Arts
Coconut farmers don’t make a lot of money. In fact on average they make so little that I really should stop complaining about how much I make. Approximately 60% of small-scale coconut farmers live in poverty. They make anywhere between $70 to $7000 per year. Let’s say that again. They make anywhere between $70 to $7000 per year. Poverty cannot be easily explained and definitely not easily solved, but to be sure the system that coconut farmers find themselves in takes advantage of that poverty. In order to better understand poverty’s reign we must take a closer look at the conditions that support its existence. The Philippines is the second largest producer of coconuts in the world, accounting for 26% of the world’s production. Indonesia is number one. Most coconut farmers in the Philippines do not own their own land. They are tenant farmers, and their landlords tend to be teachers, managers, military officers, and other professionals, and for the most part these landlords are absent. The fact that most coconut farmers do not own their own land already places them at a disadvantage. First, most farmers are under agreement with their landlords to share in the profit. These types of agreements can vary from reasonable to outright exploitative. Second, because the farmers don’t own their own land that means that they have little to no assets or equity. Therefore, unlike most farmers in Canada, Filipino Coconut Farmers cannot use typical financial mechanisms, for instance, lines of credit, to reinvest in their farms and improve their profitability. Third, their reality limits their power in decision making and negotiations. Coconut Farmers usually have no say in investments in their industry or national programmes. The plight of these farmers really came to light after Typhon Haiyan damaged or destroyed more than 33 million coconut trees in the Philippines in 2013. Coconut farmers were stuck in limbo as there was no communication or agreement with the landlords concerning who would cover the costs of the clean-up. They did not have the necessary equipment to clean up the damage themselves if they wanted to, and they were without any source of income or food. Quickly following the typhon international agencies urged the Filipino government to make wide-sweeping reforms in order to improve the situation, and one of these reforms had to do with a decades long battle between the government and the coconut farmers, and it also highlights probably the main reason poverty can be so entrenched. And that reason is corruption. In 1971, the Filipino government enacted a law to establish the Coconut Investment Fund. A fund that was created to invest in the development of the coconut industry. Guess where they were going to get the money for this fund? Well, they were going to tax the coconut farmers. Not surprisingly at all, the money that was taken from the coconut farmers over a decade did not go into building up the industry, instead the President and his friends personally profited when they used the fund to buy a bank and other corporations in which the President and his friends held a majority stake. The issue is still ongoing today, with the farmers fighting for a share in the investments that was made with their money. There is currently $1.3 billion in the coconut levy fund. The impoverished reality of coconut farmers cannot be more starkly contrasted to the seemingly overwhelming success of today’s coconut industry. There is not just coconut oil, but there is cold-pressed, raw coconut oil. There is coconut flour, coconut meat, coconut chips, coconut ice cream, coconut creamer, coconut milk, coconut hand wash, coconut shampoo, oh and let’s not forget...coconut water. There are so many coconut products out there that at one time I opened up my fridge, turned to my husband and said, “I think we are slowly turning into coconuts.” As well, these coconut products are not cheap. So,