The Grim Reaper

In the blink of an eye three months whizzed by, and summer has again arrived. Despite the heat, summer is traditionally a time of merriment in the provinces because it is the fiesta season.

Fiestas in our country were originally held in celebration of the feast days of the patron saints of the towns. Eventually, however, many towns organized their fiestas to coincide with the harvest season, because it is when the townsfolk—with their pockets filled with the blessings of harvest—are in the mood for parties and amusement.

Agriculture is the main livelihood in our provinces and rice is the major crop of choice. For our rice-producing provinces, there is one cropping season for purely rain-fed farms, two cropping seasons for irrigated farms, and three cropping seasons for farms with abundant water supply.

Of the regular two cropping seasons, farmers usually derive a more bountiful harvest during the typhoon-free first cropping season that culminates in summer. Harvest time is much welcomed by sari-sari store owners who see surges in the sales of gin, coffee, junk food, and other modest luxuries.

Rice production is a source of livelihood that traditionally demands much manual labor. There is a usual increase in demand for farm workers during the planting and harvesting phases of the crop season because these two chores are done manually.

Thus, even landless farm workers customarily enjoy modest fortunes during the town fiesta because there is plentiful work available for them during the summer harvest. Until recently, that is.

An invasion of reaper machines that started in 2014 has quickly deprived farm laborers of work during the harvest season. These reaper machines cut the rice stalks, winnow the grain from the stalks, and then bag the grain in cavans, completely replacing manual labor during the harvest season. As a result, unemployment and hunger have worsened among farm workers.

Even market vendors who thrive on the daily purchases of farm workers are complaining of the significant decrease in sales ever since the reaper machines started to displace farm laborers.

“For every 100 cavans of palay harvested by reaper machines, a farm owner pays eight cavans to the machine operator,” said Isabela farm owner Ferdinand Ferrer. In contrast, if manual labor is employed for the same harvest, 15 cavans are paid to laborers for their manual work of cutting the rice stalks, and an additional eight cavans are paid to the owner of the mechanical thresher that winnows the grain from the stalks. Farm owners, therefore, save 15 cavans by availing themselves of reaper machines.

A farm owner is fortunate if he or she harvests 100-120 cavans per hectare in one crop, according to another farm owner, Priscilla Obrero. This quantity of harvest brings a net income of P30,000-P35,000 per hectare. The 15 additional cavans earned by the shift to a reaper machine brings in an additional income of P11,000. With an average agricultural landholding of 1.29 hectares for Filipino farm owners, we are provided a glimpse of the subsistence level of life in our countryside.

The invasion of reaper machines was made possible in 2013, when Congress passed the Agricultural and Fisheries Mechanization Law that gives incentives to farm owners to abandon their reliance on manual labor and resort to “cost-effective” machinery. The law’s supposed goal is to “achieve food security” for the country.

How tragic that while Congress has embarked on a program that intends to replace farm workers with machines, it has, and outrageously, failed to provide a counterpart program to assist farm workers in getting new jobs or alternate livelihoods.

Of all the possible sources of income—labor, capital, skills and land—farm workers have only the labor of their hands. If the government embarks on a program that deprives 12 million farm workers of their labor, there should be a massive program to teach them livelihood skills, give them access to capital for small businesses, or provide them land. Nothing of the sort was done. The new law only talks about fast-tracking the replacement of human workers with machines.

Criminality is on the rise in rural communities that are severely affected by the replacement of farm workers with reaper machines. There is a growing number of incidents involving unemployed farm laborers stoning reaper machines.

If we need proof that poverty is growing or is stagnant even in the midst of a growing economy, we only have to look at farm communities affected by reaper machines. “At a price of P1.6 million, a reaper machine is affordable only to rich business people,” farm owner Anarose Ferrer points out. Hence, we have a government that helps the rich get richer, and the poor, landless, and uneducated farmers are shooed out of the way.

The tragic dispersal of protesting farmers in Kidapawan City last Friday, which resulted in the death of two of them and the wounding of at least 13 others, illustrates the farmers’ desperation to survive. Numbering 6,000, the farmers claim that the dry spell has left them and their families starving for food. They had barricaded a major road in protest of the government’s inaction on their plight, their demand for relief and subsidies, and their plea for rice rations.

Impoverished farm workers have only the labor of their hands as their source of income. Deprive them of labor, and their sole means to survive is taken away. And that is precisely what Congress has done to farm workers: Congress has dispatched the Grim Reaper to the countryside.

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