Engage: The inequality between the market and farmers
Explain:
This topic revolves around the inequality the farmers between the works and labor they do and
the salary and wages they receive from it. As we all know, there is a big disparity of prices within
the market and the farmers. The farmers earn so little while the prices in the market funded by
the capitalist are so high. According to PSA (2020), the country's nominal wage rate of
agricultural workers in 2019 averaged PhP 331.10 per day. They work hard each and every day
just to earn that below minimum wage salary. And when it comes to the market, their salary is
just equivalent to almost 6 kilos of rice, and maybe less than that. Besides that, they are also
underdeveloped. Filipino agricultural workers remain among the poorest and most
disadvantaged groups in our society (Habacon, 2021). They also don’t have their own lands
because most of it are owned by this rich people who bought the land their farming in. Because
of this, they are sometimes abused, mistreated, and sometimes killed for wanting to have a
better opportunity in their farming. To add to the damage, the removal of state controls on
agriculture-related commodities, the prices of agricultural inputs, such as seeds, fertilizers, etc.
also increase drastically (Habacon, 20201). Also, inadequate investments to infrastructures,
technology, and machineries adds to the problems of lack to the farmers. This is where the
disparity between the market and the farmers lies because they are overworked, underpaid,
and underdeveloped while these markets, these capitalists earn from the fruits of these farmers
without even helping them. They just get the goods at a very low, unfair, and underpaid price
and sell it to people at market for a very high price. This is so unfair for the people who really
worked hard just to produce it. The farmer’s average salary per year is just P100,000 pesos
(Cruz, 2020) while these businessman in the markets earn thousands that sells the rice earn
thousands, if not millions of pesos every month.
Elaborate:
The inequality between the market and the farmers is a big issue because it is a recurring
problem of our country until today. Our government and the market have been continuing in
turning a blind eye for the needs of this farmers. They have been mistreated, underpaid, and
underdeveloped since the beginning. We need to talk about it because if we turn a blind eye to
them to it will affect all of us. According to the World Bank (2020), transforming Philippine
agriculture into a dynamic, high-growth sector is essential for the country to speed up recovery,
poverty reduction and inclusive growth. This statement proves that farming is an important key
for our growth as a collective in this country and if we don’t do that, numerous consequences
may happen. If this issue is not taken up seriously, our agriculture sector, which is one of the
main economic drivers of this country will crumble down, growth in our country as whole will be
stunted, and lastly, we will need to import rice from other countries which will be more
expensive which in turn will limit our buying power and will limit the food we can provide to our
tables. This is a serious issue that we need to discuss and treated immediately if not, it will be
more serious and will greatly affect our country in every way possible, and by then, we won’t be
able to control it anymore.
https://businessmirror.com.ph/2020/03/10/farming-can-be-profitable/
https://www.rappler.com/voices/ispeak/opinion-why-filipino-farmers-suffer
https://psa.gov.ph/content/farm-workers-are-paid-average-daily-wage-php-33110-2019-calabarzon-
farm-workers-are-highest
https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2020/09/09/philippines-vibrant-agriculture-is-key-
to-faster-recovery-and-poverty-reduction
