Farmers displaced by Maguindanao massacre get UN-WFP help

AMPATUAN, Philippines – Farmers of Sitio (sub-village) Masalay in the village of Salman here, who were traumatized and displaced after the massacre of 58 people five years ago, are inching their way back to normal life by planting corn and vegetables.

Parida Pananggulon-Amolan, president of the Salman People’s Organization, said local farmers have received some assistance from the United Nations-World Food Program (UN-WFP) in restoring their livelihood.

The international organization has entered into a memorandum of agreement (MOA) with the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (DAF-ARMM) to provide local farmers with their basic needs to re-start new life with various forms of farming inputs, including high-yielding variety corn seeds and foldable solar drying sheets or “collapsible drying case.”

Maguindanao Governor Esmael Mangudadatu, whose wife Jenalyn was also among 58 people killed here, said he has assured local farmers their areas would be preserved from any expansion program by industrial farming, even with a consortium of local and foreign investors venturing on a banana plantation development in adjacent areas— unless they agreed under a lease contract to be part of the banana industrial farming.

DAF-ARMM Secretary Makmod Mending Jr., a former prosecution lawyer in the massacre case, and Michael Argonza, an official of the UN-WFP national program, signed the MOA, which would involve progress monitoring of the farmers’ livelihood adversely affected by the events following the carnage.

A total of 58 persons, including 32 media workers, were killed here on Nov. 23, 2009. Some members of the Ampatuan political dynasty, including then Maguindanao governor Andal Ampatuan Sr.; his son, Andal Ampatuan Jr., then the mayor of Datu Unsay municipality; and his other son, Zaldy A Ampatuan, then the regional governor of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, have been detained and are facing trial in connection with the mass murders.

Filly Odap, a mother from the Teduray Tribe, recalled that many indigenous people’s families fled their ancestral barangay (village) in Sitio Rizal, near the massacre site.

Elsie Dalayap, president of the Kauran Farmers’ Marketing Cooperative (KFMC), told the Philippine Daily Inquirer her group has set aside a 55-hectare area for high-value cropping in partnership with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) in the ARMM. She said five horses were also given by her group to lumad (indigenous community) families.

Mangudadatu said the lumad families’ concern for community safety has been addressed and would be monitored more often. The two women said Sitio Rizal, an uphill cultural community five kilometers from here, has become better than it was four years ago.

Secretary Hadji Kahal Kedtag of the Department of Environemnt and Natural Resources in the ARMM, said the partnership would provide support to lumad families under his department’s National Greening Program (NGP) which has been complemented by “Balik Kalikasan,” a multi-sector group.

Farmer Musa Dalamba said tillers, who have moved from their home farms, have survived on planting and selling vegetables. But this time, he said, they could not expect to cash in too much from vegetable farming, because some areas have become barren due to exposure to sunlight heat.

Argonza said Sitio Masalay farmers have been among recipients of the international agency’s collapsible drier cases distributed to 60 farmer-groups in Maguindanao and 60 in Lanao del Sur.

Mending said instead of giving food or cash to farmers, a reform package under the ARMM administration of Hataman has provided a continuing link between his department and the international food agency to engage farmers for long-term collective benefits to them.

According to UN-WFP Country Representative Aomo Asaka Nyangara, the collapsible drying cases are a modern post-harvest facility that is usually not available locally, and costly to farmers.

Adjacent to their small farms is a huge industrial plantation and social complex being developed by a consortium of local investor group Al- Mujahidun Agro-Resources and Development Inc. (AMARDI) and the foreign capital groups of Univex and Delinanas.

Most of the areas covered by the corporate plantation form a settlement awarded by the administration of then President Fidel Ramos to a local group of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), under Commander Datu Tayan Sangki, after the signing of the 1996 Peace Agreement between the Philippine government and the MNLF.