We, Indigenous women farmers, together with young Indigenous women farmers, from the communities of Ayta Abellen, Dumagat Remontado, Hanunuo Mangyan, and Tadyawan of Luzon, Ata-Bukidnon, Bukignon, and Iraynon Bukidnon of Visayas, and B’laan, Erumanen Ne Menuvu, Higaonon, Kirinteken Pulangiyen Manobo, Mamanwa, Manobo, Manobo Dulangan, Teduray, Lambangian, Subanen, and Taboli of Mindanao, came together on the 21st until the 24th of July at the Villa Consuelo, Caloocan for the National Indigenous Women Gathering with the theme, “Magsasakang KPinay, may K ka sa Pagkain, Kapangyarihan at Kasarinlan” [Indigenous women farmer, you have the right to food, power, and sovereignty].
We came together to express our resolve and uphold our right to land, food, and agriculture. We celebrate our strength, knowledge, and ability to produce food that cares for the environment and values our traditional ways.
We are Indigenous women farmers and food producers. Our hands cultivate the soil, protect seeds, and care for crops. We are the ones who harvest the crops, turn them into food on the table, and share them with our communities. We are also the ones who sell them in the market. From planting to harvesting, the same pair of hands create products such as baskets and other traditional handwoven products that serve as a source of livelihood for our families and communities.
But despite our knowledge, skills, and abilities to produce food, the government does not fully recognize us as farmers and treat us as mere assistants to our husbands, fathers, uncles, and brothers. Not registering us as farmers is a form of discrimination and denigration of Indigenous women farmers.
And because we are not recognized by the state, we do not have access to agricultural services and programs. When we do receive government aid, they are often insufficient or unsuitable to our needs—such as seeds that are incompatible with our soil, the season, or with our skills.
The climate crisis has also heavily impacted us as farmers. The traditional calendar of farming passed down to us by our ancestors has completely changed because of climate change. The intensity of rains and droughts have made it difficult for us to grow our crops.
During his third SONA, Pres. Bongbong Marcos Jr. boasted that the largest yield of crops in the last three decades was recorded in 2023. He failed to mention that shortly after this was recorded, the entire country suffered from El Niño, plummeting yield and causing hunger among Indigenous peoples. The aid he mentioned in his speech did not reach us, and those of us who managed to receive some struggled to obtain them.
Aside from the climate crisis, we are also experiencing an intensifying land crisis. Until this day, many of us have yet to be awarded a Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title (CADT). Some of us have spent decades processing our CADT, and as this goes on, our ancestral domain is getting smaller and smaller. Large parts of it have been seized by the government and industrial plantations, mined by huge corporations, or destroyed for the construction of mega dams and irrigation systems. Many of us have been forcibly displaced or left with no other option but to leave our ancestral domains.
Pres. Marcos Jr. mentioned in his SONA that in just a short amount of time, BARMM has passed many of its priority legislation. What he failed to mention was that the Non-Moro Indigenous Peoples (NMIP) Code has yet to be passed into law, exhibiting blatant disregard for the welfare and rights of non-Moro Indigenous peoples in BARMM. From the passing of the Bangsamoro Organic Law in 2018 to February 2024, 60 non-Moro IPs have been killed, and no one has been held accountable for these murders. Contrary to the president’s statement, there is no peace and order in the communities of non-Moro IPs within BARMM. Their lives are constantly in danger because of their constant need to defend their ancestral domain.
For Indigenous peoples, land is life. This is what has kept us alive from then until now and what will keep future generations alive as well. Our consciousness, culture, and identity as Indigenous women farmers are all rooted in our ancestral domains. Defending our ancestral lands has been part of the history of Indigenous peoples for a long time. However, instead of hearing our struggles, the state red-tags us, calls us rebels, sues us for libel and other trumped-up charges, abducts, and kills us.
It is evident from the president’s third SONA that we are not part of the government’s priorities or even its consciousness. The fact that he mentioned neither Indigenous peoples nor the struggles we face is discouraging. It is clear from the words of the president that instead of ordinary citizens, his government is biased towards foreign investors and big corporations. Almost nothing has changed since the government of former president Duterte and the presidents before him. Despite his statements on strengthening local food production, there is no clear policy or program to make it happen. What is clear is the government’s consistent bias towards big corporations that wallow in our natural resources and our ancestral domains.
Indigenous peoples were the first farmers in our country. We inherited traditional ways of farming from our ancestors. However, because of agricultural policies and programs favoring companies and prioritizing profit, crops now need expensive pesticides to grow, resulting in farmers sinking into debts.
We are facing multiple crises—land crisis, food crisis, and human rights crisis. Still, we persist and today we gather our knowledge and strength. We believe that the solution to hunger and the food crisis will not be found in corporations. The skills, knowledge, and power needed to solve the multifaceted crises faced by our nation is in the hands of Indigenous women farmers.
To put an end to hunger and the food crisis once and for all, we call on the government to recognize Indigenous women and our rights as farmers and food producers. We call on them to:
- Prioritize registering Indigenous women farmers in government agencies, especially in the Department of Agriculture;
- Promote and support Indigenous methods and knowledge of farming in tandem with scientific methods;
- Cultivate Indigenous seeds and organic farming in accordance to the Organic Agriculture Act of 2010;
- Put an end to corruption in government and ensure that public funds allocated to support small-scale farmers directly reach them especially during times of calamity;
- Focus programs and policies to the development of agriculture grounded in the realities of Indigenous communities and the needs of farmers, and not of corporations or their interests;
- Protect the environment and our ancestral domains and end destructive projects of investors, such as large-scale mining, mega dams, and tourism;
- Repeal the Rice Tariffication Law;
- Repeal Executive Order 70 and the National Task Force on Eliminating Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC);
- Pass a law that will criminalize red-tagging;
- Repeal Anti-Terrorism Law;
- Repeal Executive Order 130 that removed the moratorium on approving new mining applications;
- Pass into law the Human Rights Defenders Protection Bill;
- Pass into law a genuine NMIP Code in BARMM;
- Continue genuine and extensive consultations among Indigenous peoples before revising the Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) guidelines; and
- Pass laws that protect the rights of farmers and rural communities in accordance with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants (UNDROP).
In order to end hunger and for us to achieve food sovereignty, the rights of food producers and Indigenous women farmers must be recognized and protected.
We are the true producers of food. We are Indigenous women farmers. As one voice and power, we will uphold the recognition and practice of food sovereignty. And we will act as one to promote the recognition of our rights in accordance with the Magna Carta of Women, Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act (IPRA), United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and UNDROP.
We are a collective that will join forces with more Indigenous women and grow our strength to defend our land, our food, and the rights of all people.
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