"This happens every year—once harvest season comes, prices crash. Farmers can no longer recover their investment. Now, they can’t even sell their produce; they’re forced to give tomatoes away or throw them out. There must be immediate compensation for the farmers who have suffered losses."
Human rights groups expressed alarm on reports of aerial strafing in indigenous peoples communities in Pola, Oriental Mindoro.
“Once again, the DA has shown where its loyalties lie—not with our struggling farmers but with big traders and importers who benefit from these policies. Importing onions at this time will push down farm gate prices, leaving our farmers in deeper debt and losses,”
“This is a blatant deception and exploitation of the people, especially during a time of soaring rice prices and an ongoing food crisis.”
“During that time, I was a daughter. Now, I'm a mother. However, the truth is, there is still no justice for the 13 martyrs. There is still no genuine land reform up to now. We continue to march to the streets to urge a department to implement genuine land reform,” Miriam Villanueva said in Filipino.
MANILA – Thirty-eight years after the Mendiola massacre, victims and their families continue to call for justice. Farmers continue to suffer from landlessness and oppression, Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas stressed in a forum held in Sampaloc, Manila on January...
Tartaria residents and supporters defended their community but were met with violence, with Jarton guards forcibly entering the outpost erected by locals and burning it down.
Nearly 20 years in the making, their application for CADT remains uncertain. Current Molbog indigenous leaders said that ten of their elders have already died waiting in vain.
Palawan PNP claimed that their investigation pointed to the likelihood that the Bricktree hired JMV services, which allegedly is the security agency providing guards in Mariahangin. The information was retrieved from the transcript of a meeting of Mariahangin residents with government agencies and confirmed by residents present in the dialogue.
“This chronic rice crisis is an insult to the Filipino people. As an agricultural nation, it is unacceptable that the basic staple of rice has become a symbol of food insecurity and exploitation."
Martial law survivors fear that the appointment of Geraldine Faith Econg could reverse hard-won gains in the anti-martial law struggle.
For Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas, the maximum suggested retail price is just a band-aid solution and does not address the root cause of the continued rise in rice and food prices—the lack of support for local farmers, neoliberal agricultural policies, and the importation of cheap rice that undermines local production, as well as the absence of genuine rural industrialization.
PDG, at its core, has spent decades advocating for agrarian reform, sustainable agriculture, and the rights of small farmers and fisherfolk in Southern Negros. Genol told Bulatlat that PDG was founded in 1987 in response to the Negros famine.
Rolan Cagas, who also sits as president of the Claveria Federation of Rice Farmers Associations, shared that their top concern was the rising prices of farm inputs, especially fertilizers, as it would now cost over P1,800 per sack, higher than the less-than-P1,000 price in the past years.
“[Secretary] Estrella, we are pleading to you. Please have mercy on us. The attacks against us have gone too far and our human rights are being violated. We can no longer go to school because of what San Miguel Corporation (SMC) is doing to us. Many young people among us still want to study, but I am one of those who had to stop because we can no longer live in peace there," Rustene Pelayo Leoncio said in Filipino.
Residents said that in 2023, SMC initially presented a “resettlement program" for Mariahangin families, offering money amounting to P75,000 with land or P100,000 if without land. Recently, the offer has increased to P400,000 per family to urge them to vacate their ancestral lands.
In 2023, DAR revoked the NOC of the 10,821 hectares of land of the indigenous peoples in Bugsuk, Palawan which was initially issued in 2014. Residents said that this decision by DAR Secretary Conrado Estrella III prompted escalated harassment and intimidation in their community in Sitio Mariahangin.
Rural women condemned the Department of Agrarian Reform's complicity in massive land-grabbing by the Villars, Aranetas, Cojuangcos, Ayalas, and foreign investors.
In a press conference, Sept. 24, resident Tarhata Pelayo said that drones are being used by armed men who are known in their community to be affiliated with SMC to watch them every night.
By ISABELA RIVERA Bulatlat.com MANILA — Regardless of whether the yield is good or not, Alipio Chico, 69, a farmer from Gapan, Nueva Ecija, must give a “buwisan” (payment) of 12 sacks of palay per hectare every harvest season to his landowner. "Whether you harvest...
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