First, let’s make our farmers rich

 

By Al S. Mendoza

FOR a change, let us talk about the farmer.

The farmer in the Philippines is typecast as poor.

But in America, the farmer is God’s magnificent marvel of invention.

Over there in the so-called land of milk and honey aka prosperity, every farmer is rich.

Why because practically every American farmer owns the land he tills.

What he plants, the harvest is all his.

The American farmer, because he is not poor, is either rich or very rich.

An “ordinary” American farmer can earn as much as what a company president earns.

With his farm’s income, the American farmer can send his kids to school with ease.

He has his own house standing on his own land.

He has a car, or several cars, bought in cold cash.

He can travel around the world with his bank deposits hardly dented.

He is a well-respected man in his village.

He occupies a key position, holds a badge of power, in his community.

In short, every farmer in America is eternally proud to proclaim himself a farmer.

In my numerous travels in America, I’ve met a lot of distinguished men in many gatherings—especially during golf events.

Several times, I had asked them during cocktails, “What do you do for a living, Sir?”

“I am a farmer” came their reply—said proudly, chin up.

And it was common to see many of them as owning multiple memberships in swanky golf courses in the neighborhood.

But can all of the above be also said of the Filipino farmer?

Bluntly put, is the Filipino farmer co-equal with his American counterpart?

Sadly, no.

Over here, almost 70 percent of our farmers do not own the farms they till, tend to.

Mostly, they cultivate lands owned by wealthy landlords.

But to be clear, there are also Filipino farmers who also till their own lands.

There’s lots of them actually but, alas, most merely own a hectare or two.

In short, they earn barely enough to tide them over.

And mercifully, even before they could harvest their produce, they have already spent the projected income of the land they till.

That’s a result of the dreaded loan shark system gripping both landless and smalltime Filipino farmers for the longest time.

Gruesomely, the landless farmer harvests virtually not for himself but for his landlord.

“Some one who wakes up at 4 in the morning almost everyday to work in the fields ought to be rich,” says my dear friend, the philanthropist Ramon Uy.

What a heart-rending observation, indeed.

The disparity is so huge our Filipino farmer seems forever tied to a pauper’s life.

And now this:  The government, for the longest time, loves to mouth the line, “Let us help the farmer to improve production.”

To that, Ramon Uy counters: “Let us first make our farmers rich before we could even start talking about increasing production.”

Bull’s-eye.

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