The militant Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) is now calling for an increase in the farm gate price of palay (unmilled rice) from P7-P9 to P10.50 or the NFA price-P15. According to Danilo “Ka Daning’ Ramos, secretary general of KMP, “this is our call in response to the worsening situation of our economy. We as the primary producers of our country’s food also have the right to live decently, just as our brother workers have the right to have their salaries raised,”

“It is a sad fact to note that though we are the food producers, we are also mainly the ones suffering from hunger and poverty. Unlike Luisito Lorenzo who has the gall to spend hard-earned money of taxpayers on unaccounted activities, we farmers cannot even afford to have three square meals a day,” added the peasant leader.

As for his part Ka Joseph Canlas, chairperson of AMGL, laments that though now is the start of the harvest season we farmers have little to be happy about. “The price of Urea, a fertilizer, has doubled from last years P420 a sack it now costs P850. Another fertilizer 141414 that formerly costs P375 a sack is now P675. What else would be left of our harvest? It will all go payments of farm inputs,”

“While the government has a P1.9 billion fund for hybrid rice, it does not have a fund or if it has it is negligible for farm inputs. It is ironic that the United Nations-Food and Agriculture Organization as well as the International Rice Research Institute declared this year as the International Year of the Rice, they are destroying our native rice varieties and peddling the lie that hybrid varieties can solve our problems. In reality it only makes them worse,” added Canlas.

“Thousands of our countrymen are going hungry, like our farm workers in Hacienda Luisita who subsist on a 1-2 man days work week at P9 a day, while families like the Cojuangcos try to trample them still by evicting them from the land that they and their forefathers tilled,” lamented Canlas.

Meanwhile Anacleto Mercado, secretary general of LUMABAN-TKsaid that they have had enough. “Starting October 18 we will launch our farm strikes in major provinces of our region to demand the increase in the price of palay to alleviate our desperate condition. It is only through this that attention would be given to the biggest tragedy in our country, a food producer who has nothing to eat. We all have a right to a decent living and we are willing to die to fight for it,” ended Mercado. # # #
 

KMP - 14 October 2004