I told you so!
At the onset of the Duterte administration, I shared the optimism of my good friends along with millions fellow Filipinos for a substantial and genuine change especially in agricultural policies.
Duterte’s SONA and the failing PH agriculture
President Rodrigo Duterte delivered his fourth State of the Nation Address (SONA) at the Batasang Pambansa complex earlier this week. Out of the more than nine thousand word speech of Duterte he only mentioned the word ‘agriculture’ once.
Mindanao rice farmers and the curse of RTL
For the past weeks, we in MASIPAG Mindanao carefully monitor the current prices of Palay and well-milled rice to see the direct impact relative to the promises made by the Duterte government upon its ratification of RA 11203 or commonly known as the Rice Tariffication Law (RTL).
“Duterte’s Golden Years of PH Agriculture”: Crisis and Bankruptcy
The perceived “Golden Years” of Philippine agriculture is nothing but another PR circus of this administration. The current state of Philippine agriculture under Duterte-Pinol leadership is in deep crises and bankruptcy.
2018: A bloody year for Filipino farmers
A couple of months ago I had a hiatus in writing in this column. The last quarter of 2018 was a terrible part of the year, forgive me I did not have enough courage to write the murders of farmers, farm-workers and a good friend farmer’s lawyer Ben Ramos. Grief and anger consumed me.