October 15 is World Rural Women’s Day:
Let us Strengthen our Struggle for Land, Food, Jobs!
Fight Imperialist Plunder of Agriculture!

October 15 is the day of the world’s rural women: women peasants, fisherfolk, agricultural workers, farm workers and indigenous women. It is the World Rural Women’s Day. It was declared as such to pay tribute to the crucial role and contribution of rural women in society and our continuing struggle for our vital rights as women and producers.

Let us celebrate our immense contribution in producing the world’s food: we number 1.6 billion worldwide, and we produce the greater part of the world’s food: 60% in Asia, 80% in Africa and 30-40% in Latin America and Western countries. Let us celebrate our significant role as bearers, nurturers and reproducers of today and tomorrow’s labor force that would keep the wheels of our countries’economies going.

But as we celebrate our significance, we likewise recognize the continuing barriers in our quest for real empowerment and development. We continue to be denied access to productive resources such as land, credit and technology, remain discriminated in the labor market, are denied control over property and earned income, and are subjected to various forms of abuse and violence, both state perpetrated and patriarchal thinking incited.

We continue to be poor, despite the fact that we work harder and longer each day. This is taking a heavy toll on our health and most especially our reproductive functions. Ill fed and overworked women stand to give birth to malnourished babies who in turn will mother a next generation of sick babies.

Imperialist globalization through its various instrumentalities, the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and the World Trade Organization have exacerbated our already difficult situation. As paying debt service and military spending eat up a large chunk of our national budget, fund allocation for basic services such as reproductive health services and production subsidies, essential in the performance of our roles as producers and reproducers of life are the first to go. Worse whatever resources that remain are lost to corruption and plunder of government coffers.

The accession of our countries and the inclusion of agriculture into WTO trade rules have left our agriculture in an unprecedented destruction, resulting in unimaginable misery, poverty and hunger for us rural women and our families. Millions have been displaced from their lands due to land grabbing and conversion of agricultural lands to other uses. Millions were driven to bankruptcy as local markets are flooded with cheap and highly subsidized imported agricultural products. The twin WTO policies of market access and elimination of subsidies have substantially weakened the productive capacity of local producers and have greatly threatened our food security.

Sisters, let us take this opportunity to voice out our issues as rural women. Let us take this opportunity to bring out these issues voices within our organizations, in the streets, and in the various hallways of power. Let our voices be heard on our united call against the oppression and exploitation that continue to leave us hungry and poor. More importantly, let us mark this day the beginning of our renewed commitment to work more to eradicate the barriers and constraints imposed on us. Let us mark this day the strengthening of our determination to tread our path towards empowerment and emancipation.

Sisters, a meaningful and fruitful observance of our day, The World Rural Women’s Day!

Recent news reports reveal that hunger stalks 15.1% of Filipino households, and that 12 million Filipinos are trapped in extreme poverty. According to the latest survey of the Social Weather Station (SWS), 15.1% of Filipino households had nothing to eat at least once in the last three months. Of these, 11.8% experienced moderate hunger while 3.3% were severely hungry. In addition, 53% of those interviewed believe that they are poor. Residents of Metro-Manila said they need at least P10,000/month so as not to be considered poor. (PDI Oct. 5)

At present, a family with two-bread winners can hardly earn enough to make ends meet. Usually, aside from the parents, children pitch in to earn some income through odd jobs such as selling, domestic work, cleaning, construction work or others. The whole family needs to work just to be able to buy the food they need, pay their fare to work, school and home, pay for social services like electricity and water, buy basic needs in the home and send the children to school.

Lourdes, 54, mother of 6, from Ucab, Itogon, is a typical woman peasant struggling to earn a living. She and her husband earn their income from farming vegetables like wombok, carrots, beans and peas. Starting with a capital of P26,000, their produce was not even enough to recoup their expenses because the prices of vegetables plunged with the flooding of cheap imported vegetables. Wombok sold for only P0.80 per kilo, while carrots were P1.50 per kilo. Aside from farming, Lourdes also cooks and sells cassava, and washes laundry for others. Her family's monthly expenses for food total more than P6,000 per month, excluding expenses for water (P35/drum) and electricity (P250/month), education (P5,350/year), medicines (as needed) and toiletries. Her children also work whenever they have the time. Despite this, their total family income is lacking to meet the family's needs for the whole year. Lourdes represents the real state of food insecurity of the typical rural woman in the Cordillera.

Food is people's most basic need. The right to food is a basic human right. For the indigenous people, our land and resources are our major sources of food. When our rights to our land and resources are violated or denied, we are unable to produce the food we need to survive. We are pushed to seek alternative livelihoods elsewhere, in the cities or overseas, in order to earn money to buy food and other basic necessities. Yet, even there, we are subjected to exploitation and abuse.

The Filipino people are denied a decent living by the prevailing unjust system controlled by the ruling elite and foreign capitalists. We are hogtied by the forces of imperialist globalization that deny us our basic rights to land, resources and food.

We take this occasion, World Rural Women's Day and World Food Day, to assert our basic right to food. Let us fight imperialist globalization and defend our land, life and resources. Assert our right to food sovereignty. Land, resources and food for the people!

October 2 - Press Conference Re: Stop Rice Importation

October 5 - Participation in the “Kabyawan sa Hacienda Luisita(HLI) in Tarlac,” Kabyawan is a mass sponsored by the Cojuangco Family led by former President Cory Aquino to celebrate the start of harvest season. The farm workers instead of joining the mass will stage a sit down strike outside of the church to protest the retrenchment of workers in the sugar mills and the continued reduction of mandays allocated to each farm worker, forcing as reported, women farm workers to offer sexual favors in return for increased number of mandays allocated to them.

October 8 - Protest Rally in Mendiola to protest Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s food coupons as her solution to the reported alarming increase in the number of people/hungry in the country.

October 9 - Press Conference Re: Announcement of the activities to the World Rural Women’s day and World Food Day

October 10 - Medical and Dental Mission : Barangays San Rafael, Montalban, Rizal; in cooperation with the Council for Health and Development

October 11 - Forum: Situation of Rural Women of the Philippines: Saint Bridgette’s School

October 12 - Picket Rally in front of the office of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) Re: Stop Laguna Lake Conversion; with Pamalakaya fisherfolks

October 13 - Picket Rally Re: Appeal to former President Cory Aquino and Kris Aquino to Find Solution to the massive hunger stalking families of the sugar farm workers in Hacienda Luisita; in cooperation with the women farm workers and their children in Hacienda Luisita.

October 14 - Forum: Situation of Rural Women of the Philippines: St Scholastica’s College, Manila

October 15 - Dialogue with the Secretary of the Department of Agriculture, Arthur Yap

- Rally in front of the Department of Agriculture

- Forum: Situation of Rural Women of the Philippines: Mirriam College

October 16 - Press Conference: World Food Day

- Launching of Amihan’s primer on the Rice Crisis. Published on the Occasion of the Celebration of the 2004 Year of the Rice