“These land lease schemes have turned farmers into mere low
wage-earning agricultural workers instead of being empowered
owner-cultivators.” – Randall Echanis, Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas
By
RONALYN V. OLEA
Bulatlat.com
MANILA – While President Benigno S. Aquino III is ecstatic about the
planned $15-million dollar investment in processing coco water by U.S.
companies, farmers feel otherwise.
Aquino, upon his arrival Sept. 23 from a working visit to the US,
said two companies – Pepsi Co. and Vita Coco.– have expressed interest
in investing in the country’s coconut industry. Aquino said Vita Coco
officials told him that they intend to invest $15 million in the next
four years.
Aquino said the coconut industry must meet the international demand
for coco water (popularly known as buko juice in the Philippines), an
alternative to commercial energy drinks.
The Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) feared that the 3.3
million hectares of coconut lands would be controlled by US
agro-corporations.
“We fear that Aquino’s pasalubong would replicate the experience of
farmers in Mindanao where US-based agro-corporations like Del Monte and
Dole now enjoy lifetime control over tens of thousands of hectares of
lands,” Randall Echanis, KMP deputy secretary general, said, referring
to the country’s 50-year leaseback agreement with the US corporations
that is renewable for another 25 years.
Echanis called on Aquino “to divulge the terms” of the investments
fearing that this could lead to “one-sided and onerous land lease deals”
between the US and the Philippines.
“These land lease schemes have turned farmers into mere low
wage-earning agricultural workers instead of being empowered
owner-cultivators,” Echanis said adding that the schemes “undermined the
rights of farmers over their lands.”
There are 3.4 million farmer-families dependent on the country’s 3.37
million hectares of land devoted to coconut or 26 percent of the
country’s total agricultural lands.
In Quezon province alone, 204,000 coconut farmer-families are
dependent on 388,664 hectares of coco lands, according to a study by the
Katipunan ng mga Samahang Magbubukid sa Timog Katagalugan (Kasama-TK).
“The sellout of lands to foreign investors that Aquino cannot do in
his family’s Hacienda Luisita due to the controversial agrarian dispute
and farmworkers’ resistance, he is now doing in the country’s vast
coconut lands,” Echanis said.
Coco levy
Echanis also said if the Aquino administration is really sincere in
developing the coconut industry, it should “immediately return to small
coconut farmers the more than P150 billion coconut levy funds trapped in
his uncle Eduardo “Danding” Cojuangco’s San Miguel Corporation.”
“The $15 million investment from the US is no match to the P150
billion ($3.488 billion) coco levy funds and the billions of pesos of
agricultural funds being plundered by corrupt officials. The immediate
return of the coco levy funds to genuine small coconut farmers is still
among the solutions for the development of the coconut industry and not
through onerous and one-sided investments,” Echanis said.....
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Source: Bulatlat.com
URL:
http://bulatlat.com/main/2011/09/29/farmers-fear-aquino-selling-out-to-foreign-firms/