It's beginning to feel a bit like musical chairs. I started this blog with the intention of holding all my Eisenhower related blogs. I've decided that I want the flexibility to post on many topics, and not to be bound to just one, so I've created yet another blog. If you happen to come here, please hop over to www.quasifarmer.com for my new one. Hopefully this is the last "new blog" for a while and I can keep all my thoughts at the new site.
See you there! Nate
Thursday, March 7, 2013
Thursday, November 15, 2012
The Philippines continued, Camarines Sur
When last I posted I had just returned from a visit to the northern Lamon Bay area of Quezon Province. After a short stopover in Metro Manila, I hopped on a bus in the morning, and headed south to Camarines Sur, a province in the southern portion of Luzon Island, but the vertical center of the Philippines. It is over 500 km from Manila to Naga City, and I had requested from the organizers of my schedule to either rent a car and drive, or to take a bus - I wanted to take this time to see much of the country. A bus it was. These fellowships are amazing opportunities we are often flown from place to place, each day packed with meetings and events. I think however that unless a Fellow makes a conscious efforts, it is too easy to just see the cities. While I had taken one trip to rural Philippines already, I was looking forward to this trip to just settle back into a seat and stare out the window as half of Luzon Island, the largest in the Philippines passed by.
It was worthwhile. We stopped a few times at local eateries along the way. If anyone is every looking for inexpensive place to spend some time, the Philippines is for you. Hotels are cheap, food is cheap, activities are cheap . . . in fact I have yet to find anything that is not cheap. My lunch was a bowl of soup, anchored by 2 large (massive) shrimp. Each was larger than my palm, and together they probably weighed well over a pound. Along with a heaping bowl of rice, and a sprite, and a large tip, it was about $4.50 US. It was an uneventful day, 8:30 am - 6:30 pm was spent on the bus. But it served its purpose - I got to watch the countryside go by. Most of the pictures have way to much reflection and glare from the window, so I'll skip them for now.
I was picked up by the folks from the Camsur Water Complex. It was built by the provincial government as an economic development project, and is a water sports complex built for wake-boarding. A large central lake has a cable system that wraps around its perimeter. Towlines are suspended from this cable and tow wake-boarders around the lake past a series of ramps, jumps, and buoys. It was a low key, and cheap place. I think in total for meals over three days I spent, maybe $25. The lodging, while sparse and simple was under $100 for three nights.
On the morning of Tuesday the 13th I was picked up by folks from PECUARIA. Mr Molina, and Tony (chairman and vice chairman of the board of directors respectively) picked me up on the very rainy morning and we proceeded to their cooperative. PECUARIA is a result of Agrarian Reform here in the Philippines. I'm not sure how interesting this will be to everyone else, but I'm going to take a few minutes to digress here and talk a little about the history of agrarian reform. Coming from a system where land ownership is held sacred, and in many cases taken for granted, this entire system is fascinating to me.
Like many other countries in the Pacific region, land ownership over many hundreds of years was consolidated into the hands of very few, very large landowners. Actual farmers throughout the region where merely tenants, not owning their own land, and paying excessive rents each year for the land. In the late 1940's immediately following WWII, many nations in the region, under the guidance of the US, including South Korea, Japan, and the Philippines embarked on a course of Agrarian Reform. Through various methods, getting the ownership of farmland into the hands of the farmers themselves. Japan and South Korea took just a few years for this process. In the Philippines Agrarian Reform actually began just prior to WWII, with much of the implementation being delayed by the war.
1963 brought a major turning point in the legislation (although legislation and implementation here in the Philippines often bear little proximity) with the Agricultural Land Reform Code. The main thrust of this reform was that all landholdings above 75 hectares (roughly 180 acres) that were planted with either rice or corn would be siezed by the government and resold to the tenant farmers. Landowners would be paid 10% of the value in cash, and 90% in the form of interest free bonds. The tenants would purchase the land through amortized payments over 20 years. But it only covered land planted to corn and rice, and many landowners avoided the program by shifting production to sugar, coconuts, fruits, or livestock.
The Department of Agrarian Reform was formed in 1971 under President Marcos as a result of extreme protests at the lack of progress with Agrarian Reform, and made some major changes to the code - making sharehold tenancy (rent paid in a portion of the crop) illegal, and converting all farms to leasehold tenancy and capping interest rates that could be charged to tenant farmers and reduced the landholding limits from 75 to 24 hectares (roughly 60 acres). A year later, with the onset of declared Martial Law, President Marcos declared that all landholdings over 7 hectares (16.8 acres) in rice or corn were to be transferred to the tenant farmers at a value of 2.5 times the value of annual production, paid over 15 years at 6% interest. Amazing the things you can order under martial law huh? The decree only covered land in production as of 1972 (over the next 10 years roughly 3 million new acres of farmland would be cleared and farmed, almost exclusively by large landowners), and again it only covered the roughly 9.5 million acres of corn and rice land, not any of the 6 million acres under cultivation with other crops. One huge flaw as well - it only covered farms operating on a tenancy method, leaving it possible for a landowner to avoid the process by simply evicting all the tenant farmers and operating the farm with hired laborers under a single corporate farm model.
The Marcos Regime came to an end as a result of the People Power Revolution from 1983-1986. If you haven't heard much about this revolution, check it out here. Its an amazing tale of a virtually entirely peaceful revolution, complete with hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of people gathering to support the movement, nuns bearing rosaries kneeling before tanks sent to disperse the troops, and a fall of a 20 year regime in a matter of just a few days. After the fall of Marcos and the reintroduction of Democracy however, graft and corruption were still rampant and power was still controlled by a wealthy ruling elite. Marcos had written his own constitution under Martial Law and this was replaced in 1987 by a new constitution. Now Agrarian Reform was actually included at the constitutional level, and this time covered all agricultural land, and farm workers as well as tenant farmers. It left it up to the congress however to set the types of exemptions and the types of land to be covered. I like to think we are "relatively" free of obvious graft, corruption, and a culture of the inclusion of specific personal gains in our laws in an area like the US. But even we have our exceptions to that. Just look at something like our wetland protection act, a document that governs ALL of the states wetland resources . . . well, all except a few little pieces here and there, not large pieces, and some for arguably good reasons, but others . . . well lets just say it makes you wonder what chairman's friend was saying, "come on senator, just this little bit of land, can't we carve just this little piece out . . ." Imagine that same process in a country where corruption and personal interest is considered the norm? The legislation that was passed to implement the constitutional mandates was rife with exemptions and "prioritized" the reforms to lands between 55 and 125 acres. Landowners were also given special abilities to argue the process in the court system a certain way to delay any process. The biggest teller of the whole process - Agrarian Reform was set to expire in (I think), 2014. So just to recap - congress is made up of many large landowners and their friends, all lands are supposed to be included, and they give themselves a little over 25 years to do it. Oh yeah, and you are allowed to argue the process in courts, and the "priority" is on those medium sized 55-125 acres farms. This article does a good job of describing one of the issues in a microcosm (oh wait, you mean the president at the time the land reform bill was being written also happened to be a major owner of a 15,000 acre sugar cane farm with tenant farmers?) As I said at the start South Korea and Japan completed their reforms in just a few years. 74 years since its start, 49 years since it was re begun, perhaps a better starting date, it is still far from done, a process market by bribery, corruption, stalling, and deadly conflicts.
So that sets the stage for PECUARIA. Prior to the 1980's PECUARIA was a 800+ hectare (almost 2,000 acre) hacienda, a corporate style farm that produced primarily livestock. Not a specific target of the government Agrarian Reform efforts, it was still a large farm in its area, and was a focus of attention by many farmers in the community who felt it should be. Due to repeated and continuing violence and destruction happening on the farm due to this, the owners closed the farm and took part in a "Voluntarily" offer to sell process with the government. As a part of the land redistribution process, "Agrarian Reform Beneficiaries" had to be identified - the people who would actually receive the land as a part of the process. Thousands of people claimed to be the most rightful beneficiaries Protests, violence, and bitter acrimony developed among various groups as they jockeyed for position.
Finally an outside organization was brought in to help find a solution and 427 beneficiaries were identified. They were not simply given the land, it was given through a cooperative that was formed, with all 427 being owners of the coop, but also assigned a specific parcel of land that was theirs to till. Instead of paying for the land, they had to buy stock in the coop. I'm going to skip ahead a bit here - watch the video to the right, it does a good job of telling much of the story of the creation of PECUARIA and its just 7 minutes. When they talk about the prices of things, remember is php at a 41:1 exchange rate (1 million php is $24,400 US)
While the coop "owns" the land, and the farmers own the coop, they are individual farmers farming their own plot of land. They own the product that they produce and may choose to sell it to the coop or not. Despite the video's lack of mentioning it, not all the farmers are organic, and some who are, don't always follow the rules. The management is diligent and strict however and while all farmers benefit from the dividends paid by the coops profits, it only buys the rice of the certified organic farmers who follow the practices. Others are free to sell their crop where ever they wish. They have ambitious plans and have spent a long time building a solid base for their operation. Currently they have two major challenges - capital investment (always a problem in a growing enterprise) and motivating members. They are addressing the capital investment issue by simply regulating their growth, using current cash flow to finance future expansion. The larger challenge however is member motivation. Some of the farm plots sit empty, unfarmed. Farmers can leave their ownership to their heirs, but they cannot sell it. They also cannot abandon it. The coop has started a process of declaring some of the lands abandoned (an internal process) and seizing them. It will work to restore them, and it has a process for bringing new members into the coop - they have to make the same stock purchases that other members had to make, and pay dues for two years before they are eligible to be designated land. They are offering training courses and reforming their board requirements in an effort to have better, active, participation. What was striking to me is if you left out the issue of land ownership, it could have been a conversation directly out of a Farm Bureau, Rotary Club, or other civic group - how do we get our members motivated to be involved, how do we train the next generation . . .
They have had a true struggle in forming the group. But they had a clear vision, goals, and an implementation plan, and they stuck to it. A sugar plant has been destroyed by a typhoon, they have struggled to learn organic farming, seeing it as one of the only methods to distinguish the product in the market price and make them price setters not price takers, their first manager and founding leader, Dante was murdered by a rival group of farmers trying to disrupt the legal transition of ownership under the Agrarian Reform System. At one point the Philippine Army was deployed to help protect the farm and its farmers from an invading group of farmers set on wrestling physical control of the land from the co-operative.
While it was great to see the story, it was even better to spend two days with the two gentleman who were helping to make it all happen, while at the same time struggling to make a living off of their own 1.7 hectare (4 acre) plots.
Mr. Molina has three children, all spaced 4 or 5 years apart. through careful planning He first built a very basic cement block home and invested in his home. His farm now yields him roughly 40,000 pesos (just under $1,000) a year. College tuition is 15,000 pesos a semester and as his son approached college age, all the family's resources were targeted towards one goal, getting his son through college. His son has now graduated and is a policeman in a neighboring city. Next year the family's wages, now including not just a farmer but a policeman will shift to the daughter. Then the three will shift to the youngest daughter. After that Mr. Molina thinks he will have just enough time to fix up his house and maybe get some sort of transportation before he has to stop farming due to age. By that time he will have three children, all hopefully with good jobs and a college education who can support him. Its the way it is here. Its long term investment and careful planning and it is helping not only the co-op, but with some luck and hard work, will propel his children and grandchildren forward as well. I noticed when I was there, and in video afterwards - the real crop of this co-op isn't organic rice or muscavado sugar. It's educated children.
Tony is a young man who, while he had a plot of land in the co-op had lived outside the coop and worked as a salesman for a private company. He neglected the farm doing very little with it, instead focusing on his primary job. At some point along the line he realized that like many Filipinos his labor was making someone else money, and no matter how hard he worked, he just got a small paycheck that never seemed to raise him up. He began to realize that he had something that, through hard work and investment he could improve and grow - and directly benefit from. He now works virtually non stop, for an outside company, as vice chairman of the co-op, and on his own farm. He is focusing on long term crops - mahogany trees, mango trees, Philippine redwoods, and more in an effort to create something for the future. More long term investment in building something that directly translates his work, into his reward.
These same two men were also the two that drove me to my next place to stay in Donsol. On the roughly 3 hour drive we talked about many things, but one topic was particularly interesting. We had talked a little bit about my travels through Mongolia, China and the Philippines. I had tried to describe each the best I could and we discussed China a great length. Just like its claims over disputed islands with Japan, it also claims ownership over many islands that the Philippines claims are its. China is a growing player in the region and certainly of interest to many Filipinos. I tried to tell them how I struggled with China and Communism. I had a short visit to China in 1995. At the time, surrounded by shanties, run down cities, and a general sense of poverty and inequity all around it was easy to look at communism and say "see, it doesn't work." Now anyone travelling through China cannot say that so simply. The growth of the cities, the services to the villages . . . while they may still need a lot of improvement, something they are doing is working. But at the same time the freedoms are so limited. Internet freedom is nonexistent; I wrote about the challenges facing a young person trying to decide about having children; there are in fact elections for who will lead the communist party, but in a country with 1.3 billion people, only 80+ million are a member of the communist party and therefore able to have any say in who those leaders are. The standard of living in China now is so much higher than that of the Philippines. The healthcare is better, the education is better, the roads, buildings. . . so much is "better." But all three of us would choose the Philippines and their system in a heartbeat. While democracy has been a struggle here, and few would argue that it is "fair" with the prevalent corruption at least there are honest choices in live. I spoke of the Huaxi Village (see my earlier post on that) where every villager had a luxury home, a car, free healthcare and education and much more but they had to work 7 days a week and nothing actually belonged to them, it was all owned by the village and thus lost if they left. They just stared in disbelief and amazement that anyone would choose to live that way. I have to say I agree. I'd take true free will struggling on a farm in the rural Philippines any day.
I was picked up by the folks from the Camsur Water Complex. It was built by the provincial government as an economic development project, and is a water sports complex built for wake-boarding. A large central lake has a cable system that wraps around its perimeter. Towlines are suspended from this cable and tow wake-boarders around the lake past a series of ramps, jumps, and buoys. It was a low key, and cheap place. I think in total for meals over three days I spent, maybe $25. The lodging, while sparse and simple was under $100 for three nights.
On the morning of Tuesday the 13th I was picked up by folks from PECUARIA. Mr Molina, and Tony (chairman and vice chairman of the board of directors respectively) picked me up on the very rainy morning and we proceeded to their cooperative. PECUARIA is a result of Agrarian Reform here in the Philippines. I'm not sure how interesting this will be to everyone else, but I'm going to take a few minutes to digress here and talk a little about the history of agrarian reform. Coming from a system where land ownership is held sacred, and in many cases taken for granted, this entire system is fascinating to me.
Like many other countries in the Pacific region, land ownership over many hundreds of years was consolidated into the hands of very few, very large landowners. Actual farmers throughout the region where merely tenants, not owning their own land, and paying excessive rents each year for the land. In the late 1940's immediately following WWII, many nations in the region, under the guidance of the US, including South Korea, Japan, and the Philippines embarked on a course of Agrarian Reform. Through various methods, getting the ownership of farmland into the hands of the farmers themselves. Japan and South Korea took just a few years for this process. In the Philippines Agrarian Reform actually began just prior to WWII, with much of the implementation being delayed by the war.
1963 brought a major turning point in the legislation (although legislation and implementation here in the Philippines often bear little proximity) with the Agricultural Land Reform Code. The main thrust of this reform was that all landholdings above 75 hectares (roughly 180 acres) that were planted with either rice or corn would be siezed by the government and resold to the tenant farmers. Landowners would be paid 10% of the value in cash, and 90% in the form of interest free bonds. The tenants would purchase the land through amortized payments over 20 years. But it only covered land planted to corn and rice, and many landowners avoided the program by shifting production to sugar, coconuts, fruits, or livestock.
The Department of Agrarian Reform was formed in 1971 under President Marcos as a result of extreme protests at the lack of progress with Agrarian Reform, and made some major changes to the code - making sharehold tenancy (rent paid in a portion of the crop) illegal, and converting all farms to leasehold tenancy and capping interest rates that could be charged to tenant farmers and reduced the landholding limits from 75 to 24 hectares (roughly 60 acres). A year later, with the onset of declared Martial Law, President Marcos declared that all landholdings over 7 hectares (16.8 acres) in rice or corn were to be transferred to the tenant farmers at a value of 2.5 times the value of annual production, paid over 15 years at 6% interest. Amazing the things you can order under martial law huh? The decree only covered land in production as of 1972 (over the next 10 years roughly 3 million new acres of farmland would be cleared and farmed, almost exclusively by large landowners), and again it only covered the roughly 9.5 million acres of corn and rice land, not any of the 6 million acres under cultivation with other crops. One huge flaw as well - it only covered farms operating on a tenancy method, leaving it possible for a landowner to avoid the process by simply evicting all the tenant farmers and operating the farm with hired laborers under a single corporate farm model.
The Marcos Regime came to an end as a result of the People Power Revolution from 1983-1986. If you haven't heard much about this revolution, check it out here. Its an amazing tale of a virtually entirely peaceful revolution, complete with hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of people gathering to support the movement, nuns bearing rosaries kneeling before tanks sent to disperse the troops, and a fall of a 20 year regime in a matter of just a few days. After the fall of Marcos and the reintroduction of Democracy however, graft and corruption were still rampant and power was still controlled by a wealthy ruling elite. Marcos had written his own constitution under Martial Law and this was replaced in 1987 by a new constitution. Now Agrarian Reform was actually included at the constitutional level, and this time covered all agricultural land, and farm workers as well as tenant farmers. It left it up to the congress however to set the types of exemptions and the types of land to be covered. I like to think we are "relatively" free of obvious graft, corruption, and a culture of the inclusion of specific personal gains in our laws in an area like the US. But even we have our exceptions to that. Just look at something like our wetland protection act, a document that governs ALL of the states wetland resources . . . well, all except a few little pieces here and there, not large pieces, and some for arguably good reasons, but others . . . well lets just say it makes you wonder what chairman's friend was saying, "come on senator, just this little bit of land, can't we carve just this little piece out . . ." Imagine that same process in a country where corruption and personal interest is considered the norm? The legislation that was passed to implement the constitutional mandates was rife with exemptions and "prioritized" the reforms to lands between 55 and 125 acres. Landowners were also given special abilities to argue the process in the court system a certain way to delay any process. The biggest teller of the whole process - Agrarian Reform was set to expire in (I think), 2014. So just to recap - congress is made up of many large landowners and their friends, all lands are supposed to be included, and they give themselves a little over 25 years to do it. Oh yeah, and you are allowed to argue the process in courts, and the "priority" is on those medium sized 55-125 acres farms. This article does a good job of describing one of the issues in a microcosm (oh wait, you mean the president at the time the land reform bill was being written also happened to be a major owner of a 15,000 acre sugar cane farm with tenant farmers?) As I said at the start South Korea and Japan completed their reforms in just a few years. 74 years since its start, 49 years since it was re begun, perhaps a better starting date, it is still far from done, a process market by bribery, corruption, stalling, and deadly conflicts.
 |
| The co-op headquarters. |
 |
| One of the several farm roads. The farm was, like most of the Philippines, amazing to view. |
 |
| The most common farm implement I have seen here. |
 |
| Rice. This is a major rice growing area, and the co-op produces a lot! |
While the coop "owns" the land, and the farmers own the coop, they are individual farmers farming their own plot of land. They own the product that they produce and may choose to sell it to the coop or not. Despite the video's lack of mentioning it, not all the farmers are organic, and some who are, don't always follow the rules. The management is diligent and strict however and while all farmers benefit from the dividends paid by the coops profits, it only buys the rice of the certified organic farmers who follow the practices. Others are free to sell their crop where ever they wish. They have ambitious plans and have spent a long time building a solid base for their operation. Currently they have two major challenges - capital investment (always a problem in a growing enterprise) and motivating members. They are addressing the capital investment issue by simply regulating their growth, using current cash flow to finance future expansion. The larger challenge however is member motivation. Some of the farm plots sit empty, unfarmed. Farmers can leave their ownership to their heirs, but they cannot sell it. They also cannot abandon it. The coop has started a process of declaring some of the lands abandoned (an internal process) and seizing them. It will work to restore them, and it has a process for bringing new members into the coop - they have to make the same stock purchases that other members had to make, and pay dues for two years before they are eligible to be designated land. They are offering training courses and reforming their board requirements in an effort to have better, active, participation. What was striking to me is if you left out the issue of land ownership, it could have been a conversation directly out of a Farm Bureau, Rotary Club, or other civic group - how do we get our members motivated to be involved, how do we train the next generation . . .
 |
| Some of the farmers have small hand tractors. Perfect size for these farms, and maneuvering over the dikes. |
 |
| The rice terraces are all hand built each planting season |
While it was great to see the story, it was even better to spend two days with the two gentleman who were helping to make it all happen, while at the same time struggling to make a living off of their own 1.7 hectare (4 acre) plots.
Mr. Molina has three children, all spaced 4 or 5 years apart. through careful planning He first built a very basic cement block home and invested in his home. His farm now yields him roughly 40,000 pesos (just under $1,000) a year. College tuition is 15,000 pesos a semester and as his son approached college age, all the family's resources were targeted towards one goal, getting his son through college. His son has now graduated and is a policeman in a neighboring city. Next year the family's wages, now including not just a farmer but a policeman will shift to the daughter. Then the three will shift to the youngest daughter. After that Mr. Molina thinks he will have just enough time to fix up his house and maybe get some sort of transportation before he has to stop farming due to age. By that time he will have three children, all hopefully with good jobs and a college education who can support him. Its the way it is here. Its long term investment and careful planning and it is helping not only the co-op, but with some luck and hard work, will propel his children and grandchildren forward as well. I noticed when I was there, and in video afterwards - the real crop of this co-op isn't organic rice or muscavado sugar. It's educated children.
 |
| The rice mill. It dehulls and cleans the rice. |
 |
| Most drying in the Philippines, like in China is done with "solar" driers. Simply spread the rice out on a road, driveway yard, etc, and let it dry in the sun. PECAURIA recently built a flatbed drier to help dry the rice in the wet times as well. Roughly 10 tons of rice per batch, 16 hours per batch, and all heating is done by burning . . . rice hulls. |
Tony is a young man who, while he had a plot of land in the co-op had lived outside the coop and worked as a salesman for a private company. He neglected the farm doing very little with it, instead focusing on his primary job. At some point along the line he realized that like many Filipinos his labor was making someone else money, and no matter how hard he worked, he just got a small paycheck that never seemed to raise him up. He began to realize that he had something that, through hard work and investment he could improve and grow - and directly benefit from. He now works virtually non stop, for an outside company, as vice chairman of the co-op, and on his own farm. He is focusing on long term crops - mahogany trees, mango trees, Philippine redwoods, and more in an effort to create something for the future. More long term investment in building something that directly translates his work, into his reward.
 |
| we stopped at the Cagsawa Ruins. This church was built in 1724 to replace one burnt in 1636 by Dutch Pirates. During the eruption of the Mayon Valcano hundreds of villagers sought refuge in the church and were killed by pyroclastic flows. |
These same two men were also the two that drove me to my next place to stay in Donsol. On the roughly 3 hour drive we talked about many things, but one topic was particularly interesting. We had talked a little bit about my travels through Mongolia, China and the Philippines. I had tried to describe each the best I could and we discussed China a great length. Just like its claims over disputed islands with Japan, it also claims ownership over many islands that the Philippines claims are its. China is a growing player in the region and certainly of interest to many Filipinos. I tried to tell them how I struggled with China and Communism. I had a short visit to China in 1995. At the time, surrounded by shanties, run down cities, and a general sense of poverty and inequity all around it was easy to look at communism and say "see, it doesn't work." Now anyone travelling through China cannot say that so simply. The growth of the cities, the services to the villages . . . while they may still need a lot of improvement, something they are doing is working. But at the same time the freedoms are so limited. Internet freedom is nonexistent; I wrote about the challenges facing a young person trying to decide about having children; there are in fact elections for who will lead the communist party, but in a country with 1.3 billion people, only 80+ million are a member of the communist party and therefore able to have any say in who those leaders are. The standard of living in China now is so much higher than that of the Philippines. The healthcare is better, the education is better, the roads, buildings. . . so much is "better." But all three of us would choose the Philippines and their system in a heartbeat. While democracy has been a struggle here, and few would argue that it is "fair" with the prevalent corruption at least there are honest choices in live. I spoke of the Huaxi Village (see my earlier post on that) where every villager had a luxury home, a car, free healthcare and education and much more but they had to work 7 days a week and nothing actually belonged to them, it was all owned by the village and thus lost if they left. They just stared in disbelief and amazement that anyone would choose to live that way. I have to say I agree. I'd take true free will struggling on a farm in the rural Philippines any day.
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