Lakbayan Press Release #01
10 October 2011

More than 10,000 peasants from Bukidnon and Misamis Oriental will walk starting October 19 and will converge in Cagayan de Oro City on October 21 to press for genuine agrarian reform in Northern Mindanao as the country honours the October Peasant Month.

Dubbed as "LakbayangMag-uumaalangsaYuta, KatungodugKatilingbanongHustisya" (Peasant Protest March for Land, Rights and Social Justice), the protesters will bring issues from their respective farms to the regional capital in order to create awareness of their situation.The protest themes will evolve around issues of landlessness, and the accompanying exploitative conditions of production that are being imposedunto the farmers due to landlessness.

In Northern Mindanao, 3 out of every 4 peasants do not own the land they are tilling.

Global land grabbing in Bukidnon

Contingents from Bukidnon will bring with them issues of global land grabbing and human rights violations.

DaniloMenente, Chairperson of Kasama-Bukidnon (KahugpungansamgaMag-uumasaBukidnon or Farmers' Association in Bukidnon) said that global land grabbing 'is putting into serious risk the survival of small farmers and farm workers in the Province.'

'Global land grabbing,' according to the Pesticide Action Network in Asia and the Pacific (PAN-AP) refers to 'land deals, whether as direct purchases or long-term leases are being brokered in poor countries by advanced countries and their TNCs (trans-national companies) as they command resources to produce crops either for food, feedstock or agro fuel in commercial and export quantities. They have been called land grabs, not as reference to their illegality since many of the deals have passed government approvals, but as description of the unjust terms through which they have been transacted and the utter lack of consultation with the communities of farmers and indigenous peoples.'

Touted as Mindanao's food basket, Bukidnon has been a host to the country's largest plantations owned by TNCs. Of the province' 315,164 hectares of alienable and disposable lands, 79,501 has been allotted to pineapple plantations alone, and 31,607 for bananas. Among the big corporations operating in Bukidnon are those of Del Monte Philippines Inc (DMPI), Davao Agriventures Corporation (DAVCO), and Southern Fresh Fruits. 'In Bukidnon, TNCs conspired with the traditional landlords in grabbing vast tracks of land, and in evading agrarian reform programs,' Menente stressed.

While landlessness has been the reason why the actual tillers and producers of food in Bukidnon remain the poorest among the poor in the Philippines, Menente said that the phenomenon of global land grabbing in the province have also attacked peasant's human rights and fundamental freedoms.

The province has become a focus of bloody agrarian unrests in the country, and the culture of impunity which exists in relation to human rights violations in agrarian situations have swelled drastically.

Menente added that 'this culture of impunity attached to global land grabbing is again illustrated in the continuing assaults against the 800 families of the Buffalo-Tamaraw-Limus (BTL) Farmers Association.

In the morning of June 14, 2011, the peaceful protest camp of the BTL farmers in front of the Central Mindanao University (CMU) in Dologon, Maramag,Bukidnon, was brutally attacked by goons and security guards hired by the university. Protesters were indiscriminately fired at, seriously wounding six farmer-leaders.One victim is a woman farmer of BTL, Marilou Fortin, which sustained bruises in her chest from the splinters. The farmers were protesting dislocation from the parcels of land within the university that they have been tilling for nearly three decades to pave the way for the pineapple and banana plantation expansion of a number of TNCs, foremost, the DAVCO in the said lands.

Violent dispersals of camp-out protests€”as a peaceful form of farmers objection against land grabbing€”have become a common scenario in Bukidnon. Such was the case of the shooting of the Danggawan Landless Farmers Association (DFLA), the incident believed to be perpetrated by hired men of the Del Monte Philippines Inc on July 30, 2010. The company was to start their pineapple plantation on part of the OcayaRanch which the DFLA were tilling in the village of Kuya, Maramag.

Coconut farmers and agri-workers exploited in Misamis Oriental

Meanwhile, the chairperson of the Misamis Oriental Farmers Association (MOFA), Ireneo Udarbe, said they will highlight the dismal situations of the coconut farmers of the province during the Lakbayan.

While coconut has been the province main produce, Udarbe stressed that the coconut farmers and workers in coconut plantations and industries that serve as the backbone of the economy live miserably.

According to the Philippine Coconut Authority (PCA), almost 64% of Misamis Orientals agricultural lands were allotted to coconut. For 2010 alone, the value of the coconut products produced for export reached P17,541,941,598.00.

€œBut the 43,105 coconut farmers and farm workers are living below poverty level, said Udarbe. He pointed out landlessness as the main problem. €œBecause we do not own the land we till, we were forced to enter into oppressive sharing systems with the landlords, added by the peasant leader.

€œTersya sharing system which gives tenants a third of the income from the produce is prevalent in the province, even if it is mandated in Administrative Order No. 5, Series of 1993 DAR (Section V, B.4) that the amount of land rental would not exceed to 25% of the overall income of the farmers. In one of the case studiesthat MOFA conducted in Samay, Gingoog City engaged in €œtersya system, a farmer merely gets P83.96 per day in three months cultivation of 290 coconut trees in 2 hectares of rented land. The situation is even worse in PhilippineVeterance Industrial Economic Corporation (PHIVIDEC) area in Villanueva and Tagoloan where the maintainer of the coconuts only got 10% of the net income and is continuously facing the threat of demolition.

Additionally, the farmers bear the brunt of the ever-fluctuating prices of copra and other coconut products. Currently, the price is P17.00/kilo for copra if the buyer bought this from the farmer. However, if buyers sold the copra, they earned big profit since the copra is bought P29.00 per kilo in the mill gates.

Subtraction from the farmers income is also prevalent through the arbitrary deduction of resikada or the moisture content. Despite the Administrative Order No. 1, series of 1991 of Philippine Coconut Authority that allows a 7% to 12% moisture content of copra if dried under the sun and 14% if dried in the coconut drier, approximately 14% to 18% of resikada have been stolen from the farmers every time they sell copra.

In the coconut plantations and individual coconut farms, agricultural workers receive a measly P120 up to P150 for a days work, far beyond the P269 minimum wage set by the Regional Tripartite Wages and Productivity Board (RTWPB) for agricultural workers.

Protest march, concert, rally

Contingents of Lakbayan from Bukidnon will start their journey from Quezon town. Those coming from Misamis Oriental will come from as far as the municipality of Lugait in the west, and Gingoog City in the east.

They are set to converge 4pm of October 20 in Licoan, Cagayan de Oro City to do the historic €œSalubungan or convergence, and will march up to the Pelaez Sports Complex for the Concert for Land, Rights and Social Justice.

On October 21, the group will head to KioskoKagawasan in Divisoria to culminate the activity.

Lakbayan is jointly organized by KilusangMagbubukidngPilipinas (KMP or Philippine Peasant Movement), AMIHAN Northern Mindanao, Kalumbay Regional Lumad Organization, Kasama-Bukidnon, MOFA, and the Rural Missionaries of the Philippines (RMP) in Northern Mindanao.###

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