In Isabela, farmers also want food aid

CITY OF CAUAYAN—Echoing the protests that led to the violent dispersal of a protest rally in Kidapawan City in North Cotabato on April 1, 135 farmers in Jones town on Thursday staged their own indignation rally to demand for food aid.

Ben Cardenas, chair of the group Danggayan Dagiti Mannalon iti Isabela, said the two-hour indignation caravan and rally were staged to ask national and local leaders to provide food assistance to drought-affected farmers.

“We were not discouraged by the Kidapawan dispersal and we staged our own protest. We have to represent the poor and the powerless, especially farmers, who have been dying of hunger because they were not getting help from the government,” Cardenas said.

It was also a sympathy march for the three farmers who were killed when the police dispersed a three-day farmers’ picket in Kidapawan.

No local government official talked with the placard-waving protesters when they picketed the town hall and paraded around the town center.

Cardenas said the farmers also wanted the government to help them control prices of their produce in the market. “The high prices of farm inputs, such as seeds, pesticides and fertilizers make farmers poorer aside from having to survive from the usurious loans given by traders,” he said.

Cita Managuelod, a rally coorganizer, said they had been asking local officials and traders to help regulate the prices of farm produce but “our pleas fell on deaf ears.” Villamor Visaya Jr., Inquirer Northern Luzon