life. Others, like me, stood at the sidelines, unable to determine which emotion to let reign. To celebrate with Christmas revelers on the last workday of the year? To commiserate with farmers, some not having eaten for days, as they awaited the fate of agrarian reform?
Inside the session hall, the Chief of Staff of a representative from Mindanao let loose some choice words for the landlord block bent on killing the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law, a landmark bill of the post-Marcos era. Her frustration was real, her empathy for those who till the soil palpable. On the floor the lawmakers milled about. Those advocating land reform and those whose interests are against it were visibly on edge. Those not visibly interested yet remained glued to their seats (instead of having dinner in the lounge), made looking bored look so easy. It should be difficult if a person in office had some semi-conscious thought about anything other than the size of her pork.
Out in the lobby the legislative staff were raffling gifts to the tune of your usual Christmas melodies. At the sidelines, milling about, are farmers in their humble garb, green ribbons tied around their upper arms. While the legis staff stuffed their faces with party fare and howled in the simple joy of getting something for free, the faces of these farmers spelled the end of agrarian reform in this country. It was bizarre, I thought, too see so much abundance and food sit side-by-side with hunger and pain and loss.
Bleeding hearts will argue land reform in this country should be rooted in social justice, that those who work the land must be allowed a way of life commensurate to their labor. This means that the eleven million or so who till the land must also own it. To ease our nation into modernity, to follow the pattern of development of other countries, we must also find a way to expropriate surplus from the agriculture sector to support a nascent industrial base, and later a service sector. This was how other countries of similar size and population have done it. As our pattern of development would have it, we have an insignificant agricultural sector contributing to the nation’s wealth even as it continues to employ over a third of the labor force. No more lands to till or no means with which to till it, millions of hungry, inutile hands and lives lay fallow. A graying demographic, these farmers sell what is left to sell and bundle their kids off to seek better fortune overseas. Those smart enough will realize that the local economy is incapable of generating job opportunities. But hey. We cannot export all our people.
One who has no heart to bleed may also see agrarian reform in a completely selfish light. If no one grows our food because we have sold all large landholdings to multinational corporations to grow GMOs for export or to foreign governments who have no arable lands in their countries, then where do we get our food? Food security is a matter of national security for rational governments. The titans of agricultural exports, the United States and the European Union, have come to a loggerheads over farm subsidies ever since agriculture was included in the world’s global trading regime. At the expense of many more developing nations, both the US and the EU spend billions on either supporting their farming industries or paying them to not plant to keep food prices high. They do so not only to support these sectors or even to honor some sort of social contract with their farmers, they do so as a matter of security.
Our little raft bobs on rough waters as the world experiences food crises on top of all others. The Filipino farmer is mercifully ignorant of the fate the rest of the world awaits. All his energies are devoted to keeping alive. This administration, and many others, have pledged to ease his suffering. So much has been said in the name of the poor. We shall end poverty, they promise. But poverty in this country is a rural phenomenon. Manila’s urban slum-dwellers are rich in comparison.
One who prefers to see things in a completely utilitarian manner will want a sensible agrarian reform policy which will see the right environment put in place to grow the agrarian economy in sync with the rest of the country. This will solve both poverty and food security. If the experience of other countries ring true, then it will also pave the way to that elusive First World status. 2020, she says. 2020. But the President, and those who share her interests, may have other plans for Philippine lands. Not for farmers to till. Not to grow food for domestic consumption. For lease. For sale. For now. Tomorrow, well. Tomorrow can go hang.
Popularity: 1% [?]
The Philippines has yet to move out of its
Feudalistic era. Tenants and Landowners are a thing of the past in this Digital Computerized Era.
We need farmers. Just as we need food on our tables.
However, we need modern agricultural know how on
how to produce more food and agri products. How to
maximize and optimize the utilization of the agricultural lands. How to utilize the Agri products into other kinds of useful products.
We have the Rice Research facilities here, but we
are importing rice. We import rice from countries
who send their people to study in our rice research facilities. Something is wrong in here.
Do you think so ?
revenue side: cultivating idle lands at its highest and best use can generate revenue thru employment and property taxation
property rights in big business: it doesn’t matter who owns the land ( foreign corp or domestic corp), the owner has to pay property taxes according to zoning. The Philippine can always exercise its eminent domain and may always impose strict liability laws to regulate and protect our environment and the people.It’s matter of presentation and legislation.
Promises to Farmers: A contract is an exchange of promises between two or more parties to do, or refrain from doing, an act which is enforceable in a court of law- implied or express. The parties must have the necessary capacity to contract and the contract must not be either trifling, indeterminate, impossible or illegal. Breach of contract has occurred between the original owner and the government and between the government and its people. The government officials are actually in the middle but we all know that they are supposed to be fairly on the side of the people. Strategy for remedies is beyond the capabilities and skills of the people in charge. The pangandamans can only play golf and beat people who are against their way. This is the type of personnel that you, my fellow pinoys are tolerating and voting in office.
Your leaders are practicing in the stone age system. The team cannot comprehend competition and global trends. It is very slow to respond economic fluctuations and market swings. It cannot act before bad things happen. They are all mentally paralyzed. They cannot work as a team but kanya kanya or ija ija. It has no foundation on where to start because the skills are only good in interpretation but not application.
The result from the world bank , united nations and other non profit org cannot be ignore. It’s the fact.
I studied in an agricultural school, and we were always taught that the land and the farmers are the backbone of this country. Where will we get our food? However, waking up to reality, I’ve seen how poorly farmers have been treated in this country, from Marcos to Cory (!) to Ramos (!!!!) to Erap to GMA.Marcos had his “Green Revolution” trying to increase farm yields by introducing new technology and new species. Hence we have the “Golden Kuhol” that eats rice plants and the “Imelda” a fresh water fish that grows huge but tastes like mud. Cory blinked at the Mendiola Massacre and the CARP. FVR signed away our future by joining the GATT. Where the Hell are those safety nets now???? And so on and so forth.
Lately, Ive heard, some farmers in the central luzon have been given inferior rice plants to cultivate, while we import tons and tons of produce from our neighbors. Who is protecting the “Salad Bowl” of la trinidad now?
there is no future left for this country if we don’t love our own first.
i have often wondered why agriculture could not be treated as any other business enterprise, run by well-capitalized and efficiently managed, fully equipped corporations, who pay agricultural laborers and managers competitive wages that ensure them prosperity and decent livelihood. the antiquated system composed of innumerable tiny parcels, individually tilled by “small” landowner-farmers, is unproductive, inefficient and a sure-fire formula for perennial failure and poverty.
the key is COMPETITIVE and DECENT wages for agricultural workers and managers, rather than the failed slogan “land for the landless”.
The parties must have the necessary capacity to contract and the contract must not be either trifling, indeterminate, impossible or illegal. Breach of contract has occurred between the original owner and the government and between the government and its people. The government officials are actually in the middle but we all know that they are supposed to be fairly on the side of the people. Strategy for remedies is beyond the capabilities and skills of the people in charge.
Maybe because we followed the model of resource-poor countries like Japan, Taiwan, Korea, and Singapore — industrialised manufacturing and exporting — but failed to appreciate that agriculture can be industrialised as well as you described above.
“Maybe because we followed the model of resource-poor countries like Japan, Taiwan, Korea, and Singapore — industrialised manufacturing and exporting — but failed to appreciate that agriculture can be industrialised as well as you described above.”
Wow, the guy who had previously said that capitalism was thousand of years old now says that we only industrialized our manufacturing and exporting.
It is sad that almost all the posts on such an important strategic problem on land use in the Philippines is so totally misunderstood. One has to not only know but to appreciate and understand the depths of the problem on the unequal distribution of factor endowments (natural resources)and the seemingly intractable effects of this mal-distribution on present day society in the Philippines.
We love to use words without appreciating the meaning of the words.
That is the effect of the mal-education of this country’s people.
For everyone’s information the beneficiaries of agrarian reform who were lucky enough to get support were proven to succeed in mitigating and uplifting themselves from poverty.
The Chinese, S. Korean, Japanese and Taiwanese experience also disproves the cruel canard that asset reform in the agricultural sector does not work.
What kind of fool will use Singapore as a model for economic development. They are living on borrowed time. Eventually they will fold and be integrated back into Malaysia. The last three letters in the word Malaysia stands for them.
They have always been the tax haven and dollar salting or laundry for S.E. Asia. That is their primary economic model.
The disparity of power between the rich trading centers (Manila the premier one) and the primitive backward rural areas will never be mitigated unless the old thinking based on the Spanish/Roman feudal system be destroyed.
The integration process is inverted and it will be uncertain and take time. Constituencies have already been in place for generations. Maybe it will come from a progressive son of landlords.
Someone who will be a traitor to his class. Gandhi was one such man. Mao was another.
But it will be difficult since in this age of mercenary journalists and communicators and the cacophony of information dissemination it will always be a struggle between education and propaganda as the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber once said.
Sparks knows that Im not the biggest fan of government, but if my dream of the smallest possible government is to be fulfilled in our country, land reform is a must, the last great act of the government before it shrinks. Freedom cannot exist in a feudal society.
Bencard: i have often wondered why agriculture could not be treated as any other business enterprise,
It can. With land reform, the farmers can actually be partners and not laborers, using their land as equity capital. Other capitalists can bring in new technology like multi-level greenhouses, hydroponics or aeroponics, sustainable energy sources like wind, etc.
A whole government department is devoted to agrarian reform. There’s all sorts of offices and agencies linked to the agriculture sector. And still agricultural productivity has not improved in the last two decades. An even simpler indicator – one in four Filipinos is still going hungry. So yes, I think so. Something is wrong here.
This government will sell parcels of land to countries like Qatar to grow food for Qataris. I don’t see how this could have a ripple effect to the rest of the economy or raise the productivity of rural areas. Revenues from the sale/lease of the land will not feed or employ people.
Bencard,
Farming is not good business unfortunately. Not without the full support of government by providing infrastructure and support services. Instead of reaching farmer beneficiaries, the funds go to the likes of Joc-Joc Bolante.
“these farmers sell what is left to sell and bundle their kids off to seek better fortune overseas. ” – sparks
The children, seeing how poor farmers have remained over the decades, would not want to go back to the land. If land reform will involve actual titling of individual lots, the beneficiaries/children will have the inclination to sell to mall developers, subdivisions, and the like.
I believe an effective land reform should create ‘genuine’ cooperative corporations for land areas 100 hectares and up; to not only benefit the farmers and their children, but ensure food security.
But knowing how the landed could game the system in the Philippines, I dunno how this could be implemented.
sparky..
Revenue is not only derived from sale or leasing but from the constitutionally mandated ( strict liability law) to pay property tax. the government do not receive the rent payment or sale proceeds unless the government owns the land. It is the owner who will receive those revenue then pay government property tax.
Concerning production for Qataris, there’s a high probability of risk that our own people will not benefit from our own land however risk can be managed thru contractual agreement between the foreign Qatar entity and the Philippine government. It could be a quota or a split revenue from production or a split of produce from production. Another important risk management is to allow foreign entity to cultivate the land with a condition that it will only employ our own people except in certain circumstances such as experts professional that the Philippines labor may be lacking in expertise during the start up process. An additional provision can also be incorporated in the contract by making it possible that foreign entity ( qatar or others) must train our own labor force in the management of its investment.
This part of agreement can be deliberated, legislated and formulated by the Senate.
There’s always room for negotiation.
Google search: international laws, treaties, contract agreement, risk management and real property laws.
great blog BTW
On agrarian reform, we already have a bill for that. the problem is application and implementation. I have a feeling that current DAR officers are unable to find FAIR remedies to settle amicably with the people. A promise made publicly is a contractual obligation between government and the farmers. This issue is old and has never been given high priority. Golf is the priority of the DAR secretary. :)
On the profitability and sustainability of small farms, the World Bank has this to say:
- World Bank Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Development
yup, world bank can be right but the issue is no longer about finding a solution but implementation including this quote from WB.
Leytenian,
I agree. Tons and tons of studies on HOW to do it. Plans, policy papers, budgeting, logistics. Tons.
But this is also a very political issue.
The simple truth is, some elected officials will lose money and more importantly their power base, if agrarian reform were truly implemented.