Food Sovereignty People's Forum Series: Looking at Agriculture with Holistic Thinking

Text by Zhang Shenghan, Editor in charge / Li Yize

Photography / Yang Wanyun (Source: Lihpao, "Defending Food Sovereignty, Farmers Speak Out on Ketagalan Boulevard")

Editor's note: This article follows [Food Sovereignty People's Forum] Series. "Agriculture," a Holistic Way of Thinking - Ecological Agriculture in Practice in the Philippines (Part 1), and documents Mr. Jaime San Luis Tadeo, an important member of a Philippine farmers' organization, sharing the experience of ecological agriculture in the Philippines.

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The international grassroots farmers' organization "La Via Campesina" held two ecological agriculture workshops in the Philippines and Thailand in 2012, and the Philippine portion was held with Paragos as its base. Although the Philippines has international agricultural research organizations such as the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), attention to ecological agriculture still relies on civil society groups. This Ketagalan Boulevard forum specifically invited Mr. Jaime San Luis Tadeo, an important member of Paragos, to share the philosophy of practicing ecological agriculture in the Philippines, in order to show the importance of bringing agricultural technology back into the hands of small farmers.

1. Taiwan and the Philippines are both located in areas frequently hit by typhoons. How should ecological farming methods face natural disasters?

The Philippines' crop disaster insurance is not as adequate as Japan's, and Jaime believes this must be improved. In addition, ecological farming methods differ from large-scale monoculture planting by mixing multiple crops and multiple agricultural production modes (for example: cultivation, gathering, and raising livestock in parallel) that take the overall ecological cycle into account. In this way, even when natural disasters strike, losses can be reduced, and at least one will not lose all sources of income at once.

2.How exactly does the monopoly of knowledge harm agricultural production?

Jaime said that he himself keeps in contact with some technical staff at IRRI, discussing together how to carry out agricultural production activities under the principle of not using chemical fertilizers and pesticides. But if farmers cannot establish contact with IRRI as he does, then farmers' organizations must step in to handle local agricultural production, the transmission of information, and the accumulation of knowledge. In fact, one of the important purposes of forming "La Via Campesina" is to promote the exchange of farming knowledge and technology among small farmers as much as possible, in order to counter the monopoly of agribusinesses and research institutions - multinational agribusinesses use methods such as seed patents and chemical agriculture to set thresholds for technology, knowledge, and capital, making it impossible for farmers to fully control the production process of their crops, so that farmers' income and survival are controlled by these enterprises.

Wu Dongjie of Green Alliance also added that in response to the urgent situation of chemical agriculture and extreme climate, ecological agriculture appears even more important. At the same time, the principle of food sovereignty is not necessarily exclusive to the state; it can also refer to communities and groups/people. A concept similar to "community granary," which emphasizes local communities, is also a feasible approach that uses ecological agriculture and asserts food sovereignty.

3.Did the ecological farming methods promoted by Jaime in the Philippines receive support from government resources?

Jaime answered frankly that they did not. But he also stressed that many agricultural technical staff in the Philippines actually work very hard, even having to work 16 hours a day. The problem lies in the corruption of the government's overall operation and its consistently developmentalist attitude, so agriculture has never received attention from the state's public authorities.

4.If small farmers do not even have their own land and must rent from others, thus facing pressure to increase yields in order to pay rent, is it still possible to adopt ecological farming methods?

Jaime admitted that this is indeed a problem, and he believes government intervention is very important. Tenant farmers should not be forced to bear all the risks themselves, and the government must provide more assistance from a holistic perspective. However, the problem in the Philippines is that the government is corrupt and incompetent. The purpose of government should originally be to take care of the people, but the president obviously does not understand the situation and merely wastes the budget on the industrial sector, without taking into account the agricultural sector, which is more fundamental to the people's survival. This point also drew considerable response from the audience. As Teacher Xu Shirong later said at the food sovereignty evening event, the Taiwan government's claim of "fostering industry with agriculture and developing agriculture with industry" has only ever fulfilled the first phrase. In the government's policy priorities, whenever industrial development is involved, agriculture is always what gets sacrificed.

Conclusion

Jaime from the Philippines is quite talkative. Although language barriers meant relying on translation, the audience's questions and discussion were still very lively. From Jaime's expression and words, the audience could also feel his amazing enthusiasm for promoting ecological agriculture. Yet when the people of the two countries worked hard to share and exchange, it also highlighted the common predicament of governments ignoring the agricultural sector and still clinging to developmentalism to this day; as well as the direction in which agricultural support groups need to connect with one another and work together.