Candoni is a 4th-class municipality in southern Negros Occidental resting in the slopes of the Tablas Mountain range. It was called Tabla Valley Settlement in 1935, cultivated by settlers from Panay and Cebu and home of the Magahat-Bukidnon and Ata tribes. Residents knew Candoni for its fertile land and rich flora and fauna, which was their primary source of sustenance and livelihood for a long time.
But this is no longer the case when the International Solidarity Mission (ISM) delegates from the United States, Australia, Colombia and Manila arrived in Candoni on 12 October 2025. A bulldozed mountain, felled trees, muddy and polluted streams and rivers, remaining sugarcane fields, and sporadic subsistence crops were what greeted the delegates.
The uplands of Candoni are now being devastated by the Hacienda Asia Plantation, Inc. (HAPI), a palm oil company of the big conglomerate DM Consunji Inc. (DMCI), which has stakes in mining, energy, construction, and agribusiness.
Under an Integrated Forest Management Agreement (IFMA), the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) has granted to HAPI 6,652 hectares of what the DENR claims to be “idle” public lands. But the IFMA spans across Barangays Gatuslao, Agboy and Payawan, affecting forests as well as cultivated farmlands.
The IFMA paved the way for HAPI bulldozing over 4,000 hectares in a span of two years, from 2023 to June 2025. Although mounting community resistance prompted the DENR to issue a cease-and-desist order against HAPI for operating without an Environmental Compliance Certificate (ECC) from the DENR, HAPI has continued operations. The bulldozed area is already 60% of the targeted 6,652 hectares to be converted into a palm oil plantation, with imported seedlings from Costa Rica, Papua New Guinea, and Malaysia.
Violating farmers’ rights
Ate Ronalie, 34 years old, is among the 500 small farmer families who were displaced by HAPI and consequently lost their livelihood. She used to cultivate corn, banana, sugarcane, and other food crops for subsistence. Today, her six-hectare land is reduced to one hectare which she cannot even use anymore for cultivation.
Ate Ronalie recounts how HAPI’s private guards destroy the farmers’ crops, either by pulling these out or covering them with soil, to make the land appear unutilized. There are also several instances when soldiers would put up their barracks on the farmers’ lands, blocking the farmers from going back to their homes and farmlands.
The farmers would stay by their farmlands, sleepless and unable to rest or attend to anything else, afraid that if they left even for a short while, their land would be bulldozed and lost forever.
Many soldiers and private guards are stationed in the area, going house to house to persuade farmers to sell or give up their lands and instead work for HAPI. Those who have given up their lands are indeed now working for HAPI but as contractual workers earning less than the mandated minimum wage and without any other benefits.
Fighting on
DMCI has further plans. It targets to expand its palm oil plantation in Negros Occidental to 12,000 hectares within five years. Its aggressive expansion is apparently in response to the overzealous drive of the Marcos administration for “renewable energy”. Palm oil allegedly may be converted into fatty acids methyl ester and mixed with diesel, and is being falsely promoted as “clean fuel”.
President Marcos has opened the renewable energy sector to 100% foreign ownership, practically privatizing land and natural resources towards profiteering and plundering farmers’ resources. For instance, HAPI is the sister company of Asian Fuels Energy, 40% owned by the US company, New Asia Holdings Inc.
To offset criticisms, DMCI has announced its reforestation project in Negros Occidental. In partnership with Japanese corporation, Marubeni, DMCI aims to plant 1.5 million trees on 15,000 hectares, potentially expanding to 100,000 hectares. But even this performative environmental stewardship is with the intention of earning “carbon credits” for trading in the market-oriented climate mitigation strategy. Like the palm oil plantation, this reforestation project will entail massive land use conversion and land grabbing from farmers.
Renewable energy is supposed to be from natural resources that do not run out on a human timescale. But Candoni reveals the stark pseudo-ness of the Marcos administration’s renewable energy program—Candoni could be gone forever for the farmers while the promised energy benefits would remain questionable.
If there is anything that is genuinely renewable with Candoni and other places of destructive projects, it is the farmers’ strength and resolve to resist and struggle for justice, as renewed by the international solidarity with the ISM local and international delegates.
