News Release
November 8, 2007
Reference: Ka Willy Marbella, internal deputy secretary general, KMP
 
Militant peasants troop to Senate to block JPEPA!
Hunger to increase with its approval
 
            The militant Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) together with other sectors brought rice and salt in front of the Senate to show what will remain of Philippine agriculture if the passage of the Japan-Philippine Economic Partnership Agreement (JPEPA) is not blocked. Peasant eviction and hunger would be one of its most disastrous results.
 
According to Ka Willy Marbella , internal deputy secretary general of KMP, “today’s hearing will discuss the agricultural aspect of JPEPA and we hope that the Senate would hear genuine peasants airing our position on this onerous agreement. We are definitely against the JPEPA, because the real “gainers” will be foreign transnational companies (TNCs) based in the Philippines and their domestic partners and not genuinely Filipino industry and agriculture, much less Filipino workers and farmers as a whole. These corporate elites will be profiting from providing Japan with cheap labor, minerals and agricultural raw materials and their exemption of 239 products while the only things left to us peasants are rice and salt, ”
 
            “But the administration is nonetheless making such hype about the supposed export gain from a more open Japanese market for Philippine bananas and pineapples. They are not saying that tariffs on these items will be reduced on a staggered basis in the coming years. However food exports are actually a small and even diminishing share of total Philippine exports to Japan and accounted for only 7.4% of total exports to it over the period 2001-2006. And while food exports potentially have high local content and significant linkages to the local economy, grassroots farmers and farm workers are in practice unlikely to benefit,” said Mariano.
 
            “This is because the actual benefits to Filipino peasants are severely limited by two circumstances of the local banana and pineapple industry. The first is that agricultural production in general – including of bananas and pineapples – is very backward and underdeveloped because of the lack of true land reform and the absence of government support and extension services. For instance, almost half of the banana farms in the Philippines are still under tenanted or lease arrangements,” added the peasant leader
 
            The backward production methods means that most farms are not really being in a position to access the Japanese market; the fruits produced are unable to meet strict Japanese aesthetic, sanitary and other quality standards. Freshness is also a problem because the transport, storage and marketing infrastructure to bring the fruits from Filipino farms to Japanese consumers are not in place. None of these issues is likely to be resolved anytime in the near future.
 
            The second and actually more decisive factor is that Philippine agriculture is grossly inequitable with corporate agri-business and rural elites cornering the benefits from production at the expense of landless tenants, farm workers and other agricultural labor. Feudal or otherwise exploitative economic arrangements still persist in the vast Philippine countryside. So, even in the case of any farms actually in a position to take advantage of the Japanese market, the gains will not really be going to the poorest peasants. In fact more land displacement would occur because of the expansion of plantations forcing more farmers to poverty. This will also pose a danger to the food security of the nation due to crop conversion from rice and corn to banana and pineapple
 
            In the end the greatest benefit from any increased banana and pineapple exports resulting from JPEPA will go to the big foreign agri-business TNCs (and their big domestic corporate growers) which account for virtually all banana and pineapple exports from the Philippines. These include Dole – the world’s largest exporter of fresh bananas and the second largest in fresh pineapples – and Del Monte – the world’s largest fresh pineapple exporter and the second largest in bananas. These TNCs have vertically integrated operations spanning the growing of the products in plantations, specialized packaging and storage, transportation, shipping and distribution. They also have total control of the associated capital and technologies,”
 
“So our call remains the same JUNK JPEPA!” ended Marbella . # # #