EDITORIAL: Planting seeds of famine: Decades of hunger under Marcos’ neoliberal food policies and plunder
All that is gold does not glitter. And what good is gold to the average Filipino whose main preoccupation is to keep themself from falling into the throes of hunger? What the Marcos political dynasty’s Bagong Lipunan and “golden age” hoax has managed is to plant seeds of famine that later bloomed into a methodical pestilence, hollowing out once net food exporter Philippines into a net food importer with the title world’s top rice importer for 2022 to 2023.
Marcosian agriculture ploys have kept the industry backward, small-scale, and uncollectivized — defenseless against a global food crisis brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, proxy wars, climate change, and skyrocketing fertilizer and crude oil prices.
The second quarter of 2023 saw a spike in hunger rates among Filipinos, including those above the government’s deceitful poverty threshold. The deterioration of our local agriculture and consumer market is irrefutable.
According to data gathered by rice watch group Bantay Bigas, the country already saw a 17% or P3.48 drop in farmgate prices per kilo of palay between 2018 and 2019. With farmgate prices consistently low and cost of production relentlessly rising, palay farmers were hit with P251 billion worth of losses from 2019 to 2022 — an amount equivalent to 73 to 80% of the country’s total annual cost of palay production. As Bantay Bigas says, a loss this colossal is tantamount to mass displacement of an economic sector.
The failed rice price ceiling under Executive Order №39 last September further emphasized how farmers, consumers, and small-scale retailers are the ones bearing the brunt of the low palay farmgate prices and steep rice retail prices double whammy.
With the National Food Authority’s mandates in palay procurement and quantitative restrictions on importation dead in the water, it’s open season for smuggling and profiteering cartels. According to Bureau of Plant Industry’s Sept. 7 data, the country has already imported 2.33 million metric tons of rice that flood our markets and threaten more local agricultural loss.
Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) states that our country’s food self-sufficiency rates fell dramatically between 1988 and 2019: rice dropped from 97% to 80%, garlic from 100% to 8%, mung beans from 97.5% to 50%, and coffee from 122% to 32%. Gradually, agriculture’s contribution to our national economy dipped from 24% in 1960 to 10% by 2020.
While several factors contributed to this criminal abrasion, KMP has traced it back to the Marcosian legacy of landlessness, plunder, and collusion with foreign tyrants.
Decades of agro- and eco-terrorism
From 4 hectares in the 1960s, the average size of agricultural land parcels in the country has shrunk to 1.3 hectares today. From the 1960s to the 1970s, more than 8 million hectares of forest were cleared under logging concessions, 2 million hectares of which we have yet to recover.
In the agricultural industry, job opportunities have remained stagnant since the 1990s at around 10 million — despite our doubled population. While grim, these numbers are but a glimpse into the damage inflicted by decades of Marcos dynasty agro- and eco-terrorism.
The year 1972 was a year of historic devastation for the peasant sector. The country confronted a series of natural disasters, pest infestation, and Marcos Sr.’s declaration of Martial Law. A month into his dictatorship, Marcos sold Presidential Decree (PD) 27 as a way of addressing the rise to “conflict and social tension” he attributed to the growing ranks of the CPP-NPA-NDF. Two-faced, Marcos recognized the righteousness of CPP’s struggle for land rights when he packaged the program as aid in the “emancipation of the tiller of the soil from his bondage.”
However, the bogus land redistribution program forced its beneficiaries to pay annual amortization equivalent to half the worth of their land parcel with an added 6% interest. It was designed to fail beneficiaries living in poverty. About 90% of them couldn’t make the payments and were forced to give up their land. By 1980, the population of landless farm workers doubled into 61% compared to 31% in 1966.
The horrors continued in 1973 by way of Marcos’s Green Revolution, a scheme conceptualized by international finance institutions like the World Bank, agribusiness transnational corporations (TNCs) like Monsanto, and philanthrocapitalists like the Rockefellers.
In the guise of raising farm productivity, the regime launched the Masagana 99 program which sought widespread use of the International Rice Research Institute’s hybrid seeds or high-yielding varieties (HYV) and patronage of government lending programs.
From 1972 to 1982, the regime’s World Bank loan for program implementation reached a whopping $1.5 billion — the largest percentage of which was allotted for the purchase of farm machine parts and imported inputs like pesticide and fertilizer.
By April 1974, the regime had already loaned around P503 million to farmers. The catch? The World Bank encouraged the “market” to dictate interest rates for Masagana 99 loans which ballooned to 38%. As millions of farmers went bankrupt, poverty rates in the countryside rose from 33% in 1971 to 73% in 1983.
In 1979, Marcos also proclaimed PD 1620 which gave IRRI immunity amidst demands for restitution after exposure to agrochemicals needed by HYVs caused their employed farm workers to develop Parkinson’s disease, liver cancer, liver failure, kidney failure and leukemia. Today, IRRI continues to push for new genetically modified crop varieties.
By selling input-intensive HYVs, the loans essentially lined the pockets of the global agribusiness and agrochemical syndicate. Adding insult to injury, the HYVs wiped out traditional and heirloom varieties of Philippine seeds.
Another case of agri plunder, and perhaps the most infamous, is the P150 billion worth of stolen coco levy fund and property bought by Marcos Sr. cronies using the fund. The scam started with the tax collection of P0.55 per 100 kilos of copra from farmers for the Coconut Industrial Investment Fund established in 1971. After the creation of more dubious funds under the Philippine Coconut Authority, cronies such as Juan Ponce Enrile and Danding Cojuangco used the stolen wealth to buy control shares in top coconut companies.
Among the companies that Enrile bought shares in were Primex Coco, Pacific Royal, and Clear Mineral. Cojuangco illegally acquired the United Coconut Planters Bank as well as shares in San Miguel Corporation and 14 other companies. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court has since junked the coco levy graft charges against both criminals and several co-respondents.
In true Imeldific fashion, one of the most destructive Marcos programs is a hairbrained vanity project. Imelda Marcos pushed for the importation of the “attractive” yet invasive Golden Apple Snail or golden kuhol. Instead of augmenting the country’s protein needs, the snail became the country’s top palay pest — with rice field damages around 1.6 million hectares as of 2019.
Deception through liberalization, institutionalizing abandonment, and sponsoring attacks against farmers
Half a century has passed since Marcos Sr. laid down the groundwork for the collapse of local agriculture — deliberately removing protective measures for our domestic food market and mandates for self-sufficiency. PD 27, Masagana 99, and the Coco Levy Fund set the precedent for institutionalizing market-assisted fake land reform following the tenets of liberalization, deregulation, and corporatisation.
Like the agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBs) of the PD 27 land redistribution program, the recipients of Certificates of Land Ownership Awards (CLOAs) under the 1988 Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Programme (CARP) were required to cough up installment payments for the land despite “funding and technical assistance” from the World Bank.
KMP notes that by 2021, around 540,000 hectares covered by CARP remained undistributed. While ARBs earning farm slave wages were being squeezed, the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) was granting exemptions for large landholdings owned by hacienderos.
The 2009 Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program Extension with Reforms (CARPER) amended CARP by imposing individual titling and parcelization of existing collective CLOAs. Individual titles streamlined amortization payments and undermined local collective farming practices. This, in turn, led to mass dispossession and land reconcentration back into the hands of the wealthy.
ARBs were coerced into under the table transactions through the aryendo system where they lease and basically sell the right to their land just to get by. Between 1980 and 2012, the percentage of farmholdings “fully-owned” by its operators dropped to 46%, a 12% decrease.
Merciless, the regime remains unrelenting in issuing individual land titles. In 2020, the Support to Parcelization of Lands for Individual Titling (SPLIT) was introduced with the goal of parcelizing around 139,000 collective CLOAs until 2024. This affects 1.4 million hectares awarded to 1.1 million ARBs across 77 provinces.
While the Department of Agriculture’s (DA) tie-in land consolidation and credit financing efforts seem at odds with CARPER on paper, they both make way for the conversion of agricultural land for agri-business venture arrangements and commercial use. The 2023 National Land Use Act (NaLUA) for land use liberalization is further proof of their motive.
Fisherfolk are also being displaced, barred from their homes and their fishing grounds. The National Reclamation Plan is composed of 187 reclamation projects affecting 25,000 hectares of coastal areas, 30 projects of which are in Manila Bay. These projects have made way for TNCs’ coastal ownership and the encroachment of large commercial fishing vessels.
As if the denial of land rights in exchange for foreign investment isn’t enough, the regime surrenders to lopsided agricultural free trade agreements that have led to nothing but rising trade deficits. One of the latest examples is 2020’s Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) which further opens our market and forces it into competition with Asia-Pacific nations.
What predictably led to the country’s rice trade deficit amounting to $1.2 billion in 2022 is the regime’s shameful Rice Tariffication Law (RTL). The banner rice liberalization program replaced quantitative restriction on rice importation with a purely tariff system. The palay farmgate palay price drop to P17 is an SOS from poor farmers as the regime continues to surrender to “global market” whims.
The 1997 Agriculture and Fisheries Modernization Act (AFMA) provided a tariff exemption for the importation of all types of agriculture and fisheries inputs, equipment, and machinery. While this already funneled funds into modernization ineffective schemes that didn’t reach small farms, similar modernization loan and grant programs like 2021’s revised program for the Agriculture Competitiveness Enhancement Fund (ACEF) were created.
In contrast, aid and reparation for farmers affected by natural disasters and crises take months, years, and even not distributed at all. The demand for a P15,000 production subsidy for farmers falls on deaf ears.
And so farmers and fisherfolk are left with no other choice than to assert their right to protest and collective political action. Even in this, they are silenced through persecution and even massacre.
In 1985, national democratic organizations in Negros waged a Welgang Bayan to protest against the hunger and sugar crisis in the region since the 1970s. The mass protest attended by around 5,000 farmworkers, fisherfolk, students, and religious officials was dispersed using water cannons, tear gas, and bullets. Around 20 farmworkers and protestors were slain in what is now known as the Escalante Massacre. Many more suffered injuries. The demand for justice in one of Marcos Sr.’s last major atrocities continues.
Marcos Jr. has taken pages from his father’s bloody playbook. The fascist Anti-Terror Law has institutionalized the violation of International Humanitarian Law and the Bill of Rights. Siphoning public funds into the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), the regime is killing us with our own tax money.
In the past year, peasant communities in Cagayan Valley, Rizal, Masbate, Negros, Iloilo, and Mindoro have been the primary victims of aerial bombings. Peasant leaders have been red-tagged, illegally arrested, and slain. From June 2022 to July 2023 alone, Karapatan listed 27 extrajudicial killings and 4 enforced disappearances. This chilling statistic has grown.
Casting out a corrupt Cerberus with its foreign masters and paving the path to a pro-people food system
Ang bawat butil ng bigas ay buhay. And history has proved that the path to relief and the fight for life necessitates militancy. Defeating a malignant power that’s disfiguring our lands, destroying the spirit of oppressed peoples, and undoing the rich tapestry of collective memory and care is an urgent task. This October Peasant Month, the Filipino people stand together and embrace this shared duty.
Like the underworld’s three-headed hound, DA Secretary Ferdinand Marcos Jr., Department of Finance Secretary Benjamin Diokno, and National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) Secretary Arsenio Balisacan follow the orders of and protect the interests of international financial overlords and themselves.
The call for their resignation and the immediate junking of their neoliberal schemes is resounding. Upholding the people’s right to food means paving the path to a pro-people food system. Farmers, fisherfolks, peasant women, agricultural stakeholders, and food security advocates should be at the forefront of crafting food policies. Technocrat arrogance should be replaced by the leadership of food producers and stakeholders.
Last October 2, food producers and stakeholders presented the People’s Action Agenda for Food Security and Self Sufficiency to Senate staff and employees. The proposal for attaining secure, safe and affordable food for and from the Filipino people was a product of the National People’s Food Systems Summit held last Sept 28.
It proposes the following as genuine solutions for a pro-Filipino food system:
1. Stop the liberalization and foreign domination of food
2. Implement genuine land reform
3. Achieve just prices and wages
4. Strengthen Filipino agriculture and develop rural and national industries
5. Fund Filipino food
6. Ensure sufficient and immediate support in times of calamity
7. Promote farmer-led research and development
8. Advance the people’s democratic rights
Leaders of KMP, Amihan, and Unyon ng mga Manggagawa sa Agrikultura (UMA) also presented the Rice Industry Development Act, the 15K Production Subsidy Bills, and the Repeal of RA 11203 or the Rice Liberalization Law as necessary and urgent proposals to address the food crisis.
The Marcos dynasty may have planted its seeds of famine, but together we can uproot their evil with our raised fists and sickles of solidarity. Together, we plant the seeds of justice, genuine land reform, and liberation.
Join the October peasant week!
15 — International Rural Women’s Day
16 — World Hunger Day at the Department of Agriculture from 9 a.m.
17 — Fish Talks Forum at the Student Union Building, UP Diliman
18 — Human Chain Against Reclamation at the Manila Baywalk Dolomite Beach from 4 p.m.
19 — Salubungan & Solidarity Night with farmers at the Department of Agrarian Reform from 5 p.m.
20 — Martsa ng mga Magbubukid caravan starting at the Department of Agrarian Reform at 7 a.m.
Sources
Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas. (October 2022). Hinggil sa krisis sa pagkain.
Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas. (January 2022). 9 paraan pinahirapan ng mga Marcos ang magbubukid at winasak ang agrikulturang Pilipino.
AMIHAN National Federation of Peasant Women, Bantay Bigas. (September 2023). Marcos Jr: Pasimuno ng krisis sa palay at bigas.
Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas, Paghida-et sa Kauswagan Development Group, Inc. (PDG), IBON International, People’s Coalition for Food Sovereignty, and Center for Economic and Social Rights. (October 2023). Decoding the WBG’s SPLIT Project in the Philippines: Resisting Agrarian Injustice.
Agroecology X. (September 2023). Forward the People’s Food Agenda Towards a Filipino Food System: A briefer on the Salu-Salo: The National People’s Food System Summiy and calls to address the food crisis.
