{"id":8510,"date":"2019-08-21T18:17:47","date_gmt":"2019-08-21T10:17:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/?p=8510"},"modified":"2020-03-25T10:55:18","modified_gmt":"2020-03-25T02:55:18","slug":"why-negros","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/why-negros\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Negros?"},"content":{"rendered":"

(This article was originally published in the January-March 2019 issue of the Karapatan Monitor at the heels of a spate of killings of farmers and rights defenders<\/em> in Negros<\/em>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All over the\nPhilippines, 207 peasants have already been killed as of March 31\nsince the start of the Duterte administration \u2013 50 of the killings\noccurred in Negros. Three of the 15 peasant massacres nationwide\nhappened in the island, claiming 29 out of 31 precious farmers\u2019\nlives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

People have come to\nask, why kill the hands that feed the nation? But another resounding\nquestion is why Negros?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In May 2015, the\nAquino administration declared the entire island to be governed as\none administrative region, called Negros Island Region (NIR). But\nPresident Duterte issued an executive order dissolving the NIR in\nAugust 2017. The new dispensation does not have the budget for a\ncombined region, Duterte reasoned. What it does have apparently are\nthe resources for increased military deployment in the island which\nDuterte ordered through Memorandum Order (MO) 32 issued on November\n23, 2018. Since then, a total of 220 additional troops of the\nPhilippine Army from Panay island have been dispersed to several\nbattalions in Negros island.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Negros is the country\u2019s sugar bowl. In 2017, the island accounted for 59% of the country\u2019s total sugarcane production and 48% of the total area harvested. Of the 27 operational mills in the country, 12 are in Negros, which produced 63% of the country\u2019s total raw sugar in 2018. But life in the island is bitter \u2013 poverty incidence is consistently higher than the national figure. In 2015, national poverty incidence was 16.5% of families, while it was 38.7% in Negros Oriental and 21.9% in Negros Occidental. Negros Oriental had the second highest hunger incidence of 19.5% of families, next to Northern Samar, and is consistently among the eight poorest provinces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Duterte\ngovernment has recently come up with the latest 2018 first semester\npoverty statistics using ridiculously low poverty lines, but it has\nfailed just the same to sugar-coat the acute poverty situation of\nNegros.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The dimension of\nNegros\u2019 poverty is classic \u2013 a colonial legacy of relegating a\nresource-rich island to produce a single crop for export. This has\nentrenched what may be considered as the most obstinate landlordism\nin the country as well as the longest running mono cropping \u2013 both\nhave caused chronic economic, ecological, and social hardship for the\nNegrenses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Almost half (42%) of the island\u2019s total agricultural land is planted to sugarcane. Negros Occidental alone has 62% of its agricultural area devoted solely to sugarcane. Mono cropping is the worst farming system \u2013 where only one crop is grown in a tiempo <\/em>(season) in a large parcel of land. It requires the loss of natural habitats and intensive use of large amounts of water and agro-chemicals, posing severe loss of soil nutrients and other environmental pollution, and in the case of sugarcane, only to cater to the global market. This is why there are tiempos muertos <\/em>(dead season) when the harvested land, parched and idle, awaits the next export orders, the next cropping season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Majority,\nor 85% of the sugar farmers are small farmers cultivating five\nhectares or less, which comprise three fourths of the farms in the\nisland. But in terms of area, 64% is covered by farms of sizes 10% to\nabove 50 hectares. In terms of ownership, only 14% of landowners own\n61% of the sugarlands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The island accounts for 21% of the land acquisition and distribution (LAD) balance of 602,306 hectares under the three-decades-old Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP). Negros has the second lowest distribution accomplishment rate in the country, next only to the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Department\nof Agrarian Reform (DAR) land inventory shows that certificate of\nland ownership awards (CLOAs) both for individual and collective\nagrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBs) cover 59% of the island\u2019s\nagricultural land. It doesn\u2019t indicate, however, whether the ARBs\nhave indeed been installed. A Negros Occidental provincial government\nsurvey showed in 2008 that 41% of the ARBs were no longer in\npossession of their land, a figure that jumped to 70% by 2013.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\nis clear is that the government has introduced various schemes \u2013\ncorporative, contract growing,\nleaseback arrangements, stock distribution option (SDO), and block\nfarming \u2013 to consolidate the farms to 30-50 hectares and maintain\nthe \u2018economy of scale\u2019 for sugarcane production. These schemes\nhave effectively re-concentrated the land to the landlords and\ndispossessed farmers not only of the resource but also of the\ndecision on what to produce. Eleven of the 13 SDOs are in Negros. As\nof 2018, 21 of the 26 accredited block farms are in Negros.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sugar\nfarmers and farm workers including mill workers are among the poorest\nsections of the Philippine peasantry. Aside from having been\ndispossessed of land, they receive the lowest wage rates and no\nbenefits while doing back-breaking and hazardous work. Their agrarian\nstruggles are intense, especially in the backdrop of massive\nlandlessness and tiempos muertos, which have culminated in direct\nactions of land occupation and cultivation for their very survival –\ncalled bungkalan <\/em>by\nthe organized peasantry. Negros farmers have waged the most number of\nbungkalan in the country. And for the government, the land-owning\nelite, sugar barons, and the military \u2013 bungkalan and the Negros\nfarmers\u2019 struggles are the source of conflict that need to be\ndecimated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BY ROSARIO GUZMAN<\/p>\n

All over the Philippines, 207 peasants have already been killed as of March 31 since the start of the Duterte administration \u2013 50 of the killings occurred in Negros. Three of the 15 peasant massacres nationwide happened in the island, claiming 29 out of 31 precious farmers\u2019 lives.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":8513,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"single-nosidebarbanner.php","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_expiration-date-status":"saved","_expiration-date":0,"_expiration-date-type":"","_expiration-date-categories":[],"_expiration-date-options":[]},"categories":[2048,3],"tags":[373,347,372,2062,116,2047,2064],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8510"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8510"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8510\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9279,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8510\/revisions\/9279"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}