A season of discontent

Our politicians are so enmeshed in their failed attempt to impeach Vice President Sara Duterte and in joint military exercises to boost the country’s external defense capabilities they are unmindful of the growing internal restlessness arising from government neglect and lack of tact to understand and solve the country’s potential problem.

Our farmers are feeling the pain of isolation. Billions are set aside in budgetary insertions. Billions are spent in election-related vote buying and trillions must have been expended for unaccountable flood control projects.

Sen. Panfilo Lacson just exposed scores of congressmen awarding themselves trillions of pesos in infrastructure projects in connivance with the Department of Public Works and Highways. With these oodles of cash strewn into the wrong causes and pockets one wonders why there is no money budgeted for the procurement of farmers’ palay harvests.

The illustration by GoFarm TV vlog on Facebook sums things up about the real situation obtaining on the ground. The Department of Agriculture and its attached agency, the National Food Authority, boisterously announced the buying price of palay at ₱P24 per kilo off the harvest season, but come harvest time the NFA announces “Stop Buying.”

Farmers, scared their freshly harvested palay will deteriorate in the next two days due to their moisture content, are then forced to sell their crops to traders at ₱P8 to ₱P10 per kilo.

And here is where greed and corruption emerge at the expense of the poor and over-burdened farmers. The traders in turn sell the palay they bought from the farmers to the NFA. That would explain why farmers are turned away on allegations the NFA warehouses are full.

This situation is prevalent nationwide. Since I have been writing about the farmers’ plight, I have been receiving feedback from Central Mindanao and Central Luzon. As a farmer’s son who grew up in Cotabato and still, along with my brother and nephews, tend our farm, I write every article on the condition of farmers with compassion and anger over the neglect of the present administration to the plight of farmers.

For now, the season of discontent is brewing. It is even aggravated by the declaration by the Department of Agriculture that rice farmers will also benefit from the ₱P20/kilo rice. It is better said in the Pilipino metaphorical expression: “Kapag puno na ang salop” (When one has had enough). It is an expression of anger. In a Filipino movie of the same title, the denouement suggests: “ay dapat kalusin” (do something about it). This time I am not talking of Fernando Poe Jr. on one side and Eddie Garcia with Paquito Diaz on the other.

Agriculture had been the backbone of the Philippine economy until it was taken over by micro, small, and medium enterprises, but still nearly 14 percent of the country’s labor force are absorbed by agriculture.

Listen to their pleas for we have a restive social volcano aside from those on the rim of political fire.