Farmers suffered most in 2019, says peasant group

LUCENA CITY –– A national farmers group will remember 2019 as the “year of endless sufferings” for the country’s tillers.

“2019 was a year of farmer’s endless suffering from crop destruction, unfriendly state policy environment, government neglect, and continuing marginalization,” Jansept Geronimo, spokesperson of the Kilusan Para sa Tunay na Repormang Agraryo at Katarungang Panlipunan (Katarungan), said in a statement Tuesday.

He said the “profoundly disappointing realities are not the kind of situation that small farmers expected when President Duterte assumed office in 2016.”

He tagged the Rice Tarrification Law which was signed by Duterte on Feb. 14 last year as the most severe blow that brought the rice farmers to their knees.

He blamed the rice trade liberalization in the flood of rice imports, which he pointed out as the direct cause of the free fall of palay prices in the local market.

“The measures supposedly protecting rice farmers failed to keep palay prices at a competitive level or enable farmers to recoup losses as they lost by as much as P 40,000 per hectare,” he lamented.

Coconut farmers, Geronimo noted, likewise suffer from the continuing low prices of copra and whole nut.

The situation has reduced the income of coconut farmers and ensured that their poverty continues to worsen.

Geronimo said the sufferings of coconut farmers could have been abated if President Duterte had made good his campaign promise to return the multi-billion pesos coconut levy fund.

“Given the current trend, there is little to expect on the prospect of coconut farmers benefitting from the fund because of the provisions of the bill has been mangled,” Geronimo said.

He noted that President Duterte himself has not been clear enough about the kind of law that he wants Congress to pass, “even as coconut farmers are clear about their demand for the establishment of a perpetual trust fund to be managed by a trust fund committee.”

Geronimo said the government land reform program also continues to fail the farmer’s ultimate wish to have a parcel of land to own and till.

Edited by Lzb