At the start of this year, I joined fellow diaspora organizers from Germany in the rice fields of Central Luzon to learn firsthand about the situation of farmers in the Philippines. We met farmers whose hands sustain a nation that too often forgets about them.

While the state attempts to discredit such efforts as precursors to red-tagging, casting grassroots learning as a threat, these experiences revealed a true transformative power.

It was both humbling and enraging to witness how deeply farmers love their land while it coexists with such persistent hardship. Farmers told us of vast tracts of farmland that are acquired for infrastructure projects, of land titles that never materialized, of policies that seem designed to exhaust rather than empower.

Faced with shrinking land and uncertain futures, many farmers are forced to work abroad to support their children’s education, unable to see a future where the land can be passed on.

The familiar language of “progress” started to feel hollow with every interview we conducted. Renewable energy projects, often celebrated abroad (in our homeland) as climate solutions, reveal a different face on the ground.

When powerful foreign and local elites push people off their land, food sovereignty is lost, and communities become dependent on imports, further pushing the Philippines into dependency.

In places like Zambales, solar power plants rise where farms once stood. The promise of “green” dissolves quickly when it displaces the people who have long stewarded these lands. 

Modern technologies, instead of liberating farmers, often deepen their dependence as it requires capital they do not have. Fertilizer prices continue to rise, shaped by global conflicts like the US-Israel war.

Meanwhile, the government turns to rice importation in the name of food security. But what security is there for displaced farmworkers and seasonal laborers whose livelihoods vanish with each shipment? 

In this climate of deepening insecurity, acts of solidarity come under scrutiny. The case of Chantal Anicoche, reported missing in January after a military operation in Occidental Mindoro while engaging with local communities, shows how quickly solidarity work can be criminalized.

Of course that is scary. However, the greater danger lies in detachment. Because to not fight for land rights is to concede to a system where land is treated as a commodity for profit and control. When powerful foreign and local elites push people off their land, food sovereignty is lost, and communities become dependent on imports, further pushing the Philippines into dependency.

The struggle of farmers does not end in the fields. It calls the diaspora to act in solidarity and support national self-determination: to amplify farmers’ voices; fight for fair palay prices that reflect the value of their labor; resist landlessness; and oppose projects that displace communities in the name of development. 

Seeing these realities up close connects us to struggles back home and shows how our families’ migration is shaped by larger systems that prioritizes profit over people. Solidarity trips bridge distance and show that we all fight the same corrupt elites who enrich themselves while forcing others into poverty or migration.

To learn from the fields is to listen, resist, and stand for life. Palay ay buhay!

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