This story
was taken from Bulatlat, the Philippines's alternative weekly
newsmagazine (www.bulatlat.com, www.bulatlat.net, www.bulatlat.org).
Vol. VII, No. 3, Feb. 18-24, 2007
Pro-Arroyo Landlords in
Congress to Reap Profits from Biofuels Act
The Biofuels
Act by itself cannot address the most urgent problem of exorbitant and soaring
oil prices caused by foreign monopoly control. Worse, only landlords and
bourgeois-compradors like Rep. Juan Miguel Zubiri and his co-authors are the
ones who will benefit most from it.
BY ARNOLD
PADILLA
IBON Features
Posted by
Bulatlat
Going by the hype created by its
passage, Republic Act (RA) No. 9367 or the Biofuels Act of 2006 is the silver
bullet that would end all our energy woes. In fact, the law's principal author,
Rep. Juan Miguel Zubiri (Lakas, 3rd district of Bukidnon) is now capitalizing on
the Biofuels Act to boost his senatorial bid.
Unfortunately, the law cannot
address the most urgent problem of exorbitant and soaring oil prices caused by
foreign monopoly control. In the final analysis, only the landlords and
bourgeois-compradors like Zubiri and his co-authors are the ones who will
benefit the most from the Biofuels Act, a law that was enacted at the expense of
genuine agrarian reform.
Most ardent supporters
The Biofuels Act aims to maximize
the production of sugarcane and coconut in the country to supply the needs of
bioethanol and coco-biodiesel. Sugarcane has been identified as one of the
primary sources in producing bioethanol which under the law is required to
comprise at least five percent of the total annual volume of gasoline sold and
distributed in the country within two years from the effectivity of the Biofuels
Act. Coconut, on the other hand, will serve as the feedstock for biodiesel that
the law mandates to account for at least one percent of all diesel engine fuels
within three months into the law's effectivity.
Aside from Zubiri, among the most
ardent supporters (i.e., co-authors of the bill) of the Biofuels Act in Congress
are some of the biggest landlords and bourgeois-compradors in the Philippines.
When the law was still pending in Congress, they started to position themselves
in the biofuels business which is expected to be lucrative. These politicians
and their families and/or their landlord/bourgeois-comprador patrons are the
ones who stand to gain from the government's biofuels program at the expense of
farmers and farm workers.
Zubiri himself has an interest in
the sugar industry of Bukidnon. His father – who was Bukidnon's third district
representative (1987-1998) before his son took over and is now the province's
governor – was executive vice president of the Bukidnon Sugar Milling
Corporation (BUSCO) from 1975 to 1988. Zubiri admitted that BUSCO has been
working on feasibility studies as early as 2005 for facilities that work both as
an ethanol distillery and sugar mill in anticipation of the Biofuels Act.
Another author, Rep. Herminio Teves
(Lakas, 3rd district of Negros Oriental), has been pushing for the construction
of a projected P2-billion ($41.6-million, based on an exchange rate of P48.10
per US dollar) integrated production complex for ethanol in Negros Oriental. The
complex would span four municipalities (Sta. Catalina, Siaton, Valencia, and
Sibulan) covering 214,116 hectares of government land. The proponent of the
project, the Tamlang Valley Agricultural Development Corp., is 35 percent
government-owned while 65 percent is controlled by a consortium composed of
alcohol distillery Tau Commodities and Teves' own family.
Teves, who owns agricultural lands
in Sibulan, Tayasan, and Sta. Catalina (all in Negros Oriental) is also involved
with Tolong Sugar Milling which is based in Sta. Catalina.
Increased production
Sugarcane production is expected to
increase to meet the requirements of the Biofuels Act. At present, the sugar
industry can only supply 79 percent of the needs of the five-percent bioethanol
blend which is between 200 and 400 million liters per year. The country
therefore needs to expand the current 167,300 sugarcane farms in the country
covering a total area of 344,700 hectares to meet the bioethanol demand.
Estimates show that to produce a
minimum of 120,000 liters of ethanol daily, a sugarcane plantation needs 7,000
to 8,000 hectares aside from the 10 to 20 hectares for each ethanol processing
plant. The Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA) already identified 237,748
hectares of new sugar fields, mostly in Mindanao, that can be tapped to produce
ethanol for fuel. These are found in Maguindanao (69,550 hectares), Agusan del
Norte and Agusan del Sur (45,000 hectares), Palawan (20,808 hectares),
Saranggani (19,700 hectares), Lanao del Norte (19,035 hectares), Cagayan (16,918
hectares), South Cotabato (15,000 hectares), Isabela (12,337 hectares), Masbate
(8,000 hectares), Bohol (6,400 hectares), and Kalinga (5,000 hectares).
Aside from developing sugarcane
production for ethanol, government has also announced its plan to launch massive
propagation and cultivation of jathropa seeds covering around two million
hectares of unproductive and idle public and private lands nationwide in order
to produce some 5.6 billion liters of biofuel in the next 10 to 12 years.
To implement the project,
government will provide lands to PhilForest Corp., corporate arm of the
Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), under a 25-year
stewardship program. Philforest has opened pilot plantations or nursery, in
partnership with the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR), in Carmen, North
Cotabato (5,000 hectares); Isabela, Cagayan (900 hectares); Pili, Camarines Sur
(20 hectares); Tigaon, Camarines Sur (20 hectares); and Davao City (50
hectares). It is also negotiating with the DENR for additional jathropa nursery
areas in Regions I (Ilocos), II (Cagayan Valley), V (Bicol), and XIII (Caraga)
covering 167,107 hectares of land.
More landlessness
According to the pro-biofuels lobby
group Philippine Fuel Ethanol Alliance, increased ethanol production in the
country would create additional 300,000 new jobs. But the biofuels program, in
the long run, threatens to aggravate joblessness in the countryside because the
imminent loss of the farmers' land is a real threat under the Biofuels Act.
An official of the Department of
Agriculture (DA) admitted that the conversion of sugar haciendas for ethanol
production will be a major consideration of the DAR in the exemption of lands
under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP). Because of rising oil
prices, ethanol production is now considered a strategic investment by the
National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) and the DAR must therefore
take into account the supposed "economic benefits" of ethanol business ventures
as against the actual physical distribution of lands to farmer-beneficiaries.
At present, 55,285 sugarcane farms
in the country covering 83,772 hectares are either tenanted, leased, or under
various forms of tenurial arrangement while 799,700 coconut farms with an area
of 1.02 million hectares are in the same situation. Overall, 3.42 million farms
covering 3.10 million hectares are either tenanted, leased, or under various
forms of tenurial arrangement. These figures do not fully reflect the extent of
non-ownership of agricultural lands in the country considering the flaws in the
reporting methodology of government and flawed definition of ownership under the
CARP.
Landlessness is bound to worsen as
landlords, including those who helped author the law, would surely apply for
land-use conversion, CARP exemption or use other schemes such as corporative
arrangements, contract growing, joint venture and lease arrangement under the
biofuels program. In a newspaper article, for instance, Task Force Mapalad
claimed that Rep. Iggy Arroyo (Kampi, 5th district of Negros Occidental) has
been conditioning the minds of farmers in the family-owned Hacienda Bacan in
Negros Occidental that the said landholding would be exempted from the CARP
under the biofuels law. Arroyo, one of the Biofuels Act's co-authors, reportedly
said that the 157-hectare hacienda would be converted for ethanol production and
thus exempted from CARP.
Furthermore, while the jathropa
program only targets "unproductive and idle" lands, there is no guarantee that
even lands covered by CARP, or even lands of CARP beneficiaries, would not be
included for jathropa production considering the promise of high returns from
such agribusiness venture.
PhilForest estimates that an
investor in a jathropa plantation could reap a 20 percent return on investment
on a petroleum price of only $46 per barrel and could further increase as global
oil prices go up. This was the case of the contract growing scheme of San Miguel
Corporation (SMC) in Isabela, northern Philippines which promised huge profits
and enticed not only the targeted holders of stewardship contracts but also the
Emancipation Patent (EP) and Certificate of Land Ownership Award (CLOA) holders.
Instead of profits, the farmers incurred huge debts that now threaten their
control and ownership because the contract stipulates that the cooperative
commissioned by SMC to supply its cassava needs can take over the land of
farmers who incur debts for two consecutive harvest seasons.
Genuine energy security
There is no doubt about the need to
explore, develop and use alternative sources of fuel if the country intends to
achieve energy security and independence, as well as long-term, sustainable
national economic development. But the Biofuels Act, conceived with the narrow
and self-serving interests of landlords and bourgeois-compradors, cannot address
the most urgent issues that threaten the country's energy security, namely
exorbitant and soaring oil prices and intense foreign monopoly control in the
upstream and downstream of the energy industry.
Energy independence can only be
achieved if energy resources are effectively controlled and managed by the
people through the state, and not by the landlords, bourgeois compradors, and
foreign corporations. A pro-people alternative fuels program should not allow
the wanton conversion agricultural lands for biofuels production and ensure that
genuine agrarian reform would not be compromised. It will also ensure
sustainability because potential crops that would be used as alternative fuels
would be truly developed, including protection from unnecessary competition
brought about by liberalization.
Finally, even a genuine alternative
fuels program would not bring immediate relief to the economy and people
battered by exorbitant oil prices and unabated oil price hikes. The most urgent
problem today as far as oil is concerned is prices and the only reform that can
bring instant and meaningful solution to this problem is to reverse the oil
deregulation policy and institute price control. Posted by Bulatlat © 2007 Bulatlat
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