The Unyon ng mga Manggagawa sa Agrikultura (UMA) today called on all Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA) officials who signed a resolution to import sugar without the approval of President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. to resign from their posts as what Department of Agriculture (DA) Undersecretary Leocadio Sebastian just did.
According to UMA spokesperson John Milton “Butch” Lozande this is to ensure that they would not influence the ongoing investigation on the mess that they created and out of delicadeza.
Aside from Sebastian, the resolution was also signed by SRA Administrator Hermenegildo Serafica as vice chairman of the SRA board; Roland B. Beltran, the millers’ representative to the board; and Aurelio Gerardo J. Valderrama Jr., the planters’ representative.
At the same time, UMA is reiterating its earlier call to the President that Executive Secretary Victor Rodriguez who issued a “verbal” order to the DA to create an importation plan should also be investigated for the mess.
Other than that, it should dismantle the cartel in the sugar industry and punish government officials linked to it, especially those belonging to the Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA) and the Department of Agriculture (DA).
The President, who has not yet issued any statements on the high prices of sugar should also restrain middlemen in overpricing its price, and the government should also directly intervene in its pricing and marketing.
In the long run though, Ka Butch concluded that there should be a genuine agrarian reform to fully dismantle haciendas and distribute them freely to sugar field workers and poor farmers; stop land conversions to non-agricultural use; and provide all rounded support services and subsidies to the sugar industry and agriculture in general.
The Unyon ng mga Manggagawa sa Agrikultura (UMA) today dared President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to dismantle the cartel in the sugar industry and punish government officials linked to it, especially those belonging to the Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA) and the Department of Agriculture (DA).
This was in response to the President’s pronouncement that heads will roll in usurping his authority in ordering the importation of sugar.
UMA spokesperson John Milton “Butch” Lozande also dared the President to name members of the sugar cartel. Earlier before the President’s State of the Nation Address, his sister, Senator Imee Marcos publicly stated that increases in food prices are caused by importers, cartels, and syndicates.
Ka Butch added the President should also investigate the role played by Executive Secretary Victor Rodriguez who issued a “verbal” order to the DA to create an importation plan.
Mr. Lozande added that the SRA including its mother agency, the DA has a penchant for resorting to importation not only of sugar, but even of rice, galunggong, pork, vegetables, etc. Instead of looking for ways to achieve food self sufficiency.
SRA Administrator Hermenegildo Serafica has been consistent in insisting that local sugar production for this crop year was only a result of the damage wrought by Typhoon Odette last year.
This is different from planters associations which stated as early as November last year that the price of fertilizers more than doubled to as high as P3,200 per bag at a certain period from a low of P800 a bag then.
At least the new planters representative in the SRA, who also agreed to import sugar this year, Aurelio Gerardo Valderrama Jr., acknowledged the increase in production costs due to the increase of prices of fertilizer and petrol which are essential in sugar production.
With regards to the increase in the retail prices of sugar, Ka Butch is suggesting to the President restrain middlemen in overpricing its price, and for the government to intervene in its pricing and marketing.
In the long run though, Ka Butch concluded that there should be a genuine agrarian reform to fully dismantle haciendas and distribute them freely to sugar field workers and poor farmers; stop land conversions to non-agricultural use; and provide all rounded support services and subsidies to the sugar industry and agriculture in general.
Today, Unyon ng mga Manggagawa sa Agrikultura (UMA) slammed the Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA) for pinning the blame for the country’s low sugar yield solely on the adverse effects of Typhoon Odette. According to the federation, this was a malicious stretch; the low sugar yield was also largely caused by the steep rise in fertilizer prices, which curbed the production of planters, especially small ones.
“Had the SRA acknowledged this problem early on, it would not have had to resort to sugar importation,” said John Milton ‘Ka Butch’ Lozande, spokesperson of UMA. “It seems Marcos bureaucrats, just like Duterte bureaucrats, are too lazy to find any solution to the growing inaccessibility of agricultural products other than importation. The skyrocketing costs of inputs already harm small planters, what more another flood of imports?”
Even the US government’s Global Agricultural Information Network stated this explicitly in its own April 18 forecast. In its Philippines Sugar Annual, “Post forecasts sugar production in Marketing Year (MY) 2023 to decline by 50,000 MT to 2 million MT, as high fertilizer prices lead to reduced yields. Production for MY 2022 is also lowered to reflect the damage to sugar farms in December 2021 by Typhoon Rai (local name Odette).”
PRICE CAPS, PRODUCTION SUBSIDIES
UMA urged the Philippine government to find alternatives to sugar importation that can help make sugar accessible to more local consumers and improve its domestic production. Putting a price cap on the retail price of sugar, inventorying traders and millers’ warehouses to determine the exact figures of buffer stocks, granting subsidies to small planters especially for fertilizers, and scrapping the US-imposed quota will make the Philippines less dependent on sugar importation.
As early as November 15 last year, the United Sugar Producers Federation (Unifed) had already called on the Department of Agriculture (DA) to subsidize the cost of fertilizers. The DA could have done so by immediately issuing a P1,000 voucher per bag of fertilizer, providing relief for sugar farmers who had been gravely affected by the continued rise in the cost of the commodity. But the demand, UMA observed, fell not on deaf ears, but—worse—on disinterested ears.
At the time, one bag of fertilizer used to cost P1,800 from the previous P800. But later on, this increased even more dramatically to P3,200. If, in Ka Butch’s words, one needed 18 sacks of fertilizer for every hectare of land planted to sugarcane, this meant one would also need to shell out P57,600 for fertilizer needed—almost four times the older total of P15,300 per hectare. And this amount was yet to consider the rising cost of petrol, which especially left small sugar planters in a lurch.
“The SRA’s endorsement to import 300,000 metric tons of sugar would bankrupt the remaining small planters and reduce them to sugar field workers, majority of whom are paid slave wages,” explained Ka Butch. “Clearly, these bureaucrats have no regard for the welfare of Filipino peasants, and are quick to condemn us to poverty and death if it means satisfying their fatal hunger for imports.”
END LAND CONVERSION, ADVANCE GENUINE LAND REFORM
The peasant leader added that the move to continue importing agricultural goods betrays the illegitimate Marcos regime’s disinterest in genuine agrarian reform and providing support to producers of agricultural goods. The provision of subsidies to small planters, which the government was yet to conduct, could work only if such planters were in control of the land they tilled; otherwise, only the same big landlords would benefit from such subsidies.
Putting an end to the conversion of agricultural land to other uses was also urgent. Faced with the flood of imports, landlords and corporations with big estates were prone to just convert farmlands into subdivisions, tourist spots, and special economic zones; or convert crops like sugarcane into more lucrative high-value crops like pineapple, Cavendish banana, and oil palm; rather than improving production.
For UMA, the pursuit of further importation served as a testament to Marcos, Jr.’s failure as Agricultural Secretary, having promised to lower the costs of fertilizers among other agricultural commodities, improve Philippine agriculture at large, and create conditions for self-reliance and self-sufficiency. Like his father did before him, Marcos, Jr. would only drive Filipino farmers to further debt and destitution.
“We were right to participate in the People’s SONA on Commonwealth Avenue today. Agricultural workers have little to expect from Marcos, Jr., and his words rang as hollow as his call for unity at Batasang Pambansa this afternoon. He needs to plant his feet on the ground.”
This was the reaction of John Milton ‘Ka Butch’ Lozande, chairperson of Unyon ng mga Manggagawa sa Agrikultura (UMA, Federation of Agriculture Workers), to the State of the Nation Address (SONA) delivered by Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. today.
According to the peasant leader, while Marcos’ call to erase the debt of agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBs) and implement a one-year moratorium on amortization payments was welcome, these measures were hardly enough, and did nothing to reverse the damage already inflicted on farmers by sham land reform policies.
Moreover, Ka Butch bemoaned the lack of a concrete proposal for a new agrarian reform program. Both the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) and its extension CARPER had already expired, and it was high time for government to look into the Genuine Agrarian Reform Bill (GARB) repeatedly filed by the Makabayan bloc in Congress.
“Genuine agrarian reform distributes land to the tillers for free, and supports the production of food staples with subsidies to food producers. Our farmers deserve so much more than mere loans and a year-long moratorium on amortization payments,” declared Ka Butch.
Too many ARBs had already lost their land to corporations in lopsided leaseback arrangements and other duplicitous agri-business venture agreements (AVAs) state bureaucrats themselves encouraged, brokered, and benefited from. Marcos, Jr.’s pronouncements would only maintain the status quo, not improve it.
UMA was also skeptical about his supposed goal of increasing domestic food production. The group questioned how government could do so without addressing the age-old problem of land monopoly. Food sovereignty would remain a fantasy if the hacienda and plantation systems continued to prosper through state-sanctioned landgrabs like AVAs.
The federation also slammed the president’s silence on land-use and crop conversion. Not only did the government keep allowing the re-classification of agricultural land to commercial use; it also encouraged the conversion of crops from everyday staples to high-value crops (HVCs), especially those for export.
Ka Butch also criticized Marcos, Jr.’s disinterest in raising wages and ending contractualization—problems felt deeply by agricultural workers. These were especially pervasive among sacadas and those at the mercy of the pakyawan system, especially in plantations. Regional minimum wage rates barely reached half the family living wage of P1,087—that is, if they were even implemented at all.
“Landlessness pushes peasants into low-wage work in plantations, often on their own land grabbed from them by corporations,” explained Ka Butch. “Without genuine agrarian reform, peasants will keep turning into landless agricultural workers; and without a national minimum wage, agricultural workers will remain mired in poverty.”
The federation warned that the president’s callousness was fanning the flames of crisis. Workers and peasants demanded a concrete roadmap that would alleviate their suffering, and his speech was only patronizing at best. Marcos, Jr. better watch his words and actions in the coming days if he did not want to suffer the same fate as his dictator father.
Unyon ng mga Manggagawa sa Agrikultura decries yet another arrogant display of impunity by state security forces. In a June 6 letter addressed to the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC), notorious redtagger and National Security Adviser Hermogenes Esperon has lumped UMA and other mass and people’s organizations together with underground revolutionary organizations in a list of alleged “communist terrorist groups.”
Esperon demanded that the NTC direct Internet service providers (ISPs) to block the official webpages of UMA, Pambansang Lakas ng Kilusang Mamamalakaya ng Pilipinas (PAMALAKAYA-Pilipinas), and Amihan National Federation of Peasant Women from public access. Also included in the list, among others, were alternative media outfits Bulatlat and Pinoy Weekly, as well as international leftist publications Monthly Review and Counter Punch.
“Since ramping up his fake war on drugs and counter-insurgency operations, President Duterte has already established de-facto martial law since 2017,” remarked UMA chairperson Antonio ‘Ka Tonying’ Flores. “Now, the outgoing commander-in-chief seems bent on ending his term by upgrading it to full-blown martial law, and handing on the baton of fascism to his successor, Ferdinand Marcos, Jr., son of the late dictator.”
UMA is a legitimate federation of agricultural workers registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Since 2005, it has upheld the freedom of association by defending every agricultural worker’s right to unionize. On top of living wages and humane work conditions, UMA also advances the struggle for genuine agrarian reform, identifying land monopoly as the systemic problem that makes peasants landless and forces them into abusive work relations.
Esperon’s latest attack on UMA’s freedom of expression is consistent with previous efforts to censor the federation on social media. For over a year now, links to articles on UMA’s webpage have been blocked on Facebook and Instagram, limiting the circulation of articles and statements that tackle the interests and demands of the sector it represents. Its posts on Facebook have also routinely been taken down without basis.
Ka Tonying underscores that redtagging erodes not only the freedom of expression, but also the freedom of association. In a complaint submitted to the International Labor Organization exactly one year ago, UMA emphasized the danger redtagging posed to agricultural workers’ organizations on the ground. The police and military would bust unions and associations in the countryside by linking its leaders and members to the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP).
Even the Tinang 83—the leaders and supporters of MAKISAMA-Tinang illegally arrested last June 9—have been redtagged for their assertion of the right of agrarian reform beneficiaries to cultivate food crops on their land. The National Task Force to End the Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) has repeatedly linked UMA to the CPP in justifying its accusation that the chaos of June 9 was instigated by leftists instead of the police.
“By redtagging and suppressing our unions and associations, state security forces leave agricultural workers defenseless against the abuse of landlords and corporations,” Ka Tonying lamented. “We urge the NTC and the country’s various ISPs not to play along with Esperon and the NTF-ELCAC’s ploy to trample on our Constitutionally guaranteed rights. Now more than ever, unions play a vital role in keeping democracy alive in the Philippines.”
One week since the illegal arrest of 92 activists in Tinang, Concepcion, Tarlac, Unyon ng mga Manggagawa sa Agrikultura (UMA) continued to lament the trumped-up charges of malicious mischief and illegal assembly filed against the agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBs) of MAKISAMA-Tinang and their supporters.
Last Thursday, June 9, Malayang Kilusang Samahan ng Magsasaka ng Tinang (MAKISAMA-Tinang) launched a land cultivation activity on half a hectare of the 200 hectares awarded by the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) to 236 ARBs way back in 1995. They set out to plant vegetables—beginning with mongo or mung beans—to secure their food supply.
The 200 hectares bestowed on them by DAR through the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) had been planted to sugarcane, but the rewards of such a high-value crop (HVC) could be reaped no sooner than six months. Addressing their hunger was urgent, so the ARBs of MAKISAMA-Tinang decided to begin planting what they could eat as soon as possible.
Their pursuit of food, however, was met with state violence. The police attacked then rounded up a number of ARBs and scores of peasant advocates, many of them artists, journalists, and researchers, accusing them of destroying crops. 83 were detained at the Concepcion police station for four days, earning them the moniker “Tinang 83”—51 of whom spent their last night in overly cramped jail cells.
TERROR AND TORTURE
“29 male farmers and peasant advocates were crammed with over 30 other inmates in a prison cell that could humanely accommodate only 10. The same was done to 22 female farmers and peasant advocates with five others in an even smaller cell,” narrated Antonio ‘Ka Tonying’ Flores, chairperson of UMA. “This alone could pass for torture.”
Inmates were sleep-deprived for lack of space. When not supplied by donors, food and drink were paid for. COVID-19 was also a clear and present danger; one inmate in the male cell had been exhibiting symptoms. Two women vomited, one suffered a panic attack, and another one with rheumatic heart disease experienced chest pains police officers present could barely be bothered with.
And all these for asserting the right to produce food staples. Upon arrest, artist Angelo Suarez, a member of Sama-samang Artista para sa Kilusang Agraryo and a volunteer for UMA, was told by a police officer that they were being accosted for “being NPA” (New People’s Army). In a low-key interrogation with no legal counsel present for Suarez, Concepcion police chief Reynold Macabitas insinuated he was a ranking communist officer, and may have been to the mountains as a rebel.
“If the state considers the NPA as a terrorist organization, and that asserting the right to food makes one a member of the NPA—does this mean that the state now includes food production as a terrorist activity?” wondered Ka Tonying. “ARBs were there to address their own community’s hunger using land granted to them by DAR. Will the police consider DAR an accessory to terrorist activity as well?”
SOVEREIGNTY AND SOLIDARITY
Artist Donna Miranda, another member of SAKA and spokesperson for Farmers’ Center for Agroecology Services (FCAS), remarked that DAR should be defending MAKISAMA-Tinang’s assertion of their right to grow food on their land rather than pinning blame on ‘leftists’ as so-called ‘instigators’ of their land cultivation. According to Miranda, police intervention last Thursday was a violation of DAR’s joint Circular No. 5 with the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) and the Department of National Defense (DND).
“Signed in 2002, the circular stipulated that the ‘DILG-PNP shall desist from intervening in any agrarian dispute without prior consent from the DAR Secretary, DARAB (Department of Agrarian Reform Adjudication Board), or any of its adjudicators.’ Yet DAR has refused to hold the police accountable for this violation,” she explained. “We hope DAR, like the arrested peasant advocates, will live up to its mandate of throwing its solidarity behind ARBs. We hope DAR, like MAKISAMA-Tinang, will hold accountable whoever pushed the police to intervene in an agrarian dispute and used them as his private army.”
FCAS argued that peasant control over food production was a crucial component of upholding the country’s food sovereignty, and that efforts to thwart it in favor of landgrabbers was a kind of treason. By barring DAR-recognized ARBs from exercising their control over land granted to them by the state to secure their own food security, the police and whoever was influencing them were, in effect, undermining the country’s food sovereignty.
“Everything the Tinang 83 has done is within legal bounds. The ARBs of MAKISAMA-Tinang invited peasant advocates as guests to support them in their land cultivation activity—and any Filipino who eats owes it to farmers to support them in their struggle to produce food,” concluded Flores. “All charges against the Tinang 83 should be dropped, and we urge DAR to intervene and uphold the right of MAKISAMA-Tinang’s ARBs to till the land they’ve been granted, enjoy the fruits of their struggle, and eat with dignity like any human being should.”
“Since his return to the country in 1991, Bongbong Marcos has had over 30 years to practice deceiving the Filipino people that he is on our side. Yet several audit-related scandals, a handful of useless bureaucratic terms, and a horrifyingly dirty election later, all he has to show for it is bad ‘alamano’ acting.”
This was how Antonio ‘Ka Tonying’ Flores, chairperson of Unyon ng mga Manggagawa sa Agrikultura (UMA), described president-elect Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Marcos, Jr.’s pushback against rushing the country’s participation in the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).
RCEP, a China-led free-trade agreement involving 10 member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and six trading partners, had been ratified by outgoing President Rodrigo Duterte last September, but was yet to be approved by the Senate. Both the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) and the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) had been pushing for it.
UMA had long joined the ranks of Anakpawis Partylist, Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas, and several other peasant organizations in clamoring for RCEP’s rejection. They warned that such a trade deal with industrialized countries whose agricultural production had been subsidized by their states would disadvantage local farmers and agricultural workers.
On top of further pulling wages down and eroding labor conditions to attract foreign direct investment, RCEP’s lowered tariffs would flood the domestic market with foreign agricultural produce, creating undue competition for unprepared local farmers receiving little to no state support. Its investment protection could also undermine any effort at agrarian reform in defense of corporate land monopoly, allowing the expansion of plantations further.
The agricultural workers’ federation, however, clarified that their rejection of RCEP did not mean that they were on the same side as Marcos. According to UMA, Marcos may have professed skepticism over its supposed benefits to peasants, but the dictator’s son only held off on the trade agreement’s ratification for show.
“If Marcos were serious about protecting farmers and agricultural workers, he would not only reject RCEP wholesale; he would have a roadmap for rural development that started with genuine agrarian reform,” Ka Tonying explained. “But where is his plan for free land distribution to peasants? How can he improve domestic food production if landlessness continues to plague 90% of farmers?”
The peasant leader said agricultural workers could see through Marcos’ pretensions. Even his choice of NEDA chief, ex-Aquino bureaucrat Arsenio Balisacan, betrayed his intent to sell out the peasantry. Not only was Balisacan, an RCEP advocate, in contradiction with Marcos’ professed skepticism over the free-trade agreement; he even toed the line of Aquino’s anti-peasant legacy of continued land monopoly.
Moreover, had the president-elect been sincere about defending local agriculture, he would have long acknowledged his father’s crimes against the peasantry. Yet he whitewashed Presidential Decree 27 (PD27), the dictator’s sham agrarian reform program, which consolidated instead of dismantled haciendas and plantations; and championed Masagana 99 and the Green Revolution, which facilitated the corporate hijack of agricultural lands, mired farmers in debt, and even poisoned the soil.
“Whatever Marcos’ final decision on RCEP will be, we urge the Senate to reject this attack on farmers and agri-workers,” concluded Ka Tonying. “But more importantly, we call on the Filipino people to expose Marcos’ duplicity, oppose the onslaught his regime will certainly bring, and ultimately shut down his illegitimate regime.”