Today marks the launch of the “Save the Rice Granary” movement, a campaign that aims to amplify farmers’ call to stop the rampant land-use conversion of massive agricultural lands in Central Luzon. Considered as the Rice Granary of the Philippines, Central Luzon is the top rice-producing region in the country. However, it continues to lose irrigated lands to land-use conversion, transforming them into urban, commercial and transport infrastructures like expressways, malls, subdivisions and renewable energy projects to name a few. Land-use conversion has also evicted farmers from arable lands, resulting in poverty and landlessness.
CPDG supports the call to uphold farmers’ right to land and livelihood, recognizing their crucial role in food security. Likewise, we remind the Philippine government of its commitments to the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) to address prevailing malnutrition and hunger in the country. The government should prioritize boosting local food production and mitigating climate damages to farmlands. In order to improve the country’s food situation, the government must repeal the Rice Liberalization Law to decrease import dependency, foster rice self-sufficiency through Genuine Agrarian Reform, legislation of the Rice Industry Development Act, and suspend land conversion projects to preserve prime agricultural lands.
#SDG2ZeroHunger
#SDG15LifeOnLand
#SaveTheRiceGranary
#defendcentralluzonfarmlands
