Contrary to What Cojuangco-Aquinos Say, Farming Improved Lives of Many Luisita Folk Published on August 14, 2010

Contrary to What Cojuangco-Aquinos Say, Farming Improved Lives of Many Luisita Folk

Published on August 14, 2010

MANILA — One of the arguments put forth by Hacienda Luisita management in pushing for the stock distribution option (SDO) and the recent compromise agreement is that the farmer beneficiaries could not possibly survive on less than an hectare each of land. This argument, however, had been demolished by a NEDA study that said a family in Luisita can earn more from 0.78 hectares of land than from stocks — a study that was conveniently ignored by the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council under then President Corazon Aquino when it allowed the implementation of the SDO.

After the strike and massacre and after the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council ordered the revocation of the SDO in 2005, the farmer beneficiaries launched what they call a “bungkalan” or the cultivation of idle Luisita land. It was both a political statement and a matter of survival for the beneficiaries who were, and still are, facing extreme poverty in the hacienda owned by President Benigno S. Aquino III and his family. Farmers who participated swear that their lives improved after the “bungkalan.”.... MORE

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URL: http://www.bulatlat.com/main/2010/08/14/contrary-to-what-cojuangco-aquinos-say-farming-improved-lives-of-many-luisita-folk/