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By Nora O. Gamolo, Senior Desk
Editor
In the Central Luzon plains,
Nueva Ecija is unique. In this farming province, the biggest rice
producer in this region, you see rows upon rows of rice paddies. But
it had more rice lands before the phenomenon of land conversion in
the late 80s.
The large landowners converted
their lands to non-agricultural use so these would not fall under
the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law enacted in 1988. Land
conversion was also necessitated by population rise and the
urbanization of many towns of the province.
Butil Party-list Rep. Leonila
Chavez, who is from Nueva Ecija, blames the massive conversion of
irrigated farmlands into lands for non-agricultural use for causing
the current rice crisis.
The legislator told The Times
unabated land conversion, especially in Central Luzon, demolished
the country’s potential to remain one of the prime rice producers
in Asia which it was before the seventies when the first rice
importations took place.
“We are better at producing
rice than most of our Asian neighbors. The problem is that irrigated
rice lands are being wiped out because these are being converted
into sites for housing and factories, for commercial and industrial
uses,” she said.
Chavez, who chairs the House
Special Committee on Food Security, said the government should check
the conversion of irrigated farmlands into subdivisions and factory
sites, noting that this has left the country with only two million
hectares of fully irrigated rice production areas, way behind
neighboring Thailand and Vietnam.
Thailand has seven million
hectares of fully irrigated farmlands devoted to rice production,
while Vietnam has more than five million hectares of irrigated rice
producing areas, she noted.
Shopping malls and housing
developments are among the projects for which prime arable land was
turned into.
“Prime agricultural areas are
being snapped up by the leading developers for malls and high-end
housing sites. It is tragic. Jungles of concrete are now standing in
what used to be vast stretches of green and gold,” said Chavez.
Land conversions have since bred
many other issues, big and small.
One of the most dramatic was the
struggle launched for so many years by 137 indigenous families
belonging to the Mapadayunong Panaghiusa sa mga Lumad Alang sa
Damlag (Sustainable Unity of Lumads Toward Development)
Multi-Purpose Cooperative (Mapalad-MPC) to demand that the
government redistribute 144 hectares of what they consider their
ancestral land.
In 1997, their historic hunger
strike pressured former President Fidel Ramos to declare a
“win-win” solution giving them 100 hectares, and the remaining
44 to the former landowners, Norberto Quisumbing Sr. Management and
Development Corp. (NQSRMDC). The firm had sold their land to the
industrial behemoth San Miguel Corp. (SMC). Their victory was
short-lived when the Philippine Supreme Court on appeal by the firm,
reversed the presidential ruling and approved the land use
conversion application from agricultural to agro-industrial use.
Ten years of struggle that
brought them face to face with President Gloria Arroyo forced
another agreement. This time, the agreement was for the Sumilao
farmers and SMC to “apportion to the farmers 50 hectares from the
original contested site, plus another 94 hectares from an adjacent
property.”
The conflict has now been finally
solved thanks to the ministrations of Archbishop Gaudencio Rosales
of Manila.
Massive land conversion also
takes the form of turning rice land into expot-crop plantations.
Virginia Maraganas, a woman
farmer from South Cotabato and chairperson of BUGAS (which is
Cebuano for rice), or Babaye sa Uma Gidaug-daug Andam sa Pagbarug
(Oppressed Rural Women Ready to Stand), used to farm 10 hectares for
rice and corn, but she was forced by circumstances to give up six
hectares to a corporate firm expanding in her town.
Her province is now only
approximately one-fourth of the old Cotabato province that used to
be the “rice granary” that produces all the rice consumed by
Mindanao. Until the sixties, it even supplied rice to the rest of
the Visayas in Central Philippines. Her province has since been
turned into a sprawling expanse of corporate farms producing
pineapples, bananas, rubber and palm oil.
The three biggest corporations
operating in South Cotabato are: Dole Philippines, Global Fruit, and
Blooming Petals.
Dole Philippines has covered 10
municipalities, and is into producing pineapple, papaya, asparagus,
and bananas. Global Fruit expanded into four municipalities to
produce bananas, asparagus, and pineapples. Blooming Petals is
producing bananas, pineapples and asparagus.
The fourth biggest corporation is
the Japanese-owned Upland Banana Corp. (UBC) that started its
operations in T’boli, South Cotabato in 2004. Its operations cover
1,530 hectares, devoted solely in the production of bananas, with 85
percent of its production exported to Japan.
Said Maraganas, “With the fast
conversion of lands, our staple food of rice, our food security is
at high risk. We now import rice. What happens when crisis arise in
the countries we are importing rice from, and they can no longer
sell to us these staple foods? It is not farfetched to think that
the time will come, when our food for breakfast are pineapples, and
asparagus and bananas for lunch and dinner.”
According to Rafael Mariano,
chairman of the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas and president of
the Anakpawis party-list, “Agro-corporations control at least
200,000 hectares of our lands: Dole Philippines controls 90,000
hectares; Tagum Development Corp., 55,000 hectares; Philippine
Packing Corp, 44,000; and Del Monte Phils., 20,000.”
“With the RP-China agricultural
deals, at least 1.2 million hectares will be added to for planting
jatropha trees, so the land allotted for rice production will be
reduced drastically even more,” said Mariano.
Farming groups, including some of
the country’s economic specialists, have lately asked government
to deny all applications for land conversion and revert all
converted lands into agricultural use to remedy the rice crisis and
increase the areas planted to rice.
Catholic bishops have also joined
the call against land conversion and for Philippine rural
development.
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