On Saturday, July 20, farmers, fishers, peasant women, agricultural workers, and land reform advocates, together with networks advocating food security will present the State of the Peasant Address (SOPA), as they reiterate the just demand of Filipinos and the peasant masses for genuine agrarian reform.

KMP said genuine agrarian reform addresses the Filipino peasantry’s historical plight for social justice, provides rural jobs and livelihoods, builds food self-sufficiency, protects the environment, and builds the foundation for national industrialization.

Such a program also resolves the land problem by mobilizing peasants and exercising State power to (1) break up land monopoly, (2) freely distribute land to tillers, (3) promote cooperativization, (4) provide intensive support services, and (5) build rural industries towards national development.

The people have put Marcos Jr to the test and he failed. He failed the difficult task of resolving the worsening economic crisis. In fact, the programs and policies under his presidency exacerbated the national situation.

The livelihood and situation of the Filipino peasantry have not improved ever since the Marcos Sr. era of PD 27 and Masagana 99. We have come full circle. The layers of problems created during Marcos Sr’s so-called “Golden Age” led to more issues under Marcos Jr.

The group reiterates that the assertion of genuine land reform is crucial in achieving food security and rice self-sufficiency for the Filipino people. Rice is life for Filipinos but the population will always remain food insecure and hungry as long as there is no genuine land reform in the country. Farmers must defend and protect lands devoted to rice and food production from perennial land-grabbing and land-use conversion.

While the DA and Marcos Jr claim that they are devoted to modernizing local agriculture, they neglect that genuine agrarian reform and free land distribution are necessary for agricultural transformation. Based on KMP’s data, seven out of 10 farmers remain landless, farmers have no legal ownership nor effective control over the lands they till, and rice farms are dwindling in size and insufficient. Haciendas and big landholdings remain intact. There are 1.2 million and 1.6 million hectares of current and proposed plantations devoted to banana, pineapple, oil palm, and other cash crops for export to the US, China, Japan, and Europe.

On July 22, landless and poor farmers, peasant women, fisherfolks, and rural youth will further commit to the advancement of genuine agrarian reform as they march with broad sectors to protest the sham State of the Nation Address (SONA) of Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. #