Decisively securing my place as the Queen of banana discourse by going to a collective farm and hacking down some of the darn things myself with a big machete. It fucking ruled
This is a bungkalan, a collective farm, in San Jose Del Monte, less than an hour outside Manila. The farm was created by the Bulacan Farmers Association, which is affiliated to the Kilusung Magbubukid ng Philipinas (Peasant Movement of the Philippines, the main peasant union in the country). A bungkalan is a collective assertion to the peasants' rights to till the land, a demonstration that they are developing and cultivating the land and therefore it should belong to them. The bananas sell for 18 pesos a kilo, and our motley crew of trade unionists helped harvest around 1500kg. They harvest once a month. The proceeds are split 50:50 between the peasants who work the land and inputs for the farm. They also successfully campaigned for a school to be built in the area for their children.
The Association formed in 1995, and in 1997 secured land titles to land belonging formerly to the Araneta family, a huge landowning clan directly descended from Spanish settlers. They own huge tracts of land in Negros, where sugar workers are paid around 200 pesos a day (£2.43) to work their lands. The Aranetas have been trying to get the land back ever since, hiring security guards to destroy their crops. Bananas have deep roots and are hard to pull up - hence their use in the bungkalan. They are also fighting off the Viller and Ayala families, along with Japanese corporations, who want to turn the area into a speculative development and financial hub. The fight of the Bulacan farmers is against some of the largest and most vicious actors in the Philippines semi feudal, semi colonial system.
I was lucky enough to sit down for a long time with the KMP organisers for the area to plan out some solidarity efforts we can do from the UK to support the struggle of the Bulacan farmers. One of the efforts we arrived at is raising money for a solar powered water pump. Their petrol one is too expensive to run due to the runaway cost of fuel resulting from the Iran War. As well as increasing production, irrigation also increases the claim that the peasants have to the land (lands without irrigation are exempted from land reform programmes). I'm waiting for them to send me the exact model and costings, but even the high end ones while unaffordable for peasant farmers on their own are easily within reach of people with access to hard currencies. So watch this space.
To read more about the struggle of farmers in San Jose Del Monte (as well as the extreme political repression they have endured which I'll write about separately tomorrow), see here:
Farming communities in San Jose Del Monte have become vital sources of agricultural products for Metro Manila. They have established their r
