Food producers go hungry
Food producers go hungry
By SINAG JOAQUIN
Bulatlat.com
MANILA — A recent survey shows that 34 percent of Filipino families have rated themselves as ‘food poor.’ The Social Weather Stations indicated in its September 10 report added that 11.6 percent of Filipino families, or an estimated 2.9 million, experienced involuntary hunger during the period.
These figures cannot be truer for those who toil to produce food for the country.
“That’s what is painful,” 51-year old Rogelio Bantillo Jr., a sakada or sugar farm worker, said in a phone interview with Bulatlat. “We work in a sugar plantation but we buy sugar from the grocery at 100 pesos per kilo,” he shared.
One kilo of sugar could not last for 15 days, he said, so he has to buy retail at five pesos for around 40 grams of sugar a few days before the next payday. He said this has been their life inside Hacienda Del Rosario, a sugar plantation in barangay Granada, Bacolod City, Negros Occidental.
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