By Estanislao Albano, Jr.
Without the landless farm laborers, the wide ricelands of the Tabuk Valley would not produce much for the owners and for the economy of the locality. These laborers prepare the land, plant the rice, tend the crop, harvest and dry the produce. In so doing, apart from making the land yield, the laborers also allow the landed residents freedom to pursue other economic activities.
They do not mind the mud, they are inured to the itchy dust of the palay and are used to the physical exertion required by the different tasks in the rice production cycle. At times they perform these tasks under the noonday sun or during inclement weather, even during holidays because the schedule of cropping activities cannot be adjusted without negative consequences on the crop. There are even instances when they are in the ricefields in the dead of the night when the rest of the city is asleep. One such instance is during long dry spells when there is hardly enough irrigation water to go around. They go to the fields at night to ensure nobody takes the water before the crop is adequately watered. During the harvest, there may be times they have to guard threshed palay or the unthreshed heaps of palay left in the field.
Without the laborers, Tabuk landowners would have been hard put to make their lands yield anything and arguably, the current progress of the city would have not been achieved given the fact that its economy basically depends on its rice industry.
It is for their key role in the history of the city particularly the Tabuk Valley that our farm laborers should not be left to fend for themselves in the face of the crisis which hit them since the combine harvesters took away their reaping work. It should also be noted that once the farmers of the valley adopt the transplanter technology, there practically would be no more farm work for our farm laborers.
At the advent of the combine harvester in the valley, the Department of Agriculture (DA) and the Office of the City Agricultural Services (OCAS) moved in to cushion the impact of the development by organizing farm service provider organizations and assisting them with small farm machineries. As implicitly acknowledged by City Agriculturist Julibert Aquino, however, the program was inadequate because not all the farm labor groups in the city were benefitted and likewise, the farm equipment given were of the superseded technology. Aquino, however, the DA has recently granted the Appas Farm Providers’ Organization a rotavator worth P800,000.00 even as he expressed the hope that other active farm providers’ groups will be similarly assisted soon.
While we continue to pin our hopes on the national government to upgrade its program for farm laborers, the LGU could play a more active and direct part in helping the sector find substitutes for their lost livelihood source and, in the long run, to finally graduate from extreme poverty. In pursuit of this, a comprehensive study on why the sector remains poor amidst the improving conditions of similarly placed groups could be made so that the LGU, other government agencies and even well meaning private organizations which may take interest in their situation would be guided. This is suggested because of the observations that members of our farm labor sector, generally speaking, are weighed down by behavior, attitudes and values which make progress difficult. (This is one of the two editorials of the 4th quarter issue of the Tabuk Life, the official publication of the Tabuk City LGU, last year. ) **
