THE Madaum Agrarian Reform Beneficiaries Association, Inc., (Marbai) in an open letter to Pilipino Banana Growers and Exporters Associations (PBGEA) said that they have legitimate basis on their refusal to continue to be tied up with Hijo Employees Agrarian Reform Beneficiaries Cooperative (Hearbco 1).
In an open letter sent to SunStar Davao on Sunday, Mely Yu, Marbai Board of Directors Chairperson, said they are an association comprised of 159 member agrarian reform beneficiaries of mostly banana farmers, workers, planters, and growers and was formed as an offshoot to their collective effort to recognize their rights to a fair livelihood.
"Most of us have been in the banana business in more years than we can recall until such time that our living condition had dramatically declined due to an agreement entered into by the mother cooperative we assisted in establishing. This has led us to explore another buyer that may give us a promising contract we truly deserve,” Yu said.
She added that the Lapanday Foods Corporation’s contract implementation of the 10-year Banana Sales Agreement and General Framework Farm Rehabilitation has been unfavorable to them.
Yu also added that burdensome contracts brokered by LFC is an Agri-Business Ventures Agreement Scheme meant to extract excessive profits from farmers and leave them in huge debt.
“Concretely, the LFC’s contract would accord the deduction from small farmers the amount of P4,500 twice monthly for farm inputs or production cost, unfair deduction to those who would earn more than P20,000 monthly, receiving a meagre take home pay of P2,000, in addition to the anomalous intentional downgrading of banana products that cost us great lost in our earnings, among others,” Yu said.
She said that their intent to separate from Hearbco-1 was grounded in the refusal to continue to be tied up with this AVA, and that their refusal is also stemmed on the belief that some if not most PBGEA members could give them a better deal, fair and justified, so that they could live decently.
Yu said that LFC’S disapproval on their actions did not leave them unscathed because 2010, members of the coop were fenced off from their land to stop them from harvesting their banana products.
She added that the company filed a case against them for their refusal to sign a waiver allowing them to control the land they own, and the support of the local government to the LFC in enforcing their demand then drove them away from the only source of living they know.
She said that the LFC insisted holding them accountable for a contract they never agreed into and the company refused to address the fact that it was by means of a referendum-one democratic procedure that all of ARBs under Hearbco 1 agreed upon and voted for whether they chose to remain in continuance of an unfair contract with our buyer or not.
“The result concluded our resolve to leave HEARBCO 1 in January 2011 while their contract with LFC was signed September of 2011,” Yu said.
Marbai in a decision last December 15, 2015 obtained a favorable ruling from Jose Nilo Tillano, the Provincial Agrarian Reform Adjudiator of Davao Del Norte (Parad), to reinstate our members to more than one 150 hectares lands located at San Roque, Tagum City.
The legal mandate reaffirmed the correct stand they group held on, but they were disheartened when DAR failed to implement its ruling, she wrote.
Yu also said that, their group has been in the limelight for the past few days for no other reason but to gain back their livelihood and this happened at the extent that their fellow farmers getting hurt and their families traumatized.