CPP/News: Impoverished and hungry, Filipino peasants at the bottom of gov’t priorities

Propaganda news article posted to the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) Website (Nov 2, 2020): Impoverished and hungry, Filipino peasants at the bottom of gov’t priorities

NEWS STORIES
NOVEMBER 02, 2020

 

Filipino peasants marked the Peasant Month last October by staging protests against the Duterte regime’s neoliberal policies in agriculture and all-out war against farmers and peasant advocates. Foremost of their concern is the worsening state of agriculture and the peasantry, exacerbated by the pandemic and the regime’s militarist lockdown.

They pointed out that agriculture, touted as a “surviving” economic sector for registering a 0.4% growth in second quarter this year, is not resilient in the time of the pandemic. Since 2018, the sector has been registering near zero growth. State statistics show low and declining yields of 20 crops, including rice, since 2014. Livestock production also showed negative growth. In 2019, only production of cash crops for export such as sugarcane and maize registered positive growth.

Prior to the pandemic, the agricultural sector has been suffering from massive job and income losses. From 2017 to 2019, it lost a total of 1.4 million jobs. Rice farmers lost around P85 billion from February 2019 to February 2020 since restrictions on rice imports were lifted. Early on, natural disasters such as the Taal volcano explosion damaged crops and livestock worth P3 billion. Other natural disasters, like the recent typhoons Rolly and Quinta, lashed the country and wrought havoc in other areas. The other pandemic, the African Swine Flu, which has already forced the culling of 350,000 hogs still rages. Agricultural losses due to the Covid-19 pandemic is estimated to run into billions.

The Duterte regime has converted 1,820 hectares of agricultural land since 2016. . It intends to convert a total of 1.5 million hectares for its infrastructure projects under the Build, Build, Build program and other pro-capitalist and anomalous schemes. In 2019, the Department of Agriculture issued Administrative Order No. 1 to streamline and expedite land-use conversion. The regime is also railroading the enactment of the National Land Use Act to split collective land titles and recategorize land classifications under the National Land Use to serve the same objective.

The Covid-19 pandemic worsened the impoverished conditions of the Filipino peasants. Prior to the pandemic, poverty among peasant families was already three times worse compared to urban families. Food insecurity in the country was as high as 46% (meaning?) in 2019, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization-Philippines. The prolonged lockdown diminished subsistence food production and the rural informal economy due to restrictions imposed by the military even in very Covid-19 risk areas. Meanwhile, the early ban on mass transportation, closure of some trading posts and border restrictions severely affected deliveries of small and middle peasants and livestock farmers. In militarized areas, farmers are also arbitrarily restricted from working in their farms under the guise of Covid-19 prevention.

Paltry government subsidy only covered 2.5 million farmers (or less than 30% of the 9.7 million registered farmers in the country). This number excludes millions of other rural Filipinos and their families who rely on the agricultural economy. Funds earmarked for subsidies are pocketed by government officials, such as in the case of the P272-million fertilizer scam which was exposed last June. Despite the urgency, the P24-billion allocation for agriculture under the Bayanihan 2 is yet to be released. These funds will be reverted back to the national treasury if not spent by December 19.

The escrowed coco levy funds which could have helped the 3.5 million coconut farmers remain out of their reach. Instead, the Duterte regime is fast-tracking the privatization of the said fund through establishing a “trust fund” to be managed by the Duterte’s allies.

Like much of the government pandemic response, there is no coherent plan on how to stimulate local food production. Instead, the DA’s centerpiece program “Plant, Plant, Plant” focuses on marketing and logistics. This will benefit mostly big agribusinesses who complain of supply disruptions and not small farmers who rely on production for subsistence. Meanwhile, farmgate prices of key agricultural produce continue to decrease. Since September, palay prices plummeted to P10-12/kilo. This has further devastated rice farmers who needed to sell their harvest at P17/kilo at least to recoup production costs. The National Food Authority is ineffectual, as it only has a budget of P10 billion for its 2020 palay procurement program. Only a handful of local governments heeded the call to buy local palay at P19/kilo.

For 2021, the regime allocated only P66.382 billion for agriculture, slashed by 75% from the DA’s original P284.4-billion proposal, and less compared to the P79.9-billion budget in 2019.

https://cpp.ph/2020/11/02/impoverished-and-hungry-filipino-peasants-at-the-bottom-of-govt-priorities/