An immodest proposal

Sometimes, the best way to uncover the real motives for outwardly inexplicable actions is to let some time pass. In the case of the controversial proposed nationwide ban on aerial spraying of fungicides in banana plantations in Mindanao, it’s becoming clearer and clearer that neither the public’s health nor the protection of the environment are the true concerns of the various NGOs pushing it.

The news from the Department of Health has the various anti-spraying groups proposing to gather more data on the effects of the method of stopping the Sigatoka fungus through a comprehensive new study that will cost P27 billion a year per 1,000 people who may have been exposed to chemicals sprayed by low-flying airplanes in the plantation. That’s not a misprint, we’ve been told—that’s exactly how much the NGOs say they need to fund a new study.

And the beauty of it all is, the NGOs don’t even want the government to pay for the new study, like it did the first one that caused the entire controversy. No, the anti-spraying lobby wants the banana industry, the same industry that they are accusing of poisoning the people and the environment, to foot the bill this time.

The proposal is so breathtakingly wrong on so many levels, it can make your head spin. But let’s break down the suggestion of the NGOs and see how it works out.

The banana industry grows its high-value, export-oriented and labor-intensive Cavendish plants on 65,000 hectares of land in Mindanao. Industry practice mandates the employment of two workers per hectare, which translates to roughly 130,000 people directly working on the plantations.

Now, according to the proposal of Dr. Allan Dionisio, whose group of anti-pesticide advocates conducted the much-criticized study on a small village in Davao three years ago, that would mean that the banana planters would have to shell out P3.51 TRILLION—an amount that’s thrice the entire national budget and 10 times the annual earnings of the banana industry—for a “health surveillance system” that would gather “solid data on neurodevelopment.” And that’s just what it will cost to study the banana plantation workers themselves for one year, not including other people like their families, who have also supposedly been exposed to poisonous, aerially sprayed fungicide.

One could reasonably be expected to ask several questions, in the light of this revelation: Who would conduct such a costly study, requiring as it does staggering amounts of money? How much did Dionisio and his fellow researchers, who submitted the original report based on a study funded by the health department three years ago, require for the first data-gathering expedition? Why didn’t Dionisio and his team just get their much-maligned study right the first time?

And why, oh why, should the banana industry—which insists that decades of spraying fungicides from the air has in no way harmed its workers or their environment—be saddled with the exorbitant burden of proving something that Dionisio and his NGO partners have been asserting? Shouldn’t Dionisio and his fellow anti-spraying lobbyists pick up the tab for proving their claims, since the burden is theirs as the accusers?

There are only two inevitable conclusions that can be drawn from this new proposal of the anti-spraying groups: They either want the expensive studies conducted to benefit themselves and/or their biased and favored “researchers,” or they want to bankrupt an industry that they have decided is their sworn enemy, even if it gives employment to hundreds of thousands of people, taxes to the government and development to many Mindanao areas. Or both.

And, by admitting that they need a new, more comprehensive study on the effects of the aerial spraying, they have virtually admitted that the evils of this method of controlling banana-plant pests have not really been conclusively proven—even if they proclaim the “proofs” in the Dionisio study as gospel every chance they get. Neat, huh?

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In Davao City, Mayor Rodrigo Duterte recently witnessed first-hand how the aerial spraying controversy has hurt the local residents whom he loves. But the 2,000 families now suffering in Barangay Mandug were not felled by the various ailments that Dionisio and his allies have been alleging, but because the local banana plantation closed down since it could no longer use this cost-effective method to control fungicide due to a local ban.

The Lapanday banana plantation in Mandug was forced to close early this year after a Davao City ordinance banned aerial spraying against Sigatoka. The operators of the plantation also discovered that they could not control the fungus, which blackens and kills banana plants, using the ground-level spraying methods favored by the NGOs who support the ban.

Duterte himself has not spoken openly for or against the ban pushed by the city council—which has been contested in the courts—but the mayor’s recent visit to Mandug may soon change that. “Let’s wait for the courts’ decision,” Duterte told barangay officials who met him during his visit. “We can very well see who are the real victims now, and who is saying the truth.”

The Court of Appeals has earlier ruled that the ban imposed by the Davao council is unconstitutional and has also thrown out a motion for reconsideration filed by the NGOs. But the case probably won’t be resolved, Duterte knows, until the Supreme Court rules on the matter somewhere down the road.

Unlike the non-resident members of the NGOs against aerial spraying, who wallow in funds given by their foreign donors fed unverified stories of people dying of “poison rain” in the plantations, the jobless, angry and suffering people of Mandug have no one but Duterte to turn to now. And unlike the fake “victims” from other places being paraded by the NGOs, the people of Mandug have a real stake in the locality —and now they have no real livelihood, because of the ban.

Duterte, who is known to be fiercely protective of his city’s residents, will certainly have a lot to say about the ban, when the time comes. In the meantime, no one can blame him if he privately curses the NGOs who have made life so difficult for 2,000 families who once had gainful, productive and meaningful employment in the Mandug plantation. –Jojo Robles, Manila Standard Today