For almost a month, it had been raining hard, day and night, in Baguio and Benguet. for almost a month already.
Farmers were the hardest hit. Most, if not all, farms here are small and family owned. As such, it is impossible to achieve economies of scale for efficiency or lower costs, which corporate farms can easily achieve with their huge capital and vast farm lands.
So, in general, farmers around are just living a hand to mouth existence or just a notch above that. Many of them have to borrow money from the neighborhood usurer to buy farm inputs every planting season.
Thus, it is a big disaster for them when calamities such as continuous rains for weeks and weeks, or strong typhoons, hit them. Their crops would be gone along with their capacity to pay back the debt they incurred to have their farms planted.
For how long will they wait to have the chance to recoup their losses? Several months, at the very least.
While farm insurance might be the remedy to protect farmers from such dire situations, it is only being tried to be implemented by the government only lately, about a year or two ago. Can farm insurance be efficient and without corruption under the government? That would be an impossibility in this country.
While wage earners in cities are also living a hand to mouth existence, a calamity can make their lives difficult but that can only last for a few days. After the floods or the rains, they will have their jobs to go back to.
If they are independent contractors like taxi drivers who are paid with a percentage of their daily take, a bad day would mean just a day. He could recoup on the next day, or two days after, or even more days after, what he did not make on a bad day. At least, unlike the farmer, he would not have to wait for months to get that chance.
Of course, it is easy to say that people should prepare for such bad times but that is easier said than done when you are living just a hand to mouth existence.
Insurance programs for such people should be designed that would be subsidized by the government. That would be a way towards achieving a more equitable distribution of wealth.
Would the government be able to afford that? The needed amount would be nothing compared to what is being lost due to the corruption of politicians and government bureaucrats. **