`The countryside that feeds it’

The line from Pres. Arroyo’s State of the Nation Address that played over and over in my mind was: ``Perhaps it’s time to take the power from the center to the countryside that feeds it.’’ GMA received a roaring applause from her promdi (proudly promdi, obviously) supporters. That line lingered like a long-lost refrain that was suddenly, if not conveniently, found.

In saying that, the President was obviously playing to the gallery of supporters from local government units who, at the tipping point of her government’s crisis early this month, rallied around her when many in her own official family abandoned ship. Was GMA’s ode to loyalty perhaps the fruit of her intimate town hall-type campaign sortie during the 2004 elections, a strategy she used to counter FPJ’s crowd-drawing power?

With that statement, GMA was also making a dig at so-called ``imperialist Manila’’, the center of the protest rallies calling for her resignation. Oh, but how her provincial cheering squad in the Batasan rafters reveled in her words. Outside, a mammoth protest rally calling for her ouster was setting her effigy on fire.

The context in which the statement was said may have been full of contradictions and sounded unconvincing to her critics, but taken at face value, the statement sounded like music to the ears of the oft-forgotten local officials who suddenly found themselves important. Perhaps many had all the reasons to feel KSP (kulang sa pansin) for so long, until last Monday’s SONA.

Taken at face value and without its political color, the statement ``Perhaps it’s time to take the power from the center to the countryside that feeds it’’ is indeed a reality to wish for. This is a loaded statement that should not be glibly uttered to merely warm the cockles of the hearts of those far from the center. It should hold weight like a promise made after one is nearly struck down from one’s horse.



While the statement has a political ring to it, it might as well be taken literally.
``...the countryside that feeds it.’’ For so long, the countryside, the provider of food and raw materials for our national sustenance, has felt neglected by the national government. It has always been lip service on the part of many politicians.

During election time, it is usually the dense urban population that politicians woo because the votes are there in concentration. The campaigner does not have to cover a big geographical area. Last year, while gathering data for a series on families living near the railroad tracks, I photographed shanties pasted over with campaign posters with promises that went down with the rain (the promises, that is) after only one rainy season.

The city’s squatters (now euphemistically known as informal dwellers) do get a lot of attention or, if they’re lucky, the fruits of their votes. Not far from where I live in Quezon City is a depressed area blessed with cemented roads. The tax payers in the nearby area have to live with potholes and clogged canals.

I am not saying the urban poor should not get services. They should. But while they are able to demand from the national government new homes and services in relocation areas, many poor public school teachers in the provinces have no decent homes and safe water to drink, many have to walk through muddy fields to get to their classrooms. They are all but forgotten. No wonder, many from the provinces go to the cities to join the ``informal’’ dwellers.

If we have to get literal with the word ``feeds’’ in the SONA statement, then it is the food producers and providers in the countryside that should take center stage. I wish GMA had named them as such in the context of ``the countryside feeding the (center)’’. Or might she just have been referring to her loyal political supporters from ``the countryside’’? For they had indeed fed support to the center which was/is on the brink of collapse.

Speaking of farmers and the agricultural sector, they should find alarming the new global push for extremely restrictive seed laws or ``agricultural apartheid.’’ These seed laws, says GRAIN’s Seedling Magazine, are supposed to have little to do with protection of farmers and a lot to do with creating conditions for the private seed industry to gain and control markets worldwide. Seed laws are about repression of farmers.

GRAIN says: ``Back in the 1960s, seed laws referred to rules governing the commercialization of seeds: what materials could be sold on the market under what conditions. From the 1960s through the 1980s, agencies like FAO and the World Bank played a very strong role in getting developing countries to adopt seed laws. The main idea, officially speaking, was to ensure that only `good quality’ planting materials reach farmers in order to raise productivity and therefore feed growing populations.

``However, the marketing rules that the FAO and the World Bank effectively pushed came from Europe and North America, the very place where the seed industry is in place.’’

Alas, seeds are now produced by seed industry professionals and no longer by farmers themselves. Europe is supposed to be hardest hit by seed laws all these years and activists are working hard to reverse the system. Farmer-controlled seed systems have to be encouraged, they have to thrive if developing countries are to have ``autonomous, culturally meaningful and socially-supported forms of agriculture’’ in different countries.’’

What is the government doing to protect our farmers who feed and nourish us?
If you want to know more about the alarming seed laws, visit www.grain.org/seedling.