via Alleya Krisha Naveros
Every Filipino meal is built on the back of a farmer. Yet while the nation eats three times a day, the hands that feed us barely earn five thousand pesos after four months of labor. This is the cruelest irony of our time: the farmer starves in a country full of food.
Agriculture should be the pride of a nation that calls itself agrarian, but instead, it has become the greatest symbol of neglect. Farmers live in poverty not because they lack will or strength, but because the system that relies on them has abandoned them.
The farmer is the foundation of food security, yet he is treated as expendable. Each grain of rice we consume is born from his sweat, but the reward he receives cannot even sustain his own household. The very people who keep us alive are left fighting to stay alive themselves.
Unfair prices at the farmgate and rising costs of seeds, fertilizer, and fuel eat away at what little they earn. Five thousand pesos in four months cannot put enough food on their tables, cannot keep children in school, and cannot build a future worth staying in the fields for.
Government policies often favor importation over protection. Cheap foreign rice and vegetables flood the markets, making it impossible for local farmers to compete. Their crops are left unsold, their debts pile up, and their voices fade into silence. This silence is not voluntary — it is forced by years of neglect.
I know this truth not from statistics alone but from my own bloodline. My grandparents are farmers too. And unlike what others might feel, I do not carry shame because of that — I carry pride. I am proud of them because they are among those who feed this nation, even when the nation forgets to feed them back. They remind me that farming is not weakness but strength, not failure but sacrifice.
I also want to take a moment to salute all farmers — those seen and unseen, those in plains and in hills — for bringing food to our tables. Their labor feeds this country, even when too few take notice.
Without farmers, there is no food. Without food, there is no nation. Supporting them is not an act of charity, but an act of survival. If we fail to protect them now, we are planting the seeds of our own hunger.
Some say farming is outdated, that the future lies only in industry and technology. But no machine can feed a hungry nation without the human hands that tend the soil. Progress without farmers is an illusion that ends in famine.
The meal on every plate carries the sacrifice of farmers — including my own grandparents — who are unseen, unheard, and underpaid. We enjoy abundance because they endure scarcity. Until they are given dignity, fair wages, and real protection, one truth will remain: the nation eats, the farmer starves.
