Reports from Correspondents: Agrarian revolution reaps gains in Isabela
The agrarian revolution campaign continues to reap gains in the various guerrilla fronts of Isabela.
At the Reynaldo Pi�on Front in northeastern Isabela, an estimated 6,000 families in 40 villages in two towns have benefited from different forms of antifeudal struggle:
The price per kilo of corn was raised 60% (from P4.50-5.00 to P7.20).
The price per hundred pieces of banana was raised by P10 to P20 and fraudulent means of counting were stopped.
Interests on loans were successfully lowered 50% (from 30%-40% to 15%-20% per harvest).
Farmers also succeeded in blocking a deceptive DENR project from proceeding in a cluster of seven barrios in a town. The project would have evicted 1,000 families from their farms.
In another sitio in the same town, peasants who had long been tilling lands in the area were able to stop a landlord from having the lands surveyed, divided into parcels and titled for distribution to his children.
In a village in San Mariano, the take-home pay of farm workers for weeding was raised when they began being paid on the basis of the number of rows of rice plants they could weed instead of being paid by the day.
Rental for the use of corn shellers was lowered by P2/sack (from P10 per sack to P8/sack).
The farmers have also been waging struggle against the exploitative way corn and palay prices are set, where 20-50 centavos are shaved off the price per kilo due to resiko, or the expected reduction in weight once the grain dries.
At the Benito Tesorio Front in southern Isabela, farmers in a barrio waged organized struggle to resist the conspiracy between their barangay captain and a capitalist-landlord to grab their farms and have them planted to Gmelina.
At the Filomena Asuncion Front in northwestern Isabela, wages of farm workers hired on a gross rate contract basis (pakyawan) to plant palay were raised 16.7% in a cluster of barrios. Wages for sikka or uprooting rice seedlings were also raised, from 20 centavos to 25 centavos per kirkir or bundle of rice seedlings. One-hundred families immediately benefited.
In the same cluster of barrios, rental for the use of rice threshers was lowered from P10.00 to P7.00 per sack of palay.
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