Farm Policy Yields More Landless Farmers in Davao

At least one-third of Davao City 's third district is gobbled up by banana plantations. Banana companies have aggressively expanded their operations in the last three years targeting both private lands and lands up for distribution under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program.

By Amabelle Plaza-Laminero
Bulatlat

DAVAO CITY – Three years after the killing of her father during a military operation, 44-year-old Sofronita Ingay preoccupies herself with farming, as if trying to remove the pain of the tragedy.

Ingay - Nang Nita as she is fondly called - cultivates a ¾ hectare of ricefarm with her husband Ricardo in Tamugan, a barangay in Marilog, the poorest district in this city. When not tending to her farm, she attends activities by human rights groups and follows up the case of her father Sofronio Enoc, a farmer leader who was one of six civilians killed in a military raid in Pangyan, Marilog on April 15, 2002.

Without a child and despite owning the small piece of farmland, Nang Nita says income derived from rice farming remains very small and can hardly enable the couple to survive.

She and her husband usually harvest about 29-40 sacks of palay or unmilled rice. In the last farming season, they reaped 29 sacks of which they sold 16; the rest they kept for their consumption over the next three months. The 16 sacks yielded nine sacks of milled Lubong rice, a second class Dinorado variety, which they sold at P1,000 for every sack in Calinan, the nearby district center.

Nang Nita says fertilizers and pesticides have become very expensive. They use three sacks of Philphos fertilizer which cost about P1,700 each. For pesticides, they use Bulldock and Dithane fungicides costing by about P500. They don't buy rice seedlings but rely on a swapping scheme with neighboring farmers.

The couple also pays at least three persons to do most of the farm work at P80 each a day. Total cost for their hired help is at least P6,000.  Once the rice is ready for sale, they spend P5 per sack for the transportation cost from their house to the main road, and another P20 per sack from the main road to Calinan. They again pay P1.50 per kilo of palay for milling when they reach Calinan.

Nang Nita computes a net profit of P6,000 in their last harvest. She budgets the earnings for groceries and other essentials for the next three months.

Basic needs

The rise in the cost of basic commodities has forced her to adjust the quantity of bought items. "My budget for our regular grocery has not increased, so I have to adjust, say, for instance, from five bars of soap to three bars, from five kg of sugar to four kg, and
so on," Nang Nita laments.

Nang Nita fears the rise in taxes as this "would surely increase the cost of rice milling, transportation, and the costs of the pesticide and fungicide."

Other farmers are not as fortunate as Nang Nita. Other landless farmers, tenants and even some small landowners who have big families are heavily indebted and engage with banana plantations operating in Tamugan and other areas in Davao's third district often under usurious and exploitative schemes.

"They get easily satisfied whenever they receive wages—by not more than a P100 daily," says Antonio Flores, spokesperson of Farmers Association of Davao City, an affiliate with the national organization Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (Peasant Movement in the Philippines).

Banana plantations

At least one-third of Davao City 's third district is gobbled up by banana plantations. Banana companies have aggressively expanded their operations in the last three years targeting both private lands and lands up for distribution under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program. As banana and other fresh fruits account for almost half of Mindanao exports last year, the multinational Dole Philippines, Davao Abaca Plantation Corporation (DAPCO), and Alberto M. Soriano (AMS) group of companies woo local small landowners to convert their farmlots for banana plantation.

Because of this and the government's rice importation policy, the city has ceased to be a key rice producer in the South despite Davao's rich wide agricultural lands fertile for rice and corn farming.

Last year, the Davao City council chairperson of the committee on agriculture said that the city has become a major trading center of rice and has ceased to be a key producer. He said that only 20 percent of the rice supply is locally produced, while 80 percent is
brought in from other provinces.

The government continues to import rice, with the National Food Authority (NFA) targeting a total of 1.5 million sacks of rice from Vietnam and Thailand this year for Southern Mindanao region. About 500,000 sacks will be distributed in the city which reportedly needs 7,000 sacks a day.

Farm workers

Flores said nationwide, the number of agricultural workers is on the rise accounting for 25 percent of the 75 percent farmer population in the country.

He also said that schemes offered by quasi-government agencies like Quedancor have paved the easy access for expanding banana plantation owners. Quedancor, he said, usually offers loans to farmers with an interest payment of 12 percent a year. But because farmers can hardly pay their mounting debts, the agency then encourages them to rent their farmlot for the banana firms.

Contract growing for banana plantations has also been difficult. Flores said they learned that farmers were forced to produce a 16-kg per carton at $3 per carton, instead of the 13-kg carton of the same price stipulated in their contracts with the company.

Even the Department of Agriculture has discouraged farmers from planting corn and instead has asked them to plant bana, says Flores.  The department would demonstrate to farmers the lower incomes obtained from a hectare of corn compared to a hectare of banana.

"It may be true that, indeed, higher incomes can be taken from a banana farm," Flores notes, "but who owns such an income? The farmer only gets a miserable P12,000 a year for renting his one-hectare farmlot to the banana plantatation."

In one harvest season, a hectare of corn land can yield as much as 60 sacks of corn. The farmer can easily sell 50 sacks of corn (current price: P350 for every sack) and keep the 10 sacks for his/her family's consumption.

"Farmers have become tenants in their own lands," Flores laments. Bulatlat

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