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�Victory is sweeter when it is born out of our action and struggle. If we are tempered in the furnace of facing and solving problems head on, our unity and capacity to fight become as hard as steel.� More than 65,000 peasants from the Ilocos-Cordillera region directly benefited from agrarian revolution this year. According to Dangadang, the revolutionary newspaper in Ilocos and the Cordilleras, benefits such as wage increases, enhanced production and expansion of farm land and work opportunities are concrete gains now enjoyed by the farmer-beneficiaries. Simultaneously, they also gained in terms of more experience in collective action and struggle, the development of their minds and knowledge and heightened fighting spirit. Revolutionary peasant organizations in a number of barrios in Ilocos Sur succeeded in April to have loans incurred the past three years rescheduled, have the compounded interest on them abolished and the monthly interest rates on current loans reduced from 10% (or 120% annually) to 5%. Various forms of action were launched including convening barangay assemblies to persuade koboys (tobacco merchants) to reduce interest. Capital for credit was provided by the trading centers, but it was the koboys that lent it to the farmers in the form of cash or inputs. The trading centers are companies owned by bureaucrat capitalists who buy tobacco for imperialist companies that manufacture cigarettes. In three contiguous barrios in a guerrilla zone in Ilocos Sur, the farm workers� daily wage was raised by P20 to P30. Under the leadership of the peasants� organizing group (OG), the middle peasants were persuaded to support the struggle and convince the rich peasants to raise wages. Due to this victory, other nearby barrios were able to launch campaigns to raise farm workers� wages. Interest on every 10 bettek (bundle of unhusked rice) borrowed was reduced from four to two bettek in a guerrilla zone in Abra. A breakthrough was achieved in some barrios in Abra and Kalinga in the collective construction of payaw or rice terraces. The projects were led by the OGs in the area. The mountains on which the payaw were constructed were allocated to poor and lower-middle peasants. Prior to this, the construction of payaw had stopped for a long time due to the absence collective action. A breakthrough was also achieved in making a communal uma (Iloko term for swidden farm). The venture led by the peasant women�s OG is meant to augment food production for the women�s families and the NPA. The women also initiated the gathering, accumulation and propagation of seeds for planting. From the women�s example, the construction of communal uma and fishponds also gained momentum nearby barrios. In Kalinga, the revolutionary peasant organizations revived the use sunflowers and other organic soil fertilizers instead of buying commercial fertilizers. Their palay production grew. Cooperatives that had been dormant for some time after mass organizations were destroyed in the 1990s due to disorientation have likewise been reactivated. For instance, farming implements are now made by blacksmith shops run by cooperatives in some barrios in Abra and Kalinga. Alluyon, ubbo, innabuyog and other forms of agricultural cooperation are once more being practiced enthusiastically in various guerrilla zones in the Cordilleras. 
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