Beneficiaries affected by aerial spray issue

MANILA, Philippines – Agrarian reform beneficiaries in Davao will be the most affected sector if the ban on aerial spraying in banana plantations pushes through.

The Department of Agrarian Reform has taken cognizance of the problem of the ARC during a recent dialogue held in Quezon City with Presidential Agrarian Reform Council for policy planning headed by Gerundion Madueno.

The ARBs were invited to attend the executive meeting with PARC since the issue on aerial spraying involved policy formulation and most of the concerned government agencies, like the Departments of Agriculture and Environment and Natural Resources, are also part of PARC.

At the meeting, the ARB representatives expressed their concerns that their livelihood and their ability to pay their amortization for the land granted them under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) will be in jeopardy if aerial spraying is banned in the country.

According to them, most small time banana growers with contract to multi-national companies will lose their livelihood since the MNCs hinted going elsewhere should aerial spray be banned.

“That means, we will not be able to pay our land amortizations, put food on the table, and pay for the schooling of our kids,” they said.

Aerial spraying is a generally accepted practice worldwide to combat the spread of plant diseases because it is the most cost effective, reliable and, by far, safest.

Euberto Catayas, land reform beneficiary from Mindanao, told to the PARC that it is not insecticide that are being used to control fungus, its fungicide which contains only one percent of its chemical substance wherein it is being mixed with oil. It has a very low level of toxicity and it is approved and highly regulated by the Department of Agriculture (DA) and the Fertilizer and Pesticide Authority.

He said those clamoring to be victims of aerial spray are not workers nor residents of the nearby banana plantations, they are fake claimants. He furthered that a manifesto supporting aerial spraying has been signed by thousands of banana stakeholders, majority of whom are agrarian reform beneficiaries and small growers.

Lawyer Eduardo Hernandez, landowner representative from Visayas, said that the issue is scientific, thus, it needs scientific evidence that is verifiable and testable. He added that the banana industry handles its operations very carefully since it ranks second in the entire world in production and its quality possibly the best. Any negative report would push the market away, especially the finicky Japanese (the country’s single biggest market). –Perseus Echeminada (The Philippine Star)