The man of burden

The carabao, regarded as the Philippine national animal, also bears the moniker “beast of burden.” Still, this comfortless ordeal of the carabao doesn’t make that of his master, the Filipino farmer, any better. Between the two, it is the farmer who carries the heavier burden of having a family to support and a nation to feed. Advanced agricultural technology could have eased the life of the carabao, with the use of tractors to plough the field. However, the Filipino farmer’s saga has only changed for the worse, with more mouths to feed requiring higher agricultural yields that, in turn, results in tighter market competition.

Marx and Lenin forewarned us of the impending doom that awaits the peasants in a competitive market economy; that impending doom is now staring us in the face.

It is clear that the Philippine government is more concerned with international rice trade compliance than with reinforcing sustainable rice self-sufficiency, which, by the way, was its campaign in 2013, dubbed

“Sapat na Bigas, Kaya ng Pinas.” Through Presidential Proclamation No. 494 series of 2012, the government’s aim then was to attain rice self-sufficiency and end rice importation. Seven years later, however, it seems the current administration’s target has shifted to the complete opposite, an about-face that’s driving Filipino rice farmers far below the poverty baseline.

Why does the Philippines still choose to import rice? Jamie S. Davidson, associate professor of political science at the National University of Singapore, cautioned us three years before President Duterte passed the rice tariffication law in 2019 that with the Philippines’ low competitiveness, high production cost, and public underinvestment, as well as subsidized rice farmers in other exporting countries, the liberalization of rice trade “will doom millions of small Filipino rice farmers.” Davidson attributed the long-standing Philippine rice importation policy to three reasons: geography, international policies, and the country’s colonial past.

Unlike geography and history, policies are open to changes and amendments. Yes, history is arguably a topic of revisionism, too, but more so are statutes and laws. If our policymakers are true to their stated goal of improving the lives of Filipino farmers and the rice situation in the country, then by all means, they should be taking the proper course of action to pass and enforce legislation that treats all stakeholders fairly, especially those at the bottom of the socioeconomic food chain. Our misdirected confidence in rice liberalization is not resilience, but reliance that can only be fatal in the long run.

Geographical, political, and historical factors can, in fact, be restrictive without a multi-causal framework for encouraging human agency as a blueprint for policymaking. But what kind of human agency are we to expect in a country where farmers irrigate the land with their own blood — the collateral damage of unending social injustice? What are we to expect of a regime of law that cannot protect the cultivators of the land? What is human agency if farmers themselves end up hungry?

As the rice tariffication law marked one year last Feb. 14, the mass of Filipino farmers mourn. The rice tariffication law has made the price of rice cheaper for consumers—and likewise the labor of our local farm producers. Now, with many ruined farmlands getting converted into gated subdivisions and commercial lots by the same politician who was the staunchest promoter of foreign rice trade, the poor farmer may have to switch to construction work to survive, instead of cultivating his rice field. Change has come for the farmer, and it is not good. The burden only got much heavier.

* * *

Christele Jao Amoyan is currently a graduate student of rural sociology at the University of the Philippines Los Baños.