Will amid woes: Dismantling large landholdings, staving off hunger

November 16, 2017

Despite decades of land reform programs, millions of peasants remain landless. Land monopoly persists and continues to expand under various agribusiness venture agreements (AVAs) and other market-oriented land reform schemes such as the stock distribution option (SDO). Farmers and farmworkers who stand their ground demanding land distribution are meanwhile met with violence or intimidation by […]

Large landholdings amid peasant landlessness

November 15, 2017

After a series of failed land reform programs, the large landholdings of the country’s big family names remain. These include plantations of coconut, sugar, banana, pineapple, palm oil, and mango orchards. Their monopoly control extends over the country’s natural resources through mining tenements, forest leases and management agreements, foreshore leases, special economic zones, and tourism […]

IBON AVP: Haciendas Remain

July 30, 2017

Rejecting US ‘aid’ even better–IBON

May 18, 2017

Research group IBON said that the spirit of the Duterte administration’s rejection of official development aid (ODA) from the European Union (EU) for being used to intervene in the Philippines’ internal affairs is welcome. There is however a much clearer and stronger basis to reject ‘aid’ from the United States (US), which has used its […]

Four reasons why RCEP will be detrimental to Filipino farmers

May 16, 2017

​​The fight of Filipino peasants such as the farmworkers of Hacienda Luisita and Lapanday Foods Corporation for land, food, and justice, stands to be further undermined once the Philippine government fully accedes to the China-backed mega Free Trade Agreement (FTA) Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).   While the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) was seemingly put […]

Addressing the rampage of land use conversion

April 27, 2017

The land-to-the-tiller clamour mounts. This, amid the recent spate of farmers’ killings and other forms of military attacks against peasant communities nationwide. These human rights violations have escalated even after both panels of the government and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) have acknowledged in the on-going peace talks the country’s agrarian problem […]