farmers in the Philippines

[OPINION] Knowing the Filipino farmer

Eileen Fay Villegas

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[OPINION] Knowing the Filipino farmer
'Filipino farmers are disadvantaged because there are opportunists and oppressors'

When I saw the viral photo of “The Farmer” in one of the pages of a learning module distributed by the Department of Education, I immediately knew something was not right. Like many others, I was displeased by the carelessness of the very agency that supposedly guarantees that education materials are error-free, more so reputable.

The image showed a family in ragged clothes — one of the toddlers, naked — and it was easy to understand what it implied, which consequently reified the existing, problematic oversimplification of the idea that farmers are poor.

However, in the back of my head, I was also aware that it was not entirely false: Filipino farmers do live a lowly life, and in the actual world, there are very few who live in wealth, i.e. private landowners and oppressive capitalists.

But what is politically incorrect here is the stereotypical depiction of farmers. 

The illustrator apparently was not aware of the emergence of young farmers engaged in different agriculture-related ventures (e.g. agritourism, animal raising, ornamentals and landscaping, among others) and the efforts to regain the sophistication Philippine agriculture once had. There was a promise of sustainable development in the sector, had the government prioritized sensible plans and judicious policies for it.

I am not going to blame DepEd completely for this mess, because it has been a sickness of our society to perceive farmers this way due to our long history of neglecting agriculture. 

The root of all this trouble, which has been reiterated time and again only to fall on deaf ears, is that as an agricultural country, we have continuously neglected the agriculture sector, which in turn has led to the continuing notion that a farmer’s job and the life they live is inferior.

But let us be fair about it: Filipino farmers are disadvantaged because there are opportunists and oppressors. They are poor because of a soiled system that continuously buries them. When they are starved of social equity, they are fed with bullets. They are not asking for much; they just seek the respect of their rights, like most of us.

Farming is a job, a decent one. However, farmers remain poor because of those who prey on them to achieve affluence.

Though it would require a whole new social structure to be able to change people’s perspectives altogether, we could start by being aware of the hard realities the agriculture sector faces. Many farmers are still struggling to make ends meet, they remain uneducated and landless peasants, and they suffer from extensive land privatization and industrialization.

But we should not just be aware of these realities. 

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Through this consciousness, we can empathize with them, cease viewing them as lesser, and share this sentiment to the young so that they too could take part in changing the mindset of the next generations – until our collective consciousness sparks social change, until the Philippines become a society where no Filipino farmer is described as poor.

This is a call to see farmers as indistinguishable from the rest of society, to see them and all those marginalized in a new light.

It is about time we communicate appropriately the image of the very people who ensure the food on our tables – even when they struggle to feed themselves and their families. 

To see them in a new light does not mean overlooking the hard reality of poverty among farmers, but acknowledging it and then partaking in its alleviation. 

Our farmers are not asking to be depicted grandiosely, but they are not supposed to be portrayed as lesser than us, either. – Rappler.com

Eileen Villegas is an Agriculture graduate of the University of the Philippine Los Baños and currently taking MS Development Communication at the same university. She aspires to write about and for agriculture.

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