Peasants oppose fraudulent practices of banana buyers
Banana cultivation is widespread among peasants in South Quezon. Bananas are among the people's secondary agricultural products and one of their staple foods. Banana cultivation also augments the peasants' earnings, especially when it is off-season for making copra, their primary source of income.
Merchants buy bananas as fresh fruit. Bananas are a main ingredient in making ketchup. Raw bananas are made into chips while the overripe ones are sweetened or fermented into vinegar and wine. Fruit oils are also extracted from banana and used to flavor food and beverages like tea. Bananas are likewise useful in treating many disorders like anemia and high blood pressure, among others.
Banana production and trade in the province are small-scale, scattered and backward, unlike in the sprawling corporate farms of transnational companies and banana plantations in Mindanao. Bananas are usually cultivated in small coconut fields by poor and middle peasants who can hardly make ends meet. It takes a whole year of tending banana trees before they bear fruit.
Bananas are usually bought by small merchants based in sitios and barangays at P40-45/hundred. It is these merchants who usually directly transport the bananas to Manila or sell them to haulers at the price of P75-80/hundred. A week's haul usually consists of 15,000 to 20,000 bananas.
Merchants generally underprice the peasants by setting extremely low prices for the bananas, cheating in the counting and arbitrarily classifying or setting too high a standard for the bananas. The merchants are able to amass such huge profits because while they buy bananas per piece at low prices in the countryside, in the cities and town centers where bananas are sold by the kilo, the price of bananas doubles.
The most common way for merchants to rake in big profits is to cheat in the counting of bananas through such schemes as "pitaw," "talsik", "may bali," "limahan" and "panilyo".
In the "pitaw" system, bananas are counted in pairs. But bunches with odd-numbered bananas are common, since one or two pieces usually fall off the ends. The odd banana is considered "pitaw" (detached or fallen off) and goes to the merchant for free.
A "may bali" sale takes place when merchants grade the bananas as "undersized". The bananas are likewise counted in pairs, but with each pair priced at only 50 centavos (or 25 centavos a piece) instead of the usual 40-45 centavos per piece.
In "limahan," bananas in a bunch are counted in fives. The odd ones (three pieces of banana, for instance) are considered "talsik" (rejected) and go to the merchant for free.
The merchants receive half a bunch (called "panilyo") for free for every hundred bananas counted. For every 500 pieces counted, they get a whole bunch as "panilyo". The merchants routinely choose the biggest bunch in the lot as their "panilyo."
Resisting fraudulent practices in the system of counting and grading bananas is but one aspect of the overall struggle to raise the prices of all farm products. The ongoing struggle to reap immediate benefits for the peasantry is part of the process of advancing agrarian revolution step-by-step.
Simultaneously, peasant associations are strengthened and expanded until they encompass entire barrios. In the future, the peasant associations may serve as production cooperatives so that peasants can collectively confront exploitative merchants and demand just prices for their products, aside from other benefits.
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