Philippine agrarian change and rural society: dislocation, distribution, and pulitika

Abstract

The paper focuses on the realm of the peasantry to investigate rural folks’ contemporary livelihood. The research questions are: What are the patterns of mobility, especially among the younger generation of peasants? To what extent has contemporary Philippine agrarian transformation brought benefits or threats to the peasants? On the one hand, there are multi-sited agrarian relations in terms of the (younger) peasantry’s mobility that complicates scholars’ understanding of agrarian society. On the other hand, there are mixed results of threats and opportunities in agrarian change. The paper concludes that there is the persistence of poverty entanglement as the result of marginalization of market access to the shifting interest of the food industry, the subsequent unfamiliarity of (new) market mechanisms, and the unchanging political feature (the pulitika) in rural society. Simultaneously, there is the new opportunity in food source under the rubric of an evolving patron–client. Even though the ethnographic method does not provide generalizable patterns of social behaviors and actions, it provides rich insights into people’s views and actions of the location they reside through detailed observations and interviews.

Keywords:

• Agrarian change
• dislocation
• distribution
• pulitika
• rural folks

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank two anonymous reviewers for their helpful insights and comments, but any error or shortcoming is the author’s own. He would like to thank Roy Mendoza, former Director of the Ateneo Center for Asian Studies (ACAS), and Wataru Kusaka of the Graduate School of International Development (GSID), Nagoya University, who accommodate me in their institutes, which made possible the writing of the paper. An earlier version of the article was presented at a public seminar entitled “The Politics of Agrarian Transformation in the Philippines: Rural poor responses on agrarian (un)change”, December 4, 2015, at GSID Building, Nagoya University.

Notes

1. See Marc Edelman, 2013. “What is a peasant? What are peasantries? A briefing paper on the issues of definition for a discussion on the definition”. Paper prepared for the first session of the Intergovernmental Working Group on a United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas. Geneva, 15–19 July for a comprehensive review of the terminology.

2. The name of places (province, city, and barangay sitio), individuals, and government units are pseudonyms

3. Eduardo ClimacoTadem, Asian Center, University of the Philippines, interview by the author, 3 August 2015, Asian Center, UP Diliman.

4. More specifically, after the signing of its first Structural Adjustment Loans (SALSs) from the World Bank (in September 1980). For more details of the study, see Saturnino M. Borras Jr. 2008. Competing Views and Strategies on Agrarian Reform: Volume I: International Perspective. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press: 108–131.

5. Comprehensive Land Used Plan and Tax Mapping (CLUP), 2004, Nataas City.

6. Ibid, page 2–3.

7. Philippine Statistic Authority. Retrieved 8 December 2016. http://psa.gov.ph/content/population-region-iv-calabarzon-based-2015-census-population

8. Barangay Integrated Development Plan (BIDP) Camalig 2004: 3 and City Agricultural Technologist. Even though the years and numbers vary, judging from the trend of population changes, it suffices to make the conclusion that the number of farmers is decreasing in the barangay.

9. Ibid, BIDP Camalig: 3.

10. There are at the same time diverse responses of the peasantry which are shaped by conditions such as colonial experiences, ecological conditions (Hayami 2001), demographic–political–economic change (Cramb et al. 2009), and varied processes of Green Revolution (Hayami and Kikuchi 2000). Such local processes are responses to globalization that indeed shaped the agrarian structures in the neoliberal era. (Hart, Turton, and White 1989).

11. Benigno F. Perido, Performance of Agricultural: Calabarzon. In 4th CALABARZON Research and Statistics Forum Cavite State University, Indang, Cavite
20 October 2016, pages 31 and 32. Retrieved 12 January 2018.

http://calabarzon.neda.gov.ph/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/04-Performance-in-Agriculture-PSA.pdf.

12. Philippine Statistics Authority, Swine Industry Performance Report, May 2016, page ii. Retrieved 12 January 2018.

https://psa.gov.ph/sites/default/files/SWINE%20Industry%20Performance%20Report%20-%20Jan%20-%20Dec%202015%20F_0_0.pdf

13. Kuya Alberto, various interviews by author, 18 April, 12 October, 9, 11, and 14 November 2005, 2009–2015, Barangay Camalig, Nataas City.

14. Ibid, 12 October 2005.

15. The main purpose of farmers association is to assure that local farmers have access to local government’s events and programs (trainings, excursions, etc.); recruitments and community management; attending meetings and soliciting budgets from local government; but most importantly is to get access to fertilizers.

16. The year of his presidency cannot be ascertained as Kuya Alberto sometime gives different timelines and fragments of events across the interviews.

17. Kuya Alberto, interview by the author, 1 August 2015, Barangay Camalig.

18. It is unfortunate that Kuya Alberto only has fragments of memories about the event. No detailed information (such as years of the event, actors, and type of local government programs) was given at the time of interview.

19. I have volunteered to help Kuya Alberto to clear the grass so that he could resume his work. We started to work at 7AM and took our lunch break at around 11.30AM until 1.30AM, and called off at 2.30PM. I must admit that there was not much I could offer to clear the grass. I eventually fell sick due to the heat and infection. This experience had exposed me the physical hard work and the hardship a farmer has to encounter.

20. Not purely subsistence farmers, they also sell their food harvest in markets. See, Kay, Sylvia. No year. “Connecting Smallholders to Markets: An analytical guide”. Civil Society Mechanism (CSM). Terra Nuova Publication.

21. Hazel M. Dizon, Department of Geography, College of SocialSciences and Philosophy (CSSP), University of the Philippines Diliman, interview by the author, 26 August 2015, CSSP, UP Diliman.

22. This dislocation is not limited to Nataas City, it also happening in Nasugbu, Batangas. See Hazel M. Dizon, 2015. “The Contested Development of a Philippine Tourism Landscape: The Case of Nasugbu, Batangas.” Kasarinlan, 30 (1): 91–129.

23. Agricultural Technologist of Office of the City Agriculture Officer and former agriculturists of the City Office, various interviews by the author in August 2015.

24. Document provided by Office of the City Agriculture, Nataas City Government.

25. He was trained as an architect in designing gardening structures. He involved in the bidding of Kuala Lumpur Towers’ gardening in Malaysia but did not win. He then worked for five years in Nigeria as an engineer. Ed was a consultant to Barabas Elementary School to compete in a program called “Gulayan sa Pagaaralan” for best gardening in schools. Ed suggested building the garden using organic methods the elementary school such as provided the seedlings and half of the fund to develop the basic facilities to start the project. The harvest will be given to the school’s feeding program. It covers 200 square meters of school land in which will take three years to have a functional harvest for harvesting vegetables.

26. Saturnino M. Borras Jr., 2009. “Agrarian change and peasant studies: changes, continuities and challenges – an introduction” The Journal of Peasant Studies, 36 (1): 5–31.

27. Joel S. Kahn, 1985. “Peasant ideologies in the Third World” Annual Review of Anthropology, 14: 49–75.