Danilo Ramos, chairperson of the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP), today renewed his call for a Php1,200 daily family living wage for all agricultural workers nationwide, as reports of farm wages in Negros plunging to as low as P60 per day continue to surface.

“Farmworkers endure backbreaking labor that sustains our food systems, yet they are condemned to poverty wages. A Php1,200 daily living wage is not just justifiable—it is urgent and necessary,” Ramos said.

In Negros, where vast haciendas dominate the agricultural landscape, thousands of farmworkers are trapped in exploitative piece-rate (pakyawan) systems. Sugarcane workers, for example, are paid as little as Php1,800 to weed a hectare of land, a task that takes ten workers three days to complete—translating to a shocking P60 per worker per day. Even in more intensive tasks like seedling production (patdan), workers split Php1,000 for producing 10,000 seedlings, amounting to only Php333 each per day—well below subsistence.

Worse still, the Department of Labor and Employment’s official pakyaw rates are sometimes lower than these meager earnings, institutionalizing depressed wages rather than correcting them. The official rate for patdan production is pegged at Php930 per 10,000 seedlings, further driving down take-home pay.

“These government-mandated rates legalize oppression and slave wages,” Ramos asserted. “They betray the promise of dignified labor and deepen peasant landlessness, forcing more Negrense farmers to become cheap labor in haciendas.”

The Php1,200 living wage demand is anchored on cost-of-living estimates, with the Western Visayas regional family living wage already pegged at Php1,039 per day in 2024. Ramos emphasized that agricultural workers, who often have irregular incomes due to seasonal work, require even higher guaranteed daily wages to ensure family security.

“Our farmworkers deserve wages that can sustain a family, send children to school, and allow decent living—not rates that entrench hunger and hopelessness,” Ramos concluded. He called on Congress to prioritize legislation mandating a national family living wage, and urged the Department of Labor to abolish outdated, oppressive pakyaw rates.”

Ramos also lambasted the DOLE and government economic managers for washing their hands of the workers’ crisis, hiding behind regional wage boards that give out crumbs instead of living wages. “For 36 years, regional wage boards have locked over five million minimum wage earners in poverty—delivering adjustments that are both inadequate and insulting,” the KMP leader and Makabayan senatorial bet concluded. ###