Executive Order (EO) 101 was pompously signed on October 24, to fully implement Republic Act No. 11321, or the Sagip Saka Act, which allows state agencies to purchase products direct from farmers and fisherfolk without public bidding. Senator Kiko Pangilinan, the sponsor of the law, called it a “huge victory.”

This did not please farmers who described it as “another superficial measure” that will not resolve the agriculture sector’s deeply-rooted crisis. According to the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP), the order is “lacking” and “tokenistic” because it avoids confronting landlessness and other fundamental problems faced by millions of people.

It said the order is narrow and focuses only on the market, treating farmers and fisherfolk as “suppliers” while offering no solution to the basic problem of lack of support and subsidy for production, on top of the long-standing issues of landlessness, land-use conversion, and neoliberal policies that orient production toward imports and dependency on exported equipment and inputs.

“EO 101 treats farmers as mere vendors and not as main productive forces in the rural and national economy, and partners in building food self-sufficiency and national development,” KMP chairperson Danilo Ramos said. He said Marcos brazenly disregards the roots of rural poverty, to landlessness, neoliberal policies that destroy local agriculture, and perennial state neglect.

“Farmers do not just need a buyer for their produce. They need the means to produce in the first place — control over the land, capital, equipment, insurance, protection, among others,” Ramos said. “This order fails to provide those.”