Loren Legarda’s Rural Résumé

Written By Mikael Borres

As Deputy Speaker Legarda was unable to participate in the usual Zoom interview due to her heavy schedule, Fascinating Features and the deputy speaker’s campaign team arranged an alternative setup instead. We provided her team with the questions, and she answered them through video submission. 

What do a burgeoning Philippines look like?

Perhaps, for many Filipinos, a burgeoning Philippines looks like an urban metropolis of some sort. Cars are waiting for the yellow traffic lights to signal to go whilst under rail-over-road tracks for sleek trains that were ordered from Japan; debonair residents are living in swanky skyscrapers that look over Manila Bay; dogs are walking with their owners in wide public parks situated between those swanky skyscrapers. This ambition is rather reminiscent of the concrete jungles of New York, Seoul, and London portrayed on our screens.

And it’s an ambition that’s not only an unfeasible pipedream (given the current political and economic make-up of the Philippines), but it’s also a careless disregard of what the Philippines is.

The urban centres of Metro Manila, Metro Davao, and Metro Cebu thrived (and are thriving) on the backs of the country’s rural communities that produced our country’s food supply. From the Illongo farmers whose bodies are constantly arched from their seed planting in the morning to the Ifugao fisherfolks whose resolve remains strong even when their boats are weakened and destroyed by numerous natural calamities — our nation only exists because of those who live in the greener, quieter sides of the Philippine archipelago.

But despite the toil that rural Filipinos do for their fellow countrymen, they are merely an afterthought when discussing public policy on national development. In all aspects of life —  including access to healthcare and education, and economic opportunities — rural Filipinos receive bottom-of-the-barrel service in exchange for their hard work and dedication.

For this upcoming general election, voters — especially the city-dwelling beneficiaries — should reward the men and women who keep us well-fed by considering candidates who will finally put the far-flung areas of the Philippines first.

Among those candidates vying for a position this election, Senate candidate Loren Legarda hopes to lead the charge in realizing a rural development policy she considers to be “inclusive, equitable, resilient, and sustainable.”

Such purpose is based on the body of experience she built as a former senator who passed key legislation that promoted rural production (such as the Philippine Tropical Fabrics Law, which mandates government uniforms and other materials that use Philippine tropical fabrics to be made from local businesses) and rural economic growth (like the Barangay Kabuhayan Act, which established job skills training centres in low-income class municipalities (those whose annual average income is or below PHP 35 million).

In an interview with Fascinating Features, the former senator and House of Representatives deputy speaker heralds her past efforts to promote rural development in her home province and across the Philippines, then outlines her plans to realize the rural development policy she envisions for the country.

On Legarda’s Rural Résumé

Legarda speaking with vendors at the 2022 Antique Trade and Tourism Fair.

It’s easy for a politician to proclaim their love for the rustic communities and agrarian workers, even when their experience with the Philippine countryside is visiting distant relatives for Holy Week. Legarda, however, can stray from making false pronouncements by touting her long-time service in protecting the environment and creating jobs as the prime evidence of caring for rural Filipinos.

“As a three-term senator, I championed the strengthening of rural livelihoods in the Senate,” she says, “and authored laws like the Barangay Kabuhayan Act, which establishes livelihoods and skills training in the fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-class municipalities of the country to open employment opportunities to our fellow Filipinos.”

Her commitment to rural development also stems from her hometown origins. A daughter of quaint and rural Antique, she then went on to serve as her province’s sole representative in the House of Representatives; it’s an office she still holds today.

“As the Representative of the Lone District of Antique in the House of Representatives, we resolutely served the Kasimanwa, a term we used to refer to our fellow Antiqueños by launching projects that were aimed at uplifting the life of every Antiqueño. 

“Before my term [as Antique’s house representative], Antique lived in the shadows of our neighbouring provinces; but in a span of just less than three years, we were able to revive its glory and steer resilience and sustainability in the province. We took the challenge and pushed for continued change towards better education, more jobs, quality healthcare services, and a green, resilient, and sustainable province with zero tolerance for corruption.”

With this commitment to her rural province, she doesn’t shy away from expounding on her previous achievements.

Deputy Speaker Loren Legarda on her past accomplishments related to rural development in the Philippines during her interview with Fascinating Features.

On Philippine Farming (Agriculture Smuggling & Trade Liberalization)

The cornerstone of the Philippine countryside is farming; and although the share of the agricultural sector has decreased as other aspects of the nation’s production such as manufacturing and service expanded, it is still a major employer of Filipinos (about one in four people work in the sector), particularly rural residents. There, any developments and proposals in Philippine agriculture must be scrutinized to determine their impacts on a key aspect of our economy.

One major development in Philippine agriculture is the passage of Republic Act (R.A.) No. 8178, more commonly known as the  Rice Tariffication Law (RTL). RTL opened the Philippine rice market to foreign rice produce by replacing the quantitative restrictions (QRs) that limited the import and export of rice with a tariff on all rice imports. According to Department of Agriculture Secretary William Dar in November 2021, RTL led to the lowering of rice prices by PHP7 per kilo (from PHP45 in 2018 to PHP38 in 2021 at the time of making that statement). 

Another aspect of the law that should be mentioned is that the tariffs collected from imported rice goods become appropriations for the Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund, which intends to support farmers and the rice industry. This support includes grants to purchase modern planting equipment, funding for research on seed breed development and improved training in farm schools, and loans to farmers and agricultural cooperatives.

The downside to RTL, as noted by the law’s critics, is that farmers are heavily disadvantaged when trying to put their crops in a market where they have to beat the imports. Even when the government imposes tariffs on foreign rice, they are still cheaper than locally-produced rice. This is due to the rising costs Filipino farmers have to pay as part of their production. Under the new Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion (TRAIN) Law, according to the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (Philippine Peasant Movement), farmers have to pay more in excise tax when buying petroleum products — thus increasing the prices of their goods to cover higher expenses.

Legarda, who extended support for Antique’s farmers and fisherfolks as part of her collaboration with several department agencies such as the Philippine Carabao Center and the Bureau of Fisheries, signifies that she sides with the critics of RTL. “I believe the law must be reviewed and amended,” she says. “The RTL has been difficult for our farmers, especially the smallholders because they have to compete with the rice imports.

“The RTL has led to a decline in farmgate prices [the price of the product available at the farm].”

The deputy speaker is also wary of the illegal importation of vegetables, cereals, and fruits, also known as agricultural smuggling. Agricultural smuggling, when proliferated, results in the detriment of an agrarian economy since products have to compete with foreign goods that evade customs duties. During a Senate hearing on the issue, Agot Balanoy, a public relations officer of the League of Associations at the La Trinidad Vegetable Trading Areas, stated that local carrot farmers lose PHP2.5 million due to the smuggling of foreign carrots. Government revenues also decreased from agricultural smuggling; between 2013 and 2014, the Philippine government lost USD1.26 million in revenue.

“Smuggling endangers the lives of farmers and their families as well as those in the supply chain. Aside from our laws and regulations, the implementing agencies and enforcement agencies must be more vigilant in stopping this illegal trade,” Legarda asserts.

She’s referring to the lacklustre impacts of previous attempts to crack down on the problem. The most notable example she cites is RA No. 10845, also known as the Anti-Agricultural Smuggling Act of 2016. The law stipulates that agricultural smuggling is “economic sabotage”; any who commits such sabotage described in the law shall face life imprisonment and a fine of twice the fair value of the smuggled agricultural product.

But even with such harsh penalties, the enforcement of the law is still rather deficient as the agencies tasked with investigating and prosecuting smugglers have failed to even convict any single criminal since the law’s passage in 2016.

Legarda visiting Sto. Rosario Multipurpose Cooperative in Pandan, Antique.

“The law should be revisited, its defects addressed. For example, Section 3 of the law states that smuggling is considered ‘economic sabotage’ if the smuggled products were worth at least PHP1 million; when it is rice, it is PHP10 million. With this provision, when the value of smuggled products does not reach one million, it does not qualify for economic sabotage.

“Also, Section 5 of the law provides that mere possession of smuggled products is considered prima facie evidence (a legal term used to denote that a legal claim has sufficient evidence to proceed to trial or judgment unless rebutted). However, there are cases when the products are discovered already in storage. How are we able to identify who owns the illegally imported goods?”

Both issues of agricultural smuggling and rice tariffication, Legarda alludes, are a result of the Philippine economy relying on foreign goods to satisfy our daily needs.

“Importation must be a last resort,” Legarda says. “We also have to move away from our ‘import mentality.’”

To address both issues, she says she is advocating for a new law or program designed to strengthen local and small rice farms as she believes that “emphasis must be placed on self-reliance and domestic production coupled with farmers' productivity, profitability, and protection.” She then extensively lists out programs and policies that could be part of this new direction, which include crop diversification, sectoral digitalization and modernization, and effective rural credit and crop insurance programs.

In addition to agrarian support, she is also in favour of protectionist trade policies that “safeguard local producers from unfair trade practices and market disruptions like natural calamities, pandemics, and climate change.

On Disaster Resilience

"The government must include climate action in the respective COVID-19 recovery plans. There is no recovery from COVID-19 unless we attack it on the issue of environment and climate," Legarda, a long-time environmentalist, asserts.

Those who know Loren Legarda, even just a smidge, know that one of her core values as a public servant concerns the environment. She is perhaps one of the most, if not the most active Senator on the issue, authoring laws such as the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Act of 2017 and the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act. Her legislative work on climate change has been lauded through awards and distinctions from the United Nations Environment Programme and the University of the Philippines.

Legarda sees a clear connection between rural development and climate change, a link corroborated by several scholarly works. In 2019, The World Bank reported that Philippine poverty is “concentrated in rural areas and vulnerability to poverty, due to factors like disaster risks, are a major concern.”

“Among the most dangerous and most concerning threats to the development of our rural areas is a threat of climate change,” Legarda says. 

“As a country located near the Pacific Ocean and right within the Ring of Fire, we are constantly at risk of typhoons, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions. With climate change, we are bound to experience stronger typhoons, more heavy rains and flash floods, and droughts, which continue to devastate crops and livelihoods in the rural areas, where agriculture is a primary source of income for the government.”

Her goal when it comes to the disaster resilience of the hinterlands is to mitigate the “regressive effects of disasters” while also meeting the “demands for progress.

To combat its effects on the development of rural areas, the deputy speaker suggests that Philippine ecosystems at all costs, noting a 2009 study that reports how 60% of ecosystem services (nature’s benefits to human life such as bee pollination and soil erosion prevention through tree roots) have declined.

At the same time, Legarda also wants to keep the economic state of rural residents in mind as they rely on income from working in industries that may be detrimental to the environment and climate action.

“Therefore, it is also important to enhance rural livelihoods because 75% of the poor depend on these livelihoods. We must address issues related to rural poverty such as inequity in land distribution, the lack of access to better seeds and irrigation technology, lack of economic diversification, weak markets and trade barriers, and lack of capacity to absorb and recover from disaster losses.”

She believes that considering the pandemic and global warming, although threats to the Philippines, can be opportunities to “institutionalize disaster risk resilience and climate change adaptation in the local process and the practice of LGUs [local government units].”

Legarda speaking at a Marcos-Duterte campaign rally in Marikina.

Legarda, the primary author of the PAGASA Modernization Act (which upgraded the Philippines' weather and climate monitoring systems), vows to further improve current weather warning systems to alert people early on the increasingly frequent instances of natural calamities by encouraging LGUs to devise their own localized warning systems that fit their circumstances such as language and cultural differences.

She also says that current disaster preparedness efforts are too slow in responding to incoming disasters. “We also need to ensure the immediate release of Quick Response Funds (QRF) to the affected communities. The process of accessing and releasing the QRF [...] must be hastened and abbreviated and shortened.

“We cannot let our people, especially those affected by the calamities, wait until help comes. We have to ensure that days before a typhoon hits the country, both the national and the local governments must be ready to respond by prepositioning goods [...] there is a need for all LGUs to have evacuation centres with water and sanitation facilities, solar-powered lighting systems, charging stations, and gender-responsive comfort rooms as part of a disaster preparedness action plan and preparation for preemptive evacuation during disasters.”

On Empowering Rural Filipinos

When it comes to economic and social development, there is a disproportionate emphasis on developing areas of the country that are already relatively developed (Metro Manila, Cebu, Davao), whereas those in rural areas seem to be left behind. Rural Filipinos, for the most part, are getting kicked to the curb, and they must be frustrated by the fact that they get praise from politicians, only to get sidelined and neglected during discussions on matters that directly affect their lives. 

When Legarda was asked about the idea that the people who plan policies and investments in our country have failed to consider the rural areas of the Philippines, she offered an alternative that fights against the status quo.

“The key is to give our local government leaders, being closest to the people, a special role in translating national policies, plans, and programs into concrete and visible actions for people. I believe we already have the policies and programs in place; the Magna Carta for MSMEs (Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises) and even the “Build, Build, Build” program, we just need to improve on its implementation,” Legarda says.

“We must institutionalize consultations and dialogues with our fellow Filipinos from rural areas. Only when we can hear and understand their concerns will we be able to provide better support and assistance to them. In doing so, we will be able to give them more access to the political process because having such consultations and dialogues with them will allow them to have direct interactions and exchanges with lawmakers and our government leaders.”

Recommended Song: Reach Out And Touch (Somebody’s Hand) - Diana Ross

Image from Loren Legarda’s Facebook Page