This story
was taken from Bulatlat, the Philippines's alternative weekly
newsmagazine (www.bulatlat.com, www.bulatlat.net, www.bulatlat.org).
Vol. VII, No. 1, Feb. 4-10, 2007
Alter Trade Corporation: From
Farm Workers’ Cooperative to Profit-Seeking Company?
Alter Trade Corporation began as an alternative enterprise promoting the
principles of fair trade. However, it is now accused of having further
impoverished the lives of farm workers. BY
KARL G. OMBION
BACOLOD CITY
–Alter Trade Corporation (ATC) general manager Norma Mugar, in a letter released
to media on Aug. 16, 2006 said, the corporation is an “alternative business
enterprise committed to uphold the principles of fair trade and sustainable
agriculture; as such, the company places great value to its partners – the
farmers and agricultural workers as well as consumers, and its own staff and
employees.”
Earlier, in her
open letter to ATC’s friends, Mugar stressed that ATC’s profits from its
operations are used to provide production assistance to farmers and set up
alternative livelihood projects in the communities.
But to guerrilla
priest Fr. Frank Fernandez, spokesperson of the National Democratic Front of the
Philippines (NDFP) in Negros, Mugar’s description of ATC is the opposite of what
it is in reality.
“Fake and promoter
of unfair trade”
“ATC is a fake and
a promoter of unfair trade,” charged Fernandez in a statement sent to media
outlets.
“In reality, these
hypocrites lead by Edwin Lopez and Norma Mugar are big NGO (non-government
organization) bureaucrats, promoters of semi-colonial unfair trade and
anti-communist propagandists of the U.S.-Arroyo regime,” Fernandez said.
“Since 1992, the
leaders of Alter Trade Corp. had strengthened the politics of the said NGO as a
partner of the local reactionary government and foreign capitalists in promoting
their reformist programs for the masses; they also made the masses their
instruments and milking cows to enrich themselves,” he added.
He also said that
the “NGO bureaucrats” of Alter Trade Corp. serve as “middlemen” who dictate
cheap buying prices for the peasants’ products that are in turn sold at high
prices to foreign consumers in order to amass “huge profit” for their personal
and family luxurious interests.
“They are part of
the psy-war machinery of the U.S.-Arroyo regime in spreading anti-revolutionary
and anti-communist propaganda,” said Fernandez.
ATC defense
Mugar however
stressed that ATC was a response to the widespread hunger that gripped Negros
Occidental when prices of sugar – the single commodity the province’s economy
highly depended on – plummeted in the world market in 1984.
She said that same
year, a series of natural calamities also hit the province, the famine worsened.
Due to the sugar
crisis, one out of every four workers employed in the haciendas lost their jobs.
Starvation spread among the rural population, severely hitting the children.
Mugar clarified
that the company was registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission
(SEC) with five original incorporators to engage in both domestic and
international trading. It had paid-up capital of P12, 500 ($256.62 at an
exchange rate of $1=P48.71). The company borrowed P50, 000 ($1,026.48) from its
Japanese partners to start operations. The five original stockholders also
became the initial staff. The number of stockholders later expanded to 13.
The first shipment
to Japan was in 1987, with its initial market being the cooperatives in that
country. A year later, trading firms from Switzerland and Germany, and then
Italy, also espousing the principles of fair trade, began buying ATC’s sugar.
The commodity had
truly become a symbol of solidarity between Filipinos and Japanese, as well as
other peoples, who are concerned with the environment and in changing the
“exploitative social relations” prevailing in the Philippines. The demand for
non-plantation bananas in Japan had grown continuously since the beginning.
Demand has always exceeded supply. Mascobado demand had also been growing
steadily in Japan and Europe.
Cooperative to
corporation?
Fernandez,
however, cited a number of bases for calling Alter Trade Corp. as “anti-people
and a fake fair trade promoter.” The following are lifted from his statement:
* In 1992, the
said NGO bureaucrats grabbed the properties, assets and operations of Alter
Trade from the legitimate ownership of the accredited beneficiary people’s
organizations and small farmers cooperatives that in 1984 had a membership of
158,000. They converted Alter Trade into a private business corporation with
profit-making as their sole mission, vision and goal. They created Alter Trade
Foundation in 1997 to cover their private ownership and to control the
integrated branches of the different operations in manufacturing, trading and
finance. These criminal manipulations of the NGO bureaucrats resulted to the
disenfranchisement and deprivation of 158,000 peasants and farm workers of their
rights to Alter Trade.
* Grave Fraud.
First, Alter Trade Corp does not really engaged in fair trade. The truth is,
their sources of “balangon” bananas for export to Japan and other countries are
NOT from the poor or small farmers cooperatives in Negros Occidental, Negros
Oriental, Bohol and Mindanao, but from the small and rich peasants including
landlords. These bananas are being bought from middlemen or through their buying
stations where individual peasants bring their bananas to sell. However when the
NPA meted punishment by burning ATC’s hauler truck in Toboso last Aug. 13, 2006,
they hurriedly organized peasant associations that they will use as shield and
maneuver to preserve their interests.
* The mascubado
products that they sell in the local market and export to Japan and other
countries are not REAL mascubado nor products of organic farming. They do not
buy the sugarcane from the small farmers to be made into mascubado products.
What they do is buy big volume of raw sugar from the sugar milling centrals and
convert this to mascovado while making a showcase of planting sugarcane through
organic farming to demonstrate and fool their costumers and buyers in order to
hide the big volume of fake mascubado.
* Exploitation of
balangon farmers-suppliers. These poor farmers walked several kilometers
bringing their products, or spend more for transport fares if there are
farm-to-market roads leading to the buying stations. When the bananas arrived in
the buying station, export-quality bananas are sorted out if it passes quality
test (age, size and undamaged) and are bought at P0.90 ($0.018) per piece if it
is packed or P0.75 ($0.015) if unpacked. Exported bananas are sold in consumer
cooperatives in Japan at P51.25/kilo ($1.05) or P10.25 ($0.21) per piece. In a
buying station in Northern Negros Occidental, they buy bananas at P0.50 ($0.01)
per piece. Bananas that they sort out as reject are bought at P0.25($0.005) or
being asked for free from the poor producers. Because of their (ATC) low buying
price and a lot of rejected bananas, 58-70 banana growers transfered to other
buyers.
* Banana
farmer-suppliers deceived by NGO bureaucrats. When Alter Trade Corporation was
punished by the NPA (New People’s Army) last Aug. 13, 2006, ATC used the
farmer-suppliers as instruments in preserving and protecting their interests
thru a petition signing and mobilization against the revolutionary movement,
raised their buying price, increase wages of their workers, loans and other
benefits. They hurriedly organized farmer cooperatives and the Negros Federation
to cover their fraudulent modus operandi.
Fernandez further
said that the typical example of Alter Trade maneuvers in “using the masses” is
a certain Teody Allabo, an Alter Trade Corp. field assistant in Bonawon,
Zamboangita, Negros Oriental who is also the adviser of the
Bonawon-Catipon-Calangag Bolongan Farmers Association.
Fernandez stressed
that Alter Trade Corp. had already junked the principles of fair trade and
sustainable organic farming. “They no longer give due importance to their
partners who are the peasants, workers and farm workers and consumers but only
their pockets; they are pure and simple businessmen using NGO politics in
enriching themselves at the expense of the people,” he said.
Warning
Fernandez warned
that Alter Trade Corp. must be held accountable to the 158,000 poor peasants,
farm workers and laborers who are the accredited members and beneficiaries from
people’s organizations and farmers’ cooperatives in 1984.
“The cries of the
masses for justice will remain as haunting ghosts to these NGO bureaucrats so
that they will find no peace in their greedy happiness of the money they have
stolen; they cannot hide their criminal acts by just creating new cooperatives
of farmers and federations of banana growers and use these for their survival
and self-serving political and economic interests,” he said.
Mugar revealed
that in early 2000, they sought the help of local and foreign governments on the
same issue.
“That time we
received a letter from the Communist Party of the Philippines-Negros Island
Regional Party Committee demanding that ‘P30 million ($615,889) (be) turned over
to the Party treasury,’” she said. “The said letter urged us to “take positive
response to the will of the Party” and reminded us that ‘whatever action (we)
take will be dealt with accordingly by the Party.’”
“The NPA will not
stop in protecting the interests of the masses and in attaining justice for
them; the NPA will punish these NGO bureaucrats of Alter Trade Corp as
equivalent to the exploitation, oppression and sufferings that ATC inflicted on
the masses,” Fernandez meanwhile said. Bulatlat © 2007 Bulatlat
■
Alipato Publications Permission is granted to reprint or redistribute this article, provided its author/s and Bulatlat are properly credited and notified.
Bulatlat
She said the first commodity that was traded by ATC was muscovado sugar.
Muscovado, largely considered as “poor man’s sugar,” was viewed by Alter Trade
as an apt symbol of its vision to help the poor of Negros. The enterprise
adopted the brand name Mascobado, “mas” meaning the masses – the ordinary
people. Thus, Mascobado means “people’s sugar” in contrast with the sugar
produced by the hacenderos and the big multinational milling companies.
Mascobado trading had impacted significantly in the development of an
alternative trading system that seeks to change the socio-economic system
prevailing in the country, especially in Negros.
She said they brought the matter up to Philippine authorities, foreign
governments who are involved in the peace talks between the Government of the
Republic of the Philippines (GRP) and the NDFP, and to their partners in the
fair trade movement. “Maybe the situation now has allowed them to get back at
us, with the breakdown of the peace talks,” she added.