The Philippines is one of the leading targets, along with Sudan, Pakistan, Ethiopia and Tanzania, for land deals to produce food for developed countries, the local research group IBON Foundation Inc. said on Thursday.
In a statement, the foundation warned Filipinos that the plan, if carried out, would endanger the country’s efforts to provide food security for its citizens.
IBON said the “land deals” were being undertaken despite provisions in the Constitution barring foreigners from owning land in the country.
The deals refer to purchases or long-term leases of large tracts of productive lands in poor countries like the Philippines by rich countries and corporations, IBON said. These rich countries or corporations need resources to produce crops either for food, feedstock or biofuels in commercial and export quantities.
“Allowing foreigners to own land or use large tracts for food production will not ensure stable food prices because the produce will eventually be exported back to the source countries at the prevailing global market prices,” IBON said.
“This will benefit foreign agribusiness corporations and their governments tremendously by increased profits from utilizing cheap land and labor in the host countries and reselling at speculation-driven prices.”
IBON also said these land deals would displace farmers by “destroy[ing] small-scale and backyard farming” that are prevalent in rural parts of the Philippines. Small-scale farming usually employs agriculture-based families that earn only through their produce.
IBON also said the land deals would make communities lose their rights to participate in food-distribution programs and host governments would also lose their chance to build food stocks, implement centralized procurement and further develop local markets.
It said the government has allocated 6 million hectares of “idle lands” for the production of sugar cane, coconut, cassava, jatropha and oil palm, among other crops. It has also allocated 2 million hectares for agribusiness development.
These are supervised by the Philippine Agribusiness Development Cooperation Center (PADCC) created in 2007 to manage idle lands that can be considered for agribusiness deals with other countries and corporations.
The PADCC, IBON said, facilitated the $300-million investment from a company in Bahrain and the local AMA group to establish a plantation in Davao del Norte for the export of bananas.
