Winnie Monsod explains how farmers at Hacienda Luisita are at the losing end

Some people can be quite paranoid about the issue of land reform or anything to do with land. You bring it up and people immediately accuse you of being on a particular end of the spectrum. Land is really quite a legitimate policy issue for many countries, not to mention one that has land laws dating back to Spanish times.

Well, nobody will accuse Winnie Monsod of being a leftist. Here she explains how Hacienda Luisita's farmers got the short end of the stick.

Filipino Rice Policy

A Film By: Magee Clegg

'Filipino Rice Policy' is an eye-opening short documentary that explores the world of politics surrounding Agriculture in the Philippines. Myths, corruption, and the lack of understanding have allowed the Philippine Department of Agriculture to guide Filipinos towards a facade of food security. Former Secretaries of Agriculture Carlos Dominguez, Senen Bacani, and Roberto Sebastion along with many other well known rice policy experts believe that the Department of Agriculture has been leading Filipinos in the wrong direction for too long, and it is now time to change direction.

Filipino Rice Policy from Magee Clegg on Vimeo.

Population matters. Didn't expect RH to somehow be incorporated in this!

For the Politics of the Real

I share a tenuous link to Randy David. He went to the same university as my favorite teacher who was a visiting scholar in UP for two years. Manchester University has a tradition of progressive thinking, perhaps owing to its history as one of the first industrial cities in Britain.

In his column today he makes two points I wholeheartedly agree with, one about the authenticity of our 'electoral' democracy and the other about the spectacle of our politics today.

It is my belief that, as it stands today, institutional politics—especially its regular electoral expression—has become nothing more than a way of further assimilating our people into a diseased social system. It offers no paths to social transformation. It deadens all instincts for balanced growth. It offers entertainment and diversion, instead of debate and the contest of visions. It forecloses options, rather than open new spaces for invention.

The British writer Simon Critchley thinks of politics as “the creation of such a space around a demand and then articulating it in relation to the state.” The demand, whatever it may be, acquires an unstoppable force to the extent that it can be woven into an ethical narrative. There has to be “a moment of sacralization in the constitution of any polity,” says Critchley. From the perspective of the political subject, I believe that. Using this simple concept of politics, let me point to remaining pockets where, I think, real politics may still be found in our society today.

And what do you know? One such pocket of 'real' politics is still the politics of land.


And while everyone is all agog over the merger of frog parties, I share Nathan Quimpo's view:

Post-Marcos parties, in particular, have proven to be not much more than convenient vehicles of patronage that can be set up, merged with others, split, resurrected, regurgitated, reconstituted, renamed, repackaged, recycled, or flushed down the toilet anytime. After over a century of playing and dominating the electoral game, members of the elite have so mastered its many tricks that they have turned it...into a game of 'perpetual musical charis in which different bourgeois factions jostle for the right to mismanage the country and plunder its wealth.'

I await the day when elections cease being solely the province of 'who' (and the dynamics of the hows and whys among them) but also the province of debate over ideas, real problems and possible solutions.

Land (In)justice

Republic Act No. 8532, which extended the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program funding from 1998 to 2008, expired in June last year.Because funding expired before land acquisition and distribution has been completed, Congress sought to extend its funding by issuing two consecutive joint resolutions which were intended to cover the periods July 1 to December 31, 2008 and January 1 to June 30, 2009. These resolutions were promulgated/enacted to ostensibly allow Congress ample time to act on proposed bills HB 4077 and SB 2666.

The Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law’s animus is derived from the highest law of the land. The 1987 Philippine Constitution clearly manifests that it is the State’s duty to “promote comprehensive rural development and agrarian reform (Article 2, Section 21)” and to “undertake the just distribution of all agricultural lands (Article 13, Section 4).” CARL is the legal basis for carrying out agrarian reform in general and the land acquisition and distribution process in particular. Four chapters in this landmark legislation directly address the LAD process.

There are three main modes of private lands acquisition, namely the Voluntary Offer-to-Sell, Voluntary Land Transfer and Compulsory Acquisition. CA implies that in theory, private lands can and are appropriated by the state despite landlord opposition. Both the VOS and VLT are schemes which operate in the environment of the State’s legitimate power to acquire landholdings. CARL nevertheless provides incentives for land owners to voluntarily sell their landholdings to the state with just compensation.

In the Jan 27, 2009 hearing of the House Committee on Agrarian Reform, DAR Secretary Pangandaman presented rough estimates of land acquisition accomplishments as of December 2008:

VOS – 598,519 hectares
VLT – 705,634 hectares
CA – 284,753 hectares

Since 2002 there has been a trend towards voluntary modes of acquisition, veering away from CA. LAD under CA has been painfully slow in the last ten years. This is testament not only to the slow and unwieldy bureaucratic process but also to the resistance of landowners.

DAR estimates that of the total LAD balance of 1.2 million hectares, eighty percent are concentrated in five provinces - Negros Occidental, the two Camarines provinces, and the two Lanao provinces.

On December 17, 2008 legislators signed the House Joint Resolution 19 (now HJR1). It extends the funding coverage of CARP for six more months to complete the acquisition and distribution of private lands while Congress mulls the pending agrarian reform bills. This extension is limited to holdings whose owners have already signified wanting to sell their lands through the VOS and VLT schemes. The resolution also continues funding for support services to agrarian reform beneficiaries.

The resolution has in essence stopped funding for LAD under CA. In January the Department of Agrarian Reform issued a memorandum circular which intended to stop LAD under the CA scheme since funding has essentially been stopped by the HJR 19. The resolution has lapsed into law on January 30, after President Arroyo chose not to sign it.

There are two vital components of land reform - state acquisition of lands and their distribution and also the provision of support to make agricultural production viable and sustainable. Both components are dependent on state action - or inaction. HJR 19 manifests the need for time to further assess various studies proposed by the academe and researchers for “appropriate amendments to the existing agrarian reform law.” The next six months should then be used for legislators to resurrect the CARP bill with extension and reforms.

Agrarian reform is key to not only laying the policy directive to ease inequality and poverty, a largely rural phenomenon but also to raise the country’s agricultural productivity, ensure food security and pave the way to rural modernization.

Land, Still

I sometimes think that to maintain rationality, one must submit to irrational. Otherwise the world will stop rotating on its axis until the irrational has managed to explain itself in a manner satisfactory to rational people.

December 17, 2008 was a date memorable to some, insiginificant to most. On that day the House was filled to the brim with people, some in celebration of the Christmas season, some mourning the loss of their livelihood and their way of life. Others, like me, stood at the sidelines, unable to determine which emotion to let reign. To celebrate with Christmas revelers on the last workday of the year? To commiserate with farmers, some not having eaten for days, as they awaited the fate of agrarian reform?

Inside the session hall, the Chief of Staff of a representative from Mindanao let loose some choice words for the landlord block bent on killing the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law, a landmark bill of the post-Marcos era. Her frustration was real, her empathy for those who till the soil palpable. On the floor the lawmakers milled about. Those advocating land reform and those whose interests are against it were visibly on edge. Those not visibly interested yet remained glued to their seats (instead of having dinner in the lounge), made looking bored look so easy. It should be difficult if a person in office had some semi-conscious thought about anything other than the size of her pork.

Out in the lobby the legislative staff were raffling gifts to the tune of your usual Christmas melodies. At the sidelines, milling about, are farmers in their humble garb, green ribbons tied around their upper arms. While the legis staff stuffed their faces with party fare and howled in the simple joy of getting something for free, the faces of these farmers spelled the end of agrarian reform in this country. It was bizarre, I thought, too see so much abundance and food sit side-by-side with hunger and pain and loss.

Bleeding hearts will argue land reform in this country should be rooted in social justice, that those who work the land must be allowed a way of life commensurate to their labor. This means that the eleven million or so who till the land must also own it. To ease our nation into modernity, to follow the pattern of development of other countries, we must also find a way to expropriate surplus from the agriculture sector to support a nascent industrial base, and later a service sector. This was how other countries of similar size and population have done it. As our pattern of development would have it, we have an insignificant agricultural sector contributing to the nation’s wealth even as it continues to employ over a third of the labor force. No more lands to till or no means with which to till it, millions of hungry, inutile hands and lives lay fallow. A graying demographic, these farmers sell what is left to sell and bundle their kids off to seek better fortune overseas. Those smart enough will realize that the local economy is incapable of generating job opportunities. But hey. We cannot export all our people.

One who has no heart to bleed may also see agrarian reform in a completely selfish light. If no one grows our food because we have sold all large landholdings to multinational corporations to grow GMOs for export or to foreign governments who have no arable lands in their countries, then where do we get our food? Food security is a matter of national security for rational governments. The titans of agricultural exports, the United States and the European Union, have come to a loggerheads over farm subsidies ever since agriculture was included in the world’s global trading regime. At the expense of many more developing nations, both the US and the EU spend billions on either supporting their farming industries or paying them to not plant to keep food prices high. They do so not only to support these sectors or even to honor some sort of social contract with their farmers, they do so as a matter of security.

Our little raft bobs on rough waters as the world experiences food crises on top of all others. The Filipino farmer is mercifully ignorant of the fate the rest of the world awaits. All his energies are devoted to keeping alive. This administration, and many others, have pledged to ease his suffering. So much has been said in the name of the poor. We shall end poverty, they promise. But poverty in this country is a rural phenomenon. Manila’s urban slum-dwellers are rich in comparison.

One who prefers to see things in a completely utilitarian manner will want a sensible agrarian reform policy which will see the right environment put in place to grow the agrarian economy in sync with the rest of the country. This will solve both poverty and food security. If the experience of other countries ring true, then it will also pave the way to that elusive First World status. 2020, she says. 2020. But the President, and those who share her interests, may have other plans for Philippine lands. Not for farmers to till. Not to grow food for domestic consumption. For lease. For sale. For now. Tomorrow, well. Tomorrow can go hang.

Cross-posted at FilipinoVoices.