“Hindi kailangan ng lupa, hindi kailangan ng tubig to be successful in farming. So ’yung sinasabi na huwag daw i-convert ang farmland para magtayo ng bahay at huwag i-convert ang farmland para magtayo ng factory mali iyon.”
That’s what Senator Cynthia Villar, the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Food chairperson whose family also runs a property development company, said during a hearing on Sept. 1.
Noting how Israel plays a big role in exporting vegetables in the Middle East despite being a desert, she pointed out that technology (and not land and water) is the key to success for the agricultural industry.
And while we do agree that modern technology can aid farmers in having bountiful harvests, we beg to differ about the neglect towards the importance of farmlands and what consequences its conversion pose.
Social and environmental effects
A study published in 2019 lists the social and environmental effects of converting farmlands to residential and commercial use.
“The scale of land conversions has caused significant social disruption, leading to the displacement of thousands of farmers and adding to the number of the rural landless,” the study read.
Aside from social dislocation, land conversion also leads to “serious ecological effects that involve further erosion of the already precarious balance between humanity and the environment.”
“Land conversions have not only resulted in the loss of farmlands, but have also led to the further depletion of the nation’s forest cover,” adds the researchers.
Another study published in 2008 also pointed out that “conversion of farmland and forests to urban development reduces the amount of lands available for food and timber production.”
The loss of land doesn’t just affect us in the present but also in the future, as the land’s quality and agricultural productivity are reduced due to soil erosion, salinization, desertification and other forms of soil degradations. As farmlands also serve as a valuable habitat for many wildlife species, converting these areas may lead to biodiversity decline.
The impact of agriculture in the economy
“Kung ’yung mga cities, we can build homes, small homes for Filipinos para may bahay naman sila hindi sila squatter and then if we can build factories in the cities all over the Philippines para magkaroon ng alternative employment ang mga tao,” said Villar during the Sept. 1 hearing as well.
“’Yung labas ng syudad, ’yun ang gawing farmland. Hindi naman lahat gustong i-convert to homes and commercial, ’yung mga city lang ’yun eh. So bakit ipagbabawal ’yun eh importante din ’yun sa ekonomiya?” added the senator.
While the agricultural sector may have been facing challenges in growth over the previous year, it has been picking up as the only major economic sector to record a noteworthy increase based on the latest gross domestic product. In comparison, both the industry and services fell by 22.9 and 15.8 percent, respectively.
According to the August 2020 report of the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), agriculture managed to grow by 0.5 percent in the second quarter of 2020. In fact, crop production was able to record a five percent increase, and overall, the value of agricultural production amounted to P439.8 billion which is 4.6 percent higher than last year.
As of 2018, PSA also counts ten million people employed in the agriculture sector, representing a share of 24.30 percent to the national employment.
In 2019, Senator Kiko Pangilinan filed a bill that seeks to address unbridled land conversion by requiring additional certifications before developers can be granted a conversion permit.
According to data presented in the Senate press release about Pangilinan’s bill, “Luzon suffers most from massive land conversion, making up 80.6 percent of the entire country’s approved land conversions” while Visayas and Mindanao stand at 7.8 and 11.6 percent, respectively.
“Kritikal ito para matiyak ang food security ng ating bansa. Madalas, prime agricultural lands pa ang pinupuntiryang i-convert,” said Pangilinan.
As anthropologist and environmental advocate Gideon Lasco said in a tweet about Villar’s remarks, “the history of the Philippines is a history of land grabbing. Cynthia Villar’s shameless defense of the conversion of agriculture [sic] lands into subdivisions is an insult not just to Filipino farmers but to the Filipino struggle to be free,” and the reactions from netizens as the senator trended on Twitter showed that they, too, feel the same.
Header photo by Inquirer.net
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