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Food Production at a Local Scale

Banana Production in the Philippines

THE SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT

There were major social impacts on local tenant farmers around  Lapanday, some of whom were displaced without compensation while others became wage-workers in the plantation. A total of 21,000 hectares of land were brought quickly into export banana production in Southeastern Mindanao, displacing staple food production by tenant farmers in some cases and replacing older plantations in others. Wage-workers on the plantations, of which there were about 30,000 by 1980, were not regarded as skilled labour. This contrasted with the multiple skills which have to be exercised by small food farmers. Turnover of plantation workers was high but labour shortages were not experienced because of high levels of unemployment in Southeastern Mindanao and other nearby islands.

Lapanday employed large numbers of workers -- about 3 people per hectare -- most of whom were males under 30 years old. They were recruited largely from the islands of Cebu and Bohol or elsewhere in Mindanao and lived in barracks on the plantation, a common pattern throughout the banana industry of Central America. Those recruited locally mostly lived at home.

Initially,  Lapanday was regarded as being one of the better employers in the region with some of the highest wages. The owners would not allow plantation workers to join a trade union but, by 1980, some members of the Mindanao Communist Party had joined the workforce and lectured workers on their rights. At this time, there was considerable political turbulence in Southern Mindanao and guerilla activity by the New People's Army. Between 1979 and 1982, the cost of the plantation's private security force rose from 438,000 PESOS per year to 1,200,000 PESOS.