JOB VACANCY

MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS AND OUTREACH ASSOCIATE

Focus on the Global South Philippines Programme is in need of a MEDIA       
COMMUNICATIONS AND OUTREACH ASSOCIATE to join a team working
on various thematic programmes – deglobalization and trade, the commons, alter-
natives, peace and security and climate justice.

For more information click here .

Subscribe to FOP E-Newsletter






Focus Job Openings

Focus on the Global South - Internship Programme
righttoknow
Focus on the Global South-Philippines joins the Right to Know. Right Now! Campaign for the immediate passage of the Freedom of Information Act!
To download FOI Highlights click here
To downloal FOI Bicameral Bill click here
blackribbon
Focus condemns the impunity of the Ampatuan Massacre, and joins the nation's call for justice.

Links

IMG_7477
Home arrow Newsletter arrow Focus on the Philippines Number 43
Focus on the Philippines Number 43 PDF Print E-mail
FOP 43 : Hunger and Poverty in Mindanao: Two Perspectives (Part 2)


[1] CORPORATE FARMING WON’T EASE HUNGER IN MINDANAO
by Billy de la Rosa

[2] BREAKING MINDANAO’S GRIDLOCK IN AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT
by Ibarra Malonzo

In this Issue

We feature part 2 of the debate on agricultural development and anti-poverty policies in Mindanao. Billy dela Rosa of AFRIM asserts that corporate farming in Mindanao, particularly the one he describes as (being) “spearheaded by government and the landlord–transnational combine in Mindanao,” has not eradicated poverty and hunger in Mindanao. Ibarra Malonzo of KFI counters that it is a lack of investments in agriculture in Mindanao, has resulted in what he calls a “rural development gridlock”. He asserts that “agrarian reform has made difficult, if not impossible, access to large tracts of land in Mindanao for oil palm development by agribusiness corporations.” He argues that “no agribusiness investors in their right mind will invest hundreds of millions of pesos for plantation development without a secure and valid land tenure instrument.” Malonzo proposes a “way out of the gridlock by drawing the different stakeholders – the landowners of eight million hectares of Mindanao’s land and the agribusiness investors with capital and knowledge-- into a convergence strategy.”

The Dela Rosa-Malonzo debate reflects the sort of tensions and issues that complicate the question of agriculture, food and even trade policies in the Philippines particularly in the resource-rich but conflict laden region like Mindanao.

Billy dela Rosa’s article came out in the Philippine Daily Inquirer on 17 October 2004. Ibarra Malonzo’s piece is a rejoinder that has been submitted to PDI for publication. CORPORATE FARMING WON’T EASE HUNGER IN MINDANAO
by Billy de la Rosa

There are agribusiness strategies and agribusiness strategies. Certainly, the one spearheaded by government and the landlord–transnational combine in Mindanao hasn’t eradicated poverty and hunger in Mindanao. One hopes that this is not the one being defended by Ibarra Malonzo. I hope I’m right to think that he is not saying that poverty and hunger in Mindanao are due to the fact that there is not enough of the kind of agribusiness that is not being that is now being promoted in the country’s food basket.

If one goes by the numbers that he presents, agribusiness is indeed the way to go. But what he fails to mention is that transnationals and Filipino agribusiness capitalists are the ones who appropriate the profits. Policy makers and government regulators have done little to protect the rights of the small farmers in agribusiness contracts. This was what I was referring to when I said that the promised prosperity in agribusiness had not been realized for may Mindanaoans despite the untold wealth that was created by agribusiness.

The same export numbers have been cited by agribusiness companies to justify their anti-agrarian reform position. They say that agrarian reform will destroy the economies of scale of plantations. To circumvent the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP), companies like Dole and Del Monte invented the leaseback scheme in which plantations covered by CARP were immediately leased back to the company for extended periods – some up to 60 years – at amounts that would make the word pittance spell generous.

Malonzo mentions the oil palm plantation in Agusan as guilty of this and goes on to admit that plantation companies operating in Mindanao are among the worst violators of workers’ rights. He was quick, however, to say that these practices do not negate the value of the corporations’ contribution to productivity and incomes.

But these practices are precisely what keep Mindanao and its people poor. And this is precisely the brand of agribusiness being promoted by the current administration in the name of promoting the food basket policy. I hope that by challenging President Macapagal-Arroyo to back up her words with deeds, Malonzo does not want her to do a Marcos by declaring huge areas of land under government ownership and leasing these to agribusiness – Filipino or foreign – just what he did for oil palm in Agusan and bananas in Davao del Norte.

I agree with Malonzo that there is an urgent need to re-examine agricultural policy for Mindanao. There is nothing wrong with vertical integration and value addition as he defines it in the article. The question is, who controls and who benefits from agribusiness? What is terribly wrong with the agribusiness strategy as it is currently implemented is that everything is placed at the control of the companies – the same ones that had been notorious for their anti-people practices, which Malonzo fought against in his days in the labor movement.

The Philippines should develop an agro-industrial policy that answers its own needs and not one that follows (gaya gaya) what companies from other countries want us to do.

Take the case of the administration’s oil palm plantation promotion program. Palm oil started as a low quality vegetable oil, which was described by some industry experts as similar to automatic transmission fluid of automobiles in color and smell. But, because of the effort and resources which Malaysia put in research and development, it is now the world’s premier traded oil.

Within a few short decades, it has overtaken by leaps and bounds the Philippines’ coconut oil in importance in the global markets of vegetable oils. Because it pioneered in palm oil research and development, Malaysia now stands as the world’s palm oil king, controlling its technology and markets. Now, its companies are promoting the development of oil palm plantations in countries with similar climate as a strategy to make it the dominant oil worldwide, overtaking soya oil. Malaysian companies are looking for partners to provide land for oil palm plantations in Mindanao.

The lessons of palm oil’s success seem to be lost on the country’s policy makers. Coconut has declined in the world because, unlike Malaysia, the Philippines did not invest in research and development. Today, we would rather ride on Malaysia’s success than pioneer in coconut research and development.

The Philippine Coconut Authority (PCA) is being mobilized to promote oil palm expansion rather than its original mandate to promote the coconut industry. This is tantamount to throwing away the country’s leadership in the world’s coconut industry.

What Mindanao needs is an agricultural policy that begins and ends with people.

Not too long ago, Marcos took 8,000 hectares of land from settlers and lumads in Agusan del Sur and gave it to a Malaysian company to develop an oil palm plantation.

Driven out of their land, the people went straight into the waiting arms of the communist rebels. To defend the plantation, the company hired the services of the notorious Lost Command. Thus started the spiral of violence in Agusan del Sur.

Today, calling oil palm the “tree of peace”, government is promoting oil palm plantation expansion in all parts of Mindanao. Indigenous communities have started to complain about violation of their rights in the course of plantation expansion in their ancestral domain.

Is this the type of agribusiness that will bring prosperity to the people of Mindanao?


BREAKING MINDANAO’S GRIDLOCK IN AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT
by Ibarra Malonzo


Billy de la Rosa’s rejoinder to my article in “Talk of the Town” (PDI October 17, 2004) expresses great misgivings about government’s call for oil palm development in Mindanao. He fears a repeat of the late 1970s when then President Marcos ordered the National Development Corporation to acquire title over 8,000 hectares of land from settlers and lumad in Agusan del Sur and turned the land over to the Malaysian company Guthrie for oil palm plantation development. This triggered the insurgency in that area that has not abated to this day.

This article seeks to show how agrarian reform has made difficult, if not impossible, access to large tracts of land in Mindanao for oil palm development by agribusiness corporations, illustrated by the sad experience of Malaysian investor Tabung Haji in Lanao del Sur from 1996-2000. Finally, this article proposes a way out of the gridlock by drawing the different stakeholders into a convergence strategy to formulate a 200,000-hectare oil palm development program covering Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) lands in Mindanao led by the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR).

I.

The impression de la Rosa makes is that big agribusiness corporations are on a rampage all over Mindanao, planting oil palm and trampling on the rights of lumad and settlers. This assertion is far from reality.

The problem is that oil palm development in the country is moving very slowly. Only 6,000 hectares of new oil palm plantations have been developed since 1986, to add to the 14,000 hectares previously planted since 1960. In contrast, Malaysia and Indonesia have planted 3.5 million and 2.3 million hectares, respectively, over the past thirty-five years. Our production of 45,000 tons of crude palm oil (CPO) and palm kernel oil (PKO) from the measly 20,000 hectares of oil palm plantations is just a drop in the bucket compared to the world’s palm oil production of 23 million tons from eight million hectares of oil palm plantations as of 2002.

In truth, big agribusiness corporations are scared of investing in Mindanao for two reasons. First is the real danger to life and property of big agribusiness corporations posed by the New People’s Army, Muslim rebels and bandits roaming the hinterlands. Second is that accessing large tracts of lands for oil palm development is next to impossible. The Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law (CARL) of 1998 has brought about a sea change in the ownership of agricultural lands in the country. Only small farmers can own agricultural lands or acquire stewardship of forestlands.

Leasing lands from small landholders is costly and tedious. But leasing lands from ancestral domains or entering into joint ventures for oil palm development is much more difficult. The Indigenous People’s Rights Act (IPRA), the law governing ancestral domains, requires the free and prior informed consent (FPIC) of the tribal people, approval by the National Commission for Indigenous People (NCIP) and the good graces of hawk-eyed environmental and pro-tribal people NGOs and Catholic bishops.

But even if a deal goes through this formidable gauntlet, any group of tribal people can turn around and say it did not grant FPIC to the lease or joint venture agreement over the ancestral domain and the whole deal can fall apart.

IPRA recognizes ancestral domains as private land titles. But the law is still very vague. It will need a lot of implementing rules and regulations and jurisprudence before big corporations will dare invest good money in palm oil development lands.

I know of a lawyer who has spent 15 years trying to work out a lease or joint venture arrangement for oil palm development in an ancestral domain. To this day no investor has come in.

II.


The case of the Malaysian company Tabung Haji will illustrate the folly of a foreign investor wishing to do good by investing in oil palm development in Mindanao. Tabung Haji manages the Haj Fund of Muslims collected by the Malaysian government to finance their obligatory pilgrimage to Mecca. It has gone into big oil palm development projects in many countries.

In 1996, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir directed Tabung Haji to undertake a 30,000-hectare oil palm development project in Lanao del Sur with corresponding crude palm oil mills and refinery to hasten the pace of peace and development efforts in the wake of the breakthrough peace agreement between the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) and the Philippine government. Tabung Haji would finance the entire project.

As an initial project, Tabung Haji entered into a joint venture agreement with Janoub Philippines, Inc., a company owned by former Ambassador Abdul Khayr Alonto. Janoub undertook to acquire title over 5,500 hectares of land situated in the municipality of Tagoloan II, Lanao del Sur and to acquire usufruct for and in behalf of the joint venture company, Tabung Haji Janoub Philippines, Inc. (THJP). For this contribution to the joint venture, Janoub was given 40% of the shares of stocks of THJP, while Tabung Haji owned 60% of said shares. In addition, THJP paid a substantial amount of money to Janoub to cover expenses incurred for securing title and usufruct over the 5,500 hectares of land.

This land was an agrarian reform settlement known as the Kapai settlement awarded by then President Marcos in 1978 to Mr. Alonto and a group of MNLF followers as part of a peace process following the peace pact brokered by Libyan President Khadaffy in 1974. No less than President Ramos committed national government resources to facilitate titling of the Kapai settlement by the DAR.


Without waiting for the issuance of the Certificate of Land Ownership Award (CLOA) by the Department of Agrarian Reform-Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (DAR-ARMM) and the registration of the CLOA with the Land Registration Authority (without which there is no valid title), THJP proceeded to clear the land and plant oil palm starting in 1997. But soon, opposition to the project arose from Muslim and lumad occupants of settlement lands led by municipal mayors of Tagoloan and Talakag, the latter located in Bukidnon province. Both mayors claimed that their constituents owned the settlement lands. The beneficiaries previously identified by DAR-ARMM were all followers and relatives of Mr. Alonto who were not residents of the Kapai settlement.

Moreover, it turned out that 2,200 hectares of the Kapai settlement fell within the boundary of the municipality of Talakag occupied by the members of the Higaonon tribe. Neither the Higaonon nor the Muslim natives of Tagoloan were identified as beneficiaries by DAR-ARMM nor were they even consulted by Janoub on the project.

For three years, the joint venture company persevered in clearing and planting 1,000 hectares of oil palm despite growing opposition. In the absence of a clear title, agencies of the ARMM government issued certifications that the CLOA was forthcoming.

Faced with insurmountable opposition and holding no registered title to the Kapai settlement, Tabung Haji decided in January 2000 to pull out of the project but only after having invested a total of P200 million. Today, the 3-4 year old oil palm trees, chosen from the best hybrid seedlings of Malaysian nurseries, are already fruiting. But no one is harvesting because the ownership of land and plantation remains unsettled. Meanwhile, the oil palm trees are being choked to death by shrub, vine and returning forest.

Two years ago, President Arroyo visited the Tabung Haji plantation after Prime Minister Mahatir called her attention to the failed project during an earlier state visit to Malaysia with a begging bowl in hand for oil palm development assistance. A witness I interviewed reported that President Arroyo, employing her trademark taray, chided Mr. Alonto for claiming ownership to the 5,500 hectares of land, saying, “How can you own these lands? These are CARP lands. A beneficiary can only own a maximum of three hectares.”


Three months ago, I talked to the barangay chair of the area covered by the 1,000-hectare oil palm plantation. Interestingly, he identified himself as a Muslim lumad. He claimed that the Muslim lumad of Tagoloan and the Higaonon of Talakag are the rightful owners of the land covered by the Kapai settlement. They favor the oil palm project on condition they are listed in the CLOA and get a fair share of the harvest. Butif the problem of the CLOA is not settled soon, they will cut down the oil palm plantation and plant rice and corn for a living.

As a result of the Tabung Haji investment debacle, the Philippines has become a laughing stock in Malaysia. If three presidents could not fix a simple land title for 5,500 hectares as local equity, why take seriously President GMA’s ambitious goal to develop 2-3 million hectares for agribusiness?


III.

Billy de la Rosa’s fear of large-scale land grabbing of Mindanao’s ancestral lands is groundless. Eight million out of Mindanao’s ten million hectares are now covered with various land tenure instruments (CARP CLOAs, free patents, homesteads, Community Based Forest Management Agreements and Certificate of Ancestral Domain Titles) issued to small farmers and include the so-called imperfect titles. These instruments provide some measure of security against large-scale land grabbing. No agribusiness investors in their right mind will invest hundreds of millions of pesos for plantation development without a secure and valid land tenure instrument.

Agribusiness corporations find it hard to gain access to agricultural land and forestlands for tree crops which require large scale and long tenure (25 years plus 25 years’ lease or joint venture arrangements). Therefore, investments in plantation development have ground to a standstill over the last 18 years.

The only substantial agribusiness investment in land development has been in export bananas and pineapples, both crops requiring relatively small hectarage (being of high value and grossing P200,000.00 to P450,000.00 per hectare per year) and a crop period of 12-18 months from planting to harvest.

All these facts and statistics lead us to the heart of the matter: rural development gridlock in Mindanao.

In the past 16 years, there has been a virtual deadlock between the two key players engaged in agriculture in Mindanao that accounts for a stagnating countryside and farmers mired in poverty. On the one hand are the landowners of eight million hectares of Mindanao’s land with eight million warm bodies. But both land and labor are unemployed or underemployed because they have no capital or know-how to farm their lands productively. On the other hand are the agribusiness investors with capital and knowledge but without land or labor to put their money and know-how to work.

Common sense dictates that this deadlock in Mindanao’s agriculture must be broken if the now nearly-empty bread basket is to be filled to overflowing and feed the hungry and rural poor of Mindanao, the cities, and with enough left over to export to the world from whence we buy fuel oil, machineries, computers and medicines which we do not produce.

Kasanyangan Mindanao Foundation, Inc. (KFI) seeks to break this deadlock through a local convergence development strategy that draws various stakeholders together to develop an agricultural enterprise. Thus, farmers provide land and labor, local government units farm roads and technical assistance, Land Bank of the Philippines and Quedancor agricultural loans, DAR, Department of Agriculture (DA) and Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) facilitate access to land and business arrangements, agribusiness corporations provide good seeds and breeds, know-how and capital, and NGOs, with their commitment to the poor and their large hearts, facilitate the convergence process among various stakeholders around specific projects.

Finally, I wish that President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo will find time to read and ponder this article as she seeks to make a reality of her promise to develop 2-3 million hectares of land for agribusiness development during her term.

To break the gridlock of the old landlord-type agribusiness strategy, a new, more equitable, participatory and sustainable agribusiness strategy is needed, cognizant of the sea change in land tenure effected by CARL. Local Convergence Initiatives (LCI) for agricultural enterprises is such a strategy.

---------------------------------
Focus on the Philippines (FOP) is an electronic newsletter on Philippine news and issues put out by Focus on the Global South-Philippine Programme. FOP has currently over 600 subscribers. The newsletter tackles broad development issues like trade and finance, militarization, environment, global governance, multilateral institutions, and US hegemony among others. FOP is a venue for sharing perspectives and commentaries on the issues that shape our country and inform our respective advocacy work.

We welcome articles, policy papers, commentaries on Philippine development issues. We also welcome new subscribers!. Please send contributions (in word format) and request for subscription to

Focus on the Global South- Philippine Programme Suite 209 Burgundy Place, 174 Katipunan Avenue Loyola Heights, Quezon City 1108 Philippines
Telefax: (632)4330899
 
< Prev   Next >
[ Back ]