Ang Magbubukid party list made it to the 20th congress. My friend Ferdinand Beltran is the first nominee and as I write this piece he is renovating his office in the House of Representatives. He is also currently assembling his team to help him in his congressional works which will focus more on agricultural modernization and helping the farmers further. A better deal for them, he intimated to me.
If it’s often said that overseas Filipino workers are modern day heroes, so it should be said that farmers are heroes then and now. I wasn’t born to a family of farmers but I grew up in an agricultural town. Let me look back. I was about ten years old and was still in the primary grade in Porac, I always looked forward during school breaks. There were not much houses then in our barrio Cangatba. All families were known to each other. Our house was located on the second row street from what we called cabalenan and poblacion. Some one hundred meters was the some ten meters deep river. I witnessed in the afternoon farmers bathing their carabaos. ( sama akong mag-pastol once in a while).
Porac’s resident depended largely from it vast agricultural lands which was mostly planted to sugar cane. Hectares after hectares dotted the roads going to Florida Blanca . Second largest was its rice fields. Farmers in those years were simply happy and contented in whatever decent incomes they get from the soil. I remember farmers who sold their palay to the only rice mill in our town owned by my cousin, the late Servillana Lumanlan David, mother of former Mayor Roy David. After getting paid for their produce, some proceeded to my mother’s carinderia which was just across the street and got their fill there. I heard many of their stories. They talked mostly of their tenancy problems but nonetheless happy with the support from agencies of government.
If today you hear rice farmers complaining the farm gate price per kilo of palay, it is because of the enactment of the rice tarrification law which allowed the unlimited importation of rice by both government and the private sectors. It’s so ridiculous. Apparently the move wasn’t carefully studied. It adversely affected this particular agri sector. I hope congress will correct this.
Let’s look back in the early years when government provided support and services to Filipino farmers. In the early years, there was the ACCFA ( I just can’t recall what the acronym means, but it has something to do with agriculture credit). Then there was FACOMA , meaning Farmers Cooperative Marketing Association. It was an agency designed to sell in the market the farmers’ produce to the market to eliminate middlemen. The third agency was the NAMARCO, and it means National Marketing Corporation. It is tasked by government to sell grocery products and other household items to farmers in a much much reduced prices. Farmers were happy then.
Today the farmers are sad because seemingly the government really doesn’t care about their welfare. Just like in other countries, say like Vietnam and Thailand the farmers are given farm equipment, subsidies like seeds , fertilizer and technical support. Look around when you travel through the SCTEX and be curious and try looking if you can find any farm equipment on the fields. The next question, who in the very near future will till the land? Farmers are also heroes, whatever period. My friend Congressman Ferdinand Beltran will roll his sleeves and will exert every effort to make the farmers get what is due them. God bless the Magbubukid.