Poor Farmers Struggle for Justice Against Enormous Odds

Fr. Shay

Preda
November 28, 2006

There are more hungry people in the world than even before, in fact an additional 25 million since 1996 according the to UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) . The total number of severely malnourished and near starving people is 850 million. The UN pledged to reduce by half the number of hungry people in the world by the year 2015 but the globalization of trade and climate change has created more poverty and hunger than ever before. In the Philippines surveys show that more people than ever go hungry and say they eat only one full meal a day. Hunger drives the poor to work harder and longer yet they earn less and less and pay more for food. Malnutrition especially among children leads to disease and without money for medicine they die quickly. Children as young as five are forced to work to avoid starvation.

According to Philippine government figures there were 880,000 child workers aged 5 - 14 years-old in the country last 2005 but officials? claim it has been reduced to 670,000 this 2006. Non-government charities, (there are about 600 of them helping child workers) put the figures much higher. According to Government sources and the International Labor Organization (ILO) the worst occupations where children are exploited are prostitution, mining and quarrying, domestic labor, making fireworks, farming and deep-sea fishing. Working children are deprived of schooling and a healthy and natural life.

There is more hunger too because corrupt government officials and political leaders make business deals with big agricultural corporations and give them the land and permits to farm with exclusive use of land and water resources depriving small and indigenous people of their rights. The vast pineapple and banana plantations of Dole and Del Monte in the Philippines and in United Fruit in Central and South America are examples of multinational corporations in cahoots with the local political and economic elites. These luxury crops deprive hundreds of thousands of small subsistence farmers from feeding themselves and their neighbors. Corporations want them to buy their processed food products not feed themselves. Maximizing Profit is their corporate goal and even in developed nations most industrialized food products are unhealthy. In the United States, the wealthiest nation on earth, 35 million go hungry and millions more poor suffer obesity- the result of unhealthy fat saturated junk food. Diabetes is the greatest killer.

Another cause of hunger is the oil and chemical corporations like Shell for example. They can make small farmers dependent on terminator seeds that are good for one crop only they don't reproduce themselves. The seeds are dependent on chemical based artificial fertilizers and pesticides made by the same corporation. The small farmers are trapped in debt and can't pay the ever increasing higher prices. The wealthy agri-business corporations soon move in and expand their plantations. . Most of this land is used for growing luxury crops for export. The poor can't afford the food they produce and sell.

Corrupt government officials cause hunger too. By citing the World Trade Organization (WTO) rules and being in cahoots with the foreign agri-corporations they lower the import duties on foreign crops and canned or processed food that undersell local produce of small farmers. The farmers are made bankrupt and many commit suicide. When the local food products are driven from the market place then the price of imported food increases. More hunger is the result. No matter what natural or man made disaster befalls the small scale tenant farmers the absentee landowners still demand their share of the crop which can be as much as 40%. If they can't pay they can lose their land rights.

The corporations pay incentives to local government and agricultural officials to promote their products including genetically modified (GM) seed and crops. These artificial foods create further dependence and threaten native strains of crops by cross pollination. This is a gigantic threat to the organic farming movement that is making a healthy comeback. Most small holder farmers want to own their land, to be paid fair trade prices and end to price fixing cartels.

It's not all helpless gloom and doom, there are hundreds of thousands of small farmers and non-government development agencies organizing resistance to the march of the corporate monsters and pursuing organic and small scale farming. The growth of Fair Trade and a public demand for government supported Trade Justice is the hope for the small farmers and the 850 million, most of them children, who go to bed every night crying for the want of a decent meal.

End.

(Fr. Shay's columns are published in The Universe, The Voice,
Local News and other magazines in the UK & Ireland,
Sunday Examiner in HK, The Manila Times, Philnews USA
and Worldwide on Internet and Web sites,
Archives: www.preda.org - Copy free with permission)

PREDA Information Office
PREDA Foundation, Inc.
www.preda.org