Farmers, scientists and environmentalists, held a forum, October 18 on the impacts of Super El Niño on farmers and fisherfolk and the government’s lack of preparations for it.

A Super El Niño is a stronger El Niño where the temperature of the Pacific Ocean increases to 2C above the average. In the Philippines, it leads to the extreme shifting of weather conditions, bringing in severe drought, or stronger rainfall events. For farmers, it is the government’s unpreparedness that turns it into an even greater calamity, made even worse by the climate crisis.

Farmers Geraldine Patriarca and Ginny Nabia from Bicol and Negros expressed how their communities are already experiencing extreme drought, and are unable to sustain themselves and their families. They demanded Marcos Jr. to give genuine solutions to farmers’ struggles, not his proposed buckets that they say “will barely even catch any rain.”

Irish Cuaresma of Advocates of Science and Technology for the People (Agham), added that farmers and Indigenous peoples are further undermined by “disaster capitalism,” where corporations benefit from humanitarian crises.

Sharl Lopez of Philippine Network of Food Security Programs (PNFSP) meanwhile, criticized the government for not upholding their obligation to uphold the people’s right to food security, and advocated for the passing of the Right to Adequate Food Bill.

After the forum, farmers held a flash mob calling for national industrialization, genuine agrarian reform. (RVO)

Text and photos by Viggo Sarmago

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