Unyon ng mga Manggagawa sa Agrikultura [UMA]

#56 K-9 St. West Kamias, Quezon City

Tel/fax #: (02) 7992009/ Email: uma.pilipinas@gmail.com

Position of Unyon ng mga Manggagawa sa Agrikultura (UMA) on HB 5161 or

Agribusiness Venture Agreements
The Unyon ng mga Manggagawa sa Agrikultura (UMA) strongly opposes HB 5161 or Agribusiness Venture
Agreements.
This would only legalize various schemes that go against the very principles of land reform which is to give control
over the agricultural in the hands of the farmers; transform the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) into a pimp
for agricultural corporations and landlords; institutionalize corporative and landlord control over agricultural land;
lead to the abdication of the government in providing support services to peasants and farm workers; and
transform farmers into agricultural workers.
In essence HB 5161 would violate the Supreme Court decision of July 5, 2011 on the distribution of lands in
Hacienda Luisita when it stated that The policy on agrarian reform is that control over the agricultural land must
always be in the hands of the farmers. AVAs intents and purposes does the opposite.
Forms of AVAs
Those that AVA would legalize are found in Section 3 (a), section 8, and section 31, of CARP which gives options to
landowners to choose non-land transfer schemes. These include corporative schemes, joint venture agreements,
production/profit sharing schemes, leaseback arrangement and stock distribution option (SDO). These are
alternatives to actual land redistribution.
Other than in Hacienda Luisita, SDOs still exist in 11 haciendas in Negros and one each in Iloilo and in Davao del
Sur. According to the National Federation of Sugar Workers (NFSW) the 1,905 SDO beneficiaries still live like
typical hacienda workers with similar situation in any other plantation. The dividend received by the Farm Worker
Beneficiaries (FWBs) range from P340 to P500 annually as their share in the Capital Stock under the scheme.
The so-called Corporative Scheme on the other hand exists only in Negros and are all owned by Eduardo
Danding Cojuangco. In the AVA inventory it is categorized as a Joint Venture Agreement (JVP) and encompasses
4,654.050 hectares. Again according to the NFSW the haciendas under this scheme remain untouched.
In a paper made by Florence Marie P. Milan in 2006, he wrote the following: On October 1998 during President
Estradas administration, Cojuangcos Voluntary Land Transfer (VLT) and JVP agreement succeeded. Cojuangco
announced that he was instead giving his land for free to his farm workers. However, there is no legal proof of
the free distribution of land taking place. In addition, the JVP scheme compels them to surrender the use and
control of land to the former landowner. Failure to agree with these terms automatically cancels the farmers
eligibility to own the land.
And according again to NFSW, around 5,000 farmers and farm workers of the haciendas registered in 1995 and
1996 to become ARBs. Only 1,526 were awarded of which some were not supposed to be qualified as they held
managerial positions. Those excluded were retrenched by the Eduardo Cojuangco Jr & Sons Agriculture
Enterprises, Inc. and ended up either unemployed or were forced to work in other haciendas receiving
compensation way below the minimum wage.

We thus urge the Committee on Agrarian Reform of Congress to hold investigations in aid of legislation on the
conditions of the farm workers in the remaining SDOs and corporative scheme. This could be done in
coordination of the NFSW, instead of hurriedly approving HB 5161.
The experience in Hacienda Luisita
In Hacienda Luisita after the SDO was imposed, various forms of AVAs are now being proposed and/or
implemented after the sham land distribution there. While there has been no actual physical distribution of the
land there, its landlord family unleashed financiers and dummies that aggressively pushed lease agreements
called aryendo or bought lands in the guise of loans that are not permitted even by CARP.
Hand in hand with this is DARs endorsement in the formation of ARBOs and other pseudo-organizations in order
to become the venue to set-up sugar block farms and the supposed support services provided are used to coverup the widespread lease agreements and buying of lands in the area.
DAR also allows the violent eviction of farmers who had been tilling the land since 2005 which is a great favor to
the landlord family, while the latter maintains the control of the land to produce sugar. Various private entities
have also entered Hacienda Luisita to invest in agriculture, including a Japanese agro-corporation for the
production of okra called Greenstar Produce, Phils., Inc..
Sugar Block Farms
With regards to block farms, there is a new Sugar Act which has been approved in both houses of Congress and
which has the following provisions related to AVA.
It will be the DAR who would identify the agrarian reform beneficiary organizations to be included in the block
farms of 30 50 hectares each. These farms would be assisted primarily by the private sector while the
government will provide the necessary infrastructure for them like farm to mill roads, irrigation, and others.
Professional farm managers/operations managers will be hired to manage each block farm. The agrarian reform
beneficiaries supposedly still own the land, but they would only have a share in the earnings gained in using the
land for sugarcane production. And they may be hired as agricultural workers depending on ARBO arrangements
with individual enrollees.
And what are the conditions of agricultural workers in the Philippines?
According to the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) the nominal wage rate of all farm workers in 2011 was
P207.31 while the real wage rate was only 122.01, while sugarcane workers in the same year had a nominal wage
rate of P203.34 and a real wage rate of only P119.67. And in Negros Occidental where majority of sugarcane
workers are located, the nominal wage rate in 2011 was P191.91 and the real wage rate was P113.65.
All are below the minimum wage. In Western Visayas, where Negros Occidental is located the minimum wage in
2011 for plantation workers was P233 while those for non-plantation workers was only P223. But the rates that
came out of the PSA is very different from the actual wages the sugar cane workers are earning daily as based
from the data of the National Federation of Sugar Workers (NFWS), which is a member of UMA.
First of all sugar workers have only work from 6-8 months and the rest is the dead season called tiempos muertos.
According to the NFSW, sugarcane workers only have a net pay of P700 P1,000 a week or P2,800 P4,000 a
month. Many haciendas pay only P80-P120 a day and not less than 93% of workers in there are engaged in
pakyaw system that provides meager income. Majority also do not have retirement or SSS benefits.

This is not limited to the sugarcane workers but other agricultural workers as well. According to the Rural
Missionaries of the Philippines Northern Mindanao sub region, the average wage for coconut farm workers is
P150 a day but the real wage rate is for males is P114, while female workers get P105. Males who take care of
corn crops receive P101, while their female counterparts P98.
For banana plantation workers in Regions XI and XII the wage rate and family living wages are as follows:

While for Palm Oil Workers in a study made by the Center for Trade Union Rights it ststaed the following:
Farmers and indigenous people who were compelled to stay in their landsbecause they had nowhere to go
covered by the countrys biggest oil palm plantations, namely Filipinas Palm Oil Plantation Inc. (FPPI), Agusan
Plantation Inc (API) and Agumil in Agusan del Sur became plantation workers, majority of whom remained casual
even after 30 years of hard labor. These casual workers suffer from very low wages (as low as Php 150.00 a day),
absence of benefits, and were deprived of the right to security of tenure. This poor working condition
compounded by high level of unemployment particularly among women have pushed the children to work in
various capacities as plantation workers. CTUHR study (2012) revealed that 24 percent of plantation workers in
Agusan del Sur are children between 5 to 17 years old.
Conclusion
We therefore reiterate our opposition to HB 5161. It essentially re-concentrates lands back to the
landlords/corporations who would dictate which crops to plant and how much they would pay for these. The
agrarian reform beneficiary in turn is transformed into an agricultural worker whose labor rights are also not
followed. And the government ends up in helping out not the ARBs but the private corporations/landlords by
using funds for private use and also becomes a broker for said entities in choosing who to become part of AVA's.
This would only perpetuate land monopoly in the Philippines, which is one of the main roots of civil strife in the
country as this would lead to the impoverishment of the peasant sector, especially the agricultural workers. Only
a genuine agrarian reform law such as the Genuine Agrarian Reform Bill (GARB) can lift the peasant masses from
their misery and poverty and lead the country progressively hand in hand with national industrialization.