The militant Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) and the RESIST, an alliance against big foreign agro-chemical corporations featured in a dialogue in Congress with some of our country’s legislators on what the representatives can do to alleviate the onslaught of foreign products and harmful chemicals in our nation. According to Danilo “Ka Daning” Ramos, secretary general of the group, “our entry to the WTO has really wrought havoc upon our agricultural sector, harmful pesticides that are banned in other countries are being used here because of the clout of companies like Monsanto, Syngenta and Novartis, with the consent of the government,

“This is further aggravated by the current fiscal crisis that we are now experiencing because we are the primary ones who are affected by the crisis, farm worker’s wages comes to only P136.87 a day and they are only seasonal workers, a glaring example is that of Hacienda Luisita farm workers who only get P9 a week,” said the peasant leader.

The KMP has also called on the government to allocate the Bayanihan Fund to farmers and workers to at least, for a time cushion the blow of the crisis on the basic masses.

As for her part, Natalie Culvinar, RESIST Convenor said “that for our country to survive this crisis concrete steps must be taken to insure our food security and food self-sufficiency but it should not be tied to foreign imports or products which are highly dependent on foreign agro-chemical inputs. With the use of hybrid rice, the yield may be good at first but eventually the land will be too acidic and it cannot be used for a long time,”

“It is like the Masagana 99 and Mais-sagana in the 1970’s during Marco’s time. The introduction of these high yielding varieties hybrid rice has also introduced high farming costs and has almost destroyed the land the farmers are tilling. Now we are challenging, our solons to heed our calls and to also initiate concrete measures to stop the further impoverishment of the peasant sector,” ended Culvinar. # # #
 

KMP - 9 September 2005