In tobacco farming, women are decision-makers

MISAMIS ORIENTAL, MINDANAO – Here, in this tobacco-farming town, 43 kilometers west of Cagayan de Oro City, decisions on matters of consequence such as priority expenses for farm and household are judgment calls of women alone, though major decisions are mostly reached in tandem with their husbands.

LoAn Legaspi, 33, and Elena Mejos, 59, who both co-manage their own small family tobacco farms with their husbands, are always making choices, and often they decide on their own quickly, or consult their husbands.

But while women here are already headstrong in decision-making, most would still choose not to replace tobacco as major farm crop yet, shows a mid-year study on women's empowerment among farmers that I undertook among 47 women farmers in three towns, including Gitagum, in the tobacco-farming belt in Misamis Oriental.

I've learned from farmers like Legaspi and Mejos that the province's native tobacco farmlands are spread across the 61-kilometer sprawl of the western coastal towns of Opol, Laguindingan, Gitagum, Libertad, Initao and the city of El Salvador. More than 97 per cent of farmers and 85 per cent of their production areas are located in the string of Alubijid, Laguindingan and Gitagum towns, where the interviews were undertaken.

For decades, the dark native variety called batek has been a major non-food crop in this largely agricultural town of 16,000, where around 727 small-scale farmers grow the leafy shrubs in all of the town's 11 barangays. These growers head more than a fifth of the town's 3,578 households.

Of these farmers, 309 or about 42.5 per cent are women. This accounts for the highest per town, male-female ratio among the 1,717 farmers in the province's six batek-cultivating towns as of 2017. It is 21 per cent in Alubijid, and 19 per cent in Laguindingan. Globally, however, women make up 60 to 70 percent of the world's tobacco farming workforce, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

Women's empowerment

According to the Philippine Statistics Authority, women's participation in decision-making is a key determinant of empowerment. I adapted a set of questions from the National Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS) 2013 questionnaire, and asked respondents about their roles in making decisions on expenses for and earnings from their tobacco farms, on their own separate earnings and husband's earnings in jobs other than farming,and major family expenditures and purchases for daily household needs. I also asked the respondents who make decisions to get a loan, grow other crops together with tobacco and an alternative crop other than tobacco, and about their own personal health.

Like the NDHS 2013 results for Northern Mindanao, majority of the respondents (66 per cent) share decision-making with their husbands over expenses for the farm and other major purchases and 22 per cent decide alone, or a total of 88.8, but daily expenses in both farm and household as well as the crop of choice for the second cropping season are the women's niches (92 per cent and 72 per cent, respectively). Overall, 84 percent of the women are empowered. But none are willing yet to shift away from tobacco, for now.

''The number of women farmers could even be higher, says Maria Merceditas Ayco, tobacco production and regulation officer in Mindanao of the National Tobacco Administration (NTA), which updates its registry of mostly small-scale tobacco cultivators bi-annually.

''Because farming is often a husband-and-wife partnership, there should be an almost equal number of farmers of both genders, and we encouraged everyone to register, woman or man; but still fewer women have come to register in other towns,'' Ayco observes.

''In Gitagum, many women have been in the fore even outside of the farm. They attend meetings and are taking leadership roles,'' she adds. Ayco said that she has noted that Gitagum women farmers are active in cooperatives, waterworks organizations and village councils.

Finding a needle under the leaves

''You must have heard that in Gitagum, you can easily find a lost needle in the soil under the tobacco hedges. That's because the women (farmers) here are thorough in clearing the surroundings, making sure no weed could grow around the shrubs,'' explained Jeryl Abellanosa, the town's administrator and former municipal agriculturist, and a women's empowerment champion.

Most men would seek for temporary employment after the planting period, and women are left to tend the farm, Abellanosa noted.

''Except for the plowing and spraying (of pesticides), the work involved is generally light. Including watering the plants and weeding, and even from harvesting the leaves to topping the flowers and de-suckering, so women can take charge,'' said Ayco.

Abellanosa said that women in batek farming like Legaspi and Mejos most often do not quantify the value of their labor, and this pervasive attitude of not valuing the work hours masks the poverty among workers in this agricultural sector. With labor costs excluded from the farm inputs even as it is a labor-intensive enterprise, the profits once the fire-cured harvest is sold would appear to be huge.

But in real terms, according to a 2014-2016 study, “The Economics of Tobacco Farming,'' batek growers in the Visayas and Mindanao, including those in Gitagum, are poorer compared to contract growers for cigarette-making firms in Northern Luzon. The study by the think tank, Action for Economic Reforms (AER), further calculated that their perceived profits of ₱492 per hectare is reduced to a net loss of ₱1,433 per hectare, once labor costs are taken into account.

The AER researchers, on the other hand, found out that Luzon-based farmers, who are contract growers for cigarette firms, earn perceived profits of P2,312.76 per hectare and real profits of P465.68 per hectare.

Poverty incidence in Misamis Oriental, to which fifth-class Gitagum belongs, is significantly higher at 34.9 per cent compared to contract tobacco-growing provinces of Ilocos Sur at 17.2 per cent and Ilocos Norte at 15 per cent. The national poverty incidence is 25.8 per cent as of 2015.

Confronted with this reality at a forum of women farmers, Legaspi told other farmers that she can forego counting the cost of labor as long as her produce is sold at a good price.

In getting the aggregate cash sales, she could redeem her investment, which was disbursed in small amounts throughout the cropping season. ''I can have cash to rollover for the next cropping and am able to use some cash to buy household needs throughout the harvest period,'' she explains.

Another farmer, Tarrah Ubanan, 29, agrees: “I earn 50 thousand pesos from 1,000 (tobacco) plants. Granting that I invested 15,000 pesos per cropping season, and counting the value of labor at around 15,000 pesos, I still profit around P20,000.''

Lending a helping hand to farmers

Government can lend a helping hand to farmers like her, Legaspi suggested. In providing inputs like fertilizers, pesticides, loans, and crop insurance, in case of crop failure.

''Irrigation to replace cattle-pulled water barrels is also important.We fetch water from a source one kilometer away, we lose time; and instead of watering plants before sunrise, we water later in the day, at 8 a.m.,'' she said.

Legaspi added that she has heard that in the other towns, local governments are giving away bags of fertilizers and pesticides as well as roofing sheets for curing barns as incentives. She asked, ''If this is happening there, why can't the same scheme be implemented here?''

When told that funds for farm inputs can be sourced possibly from Gitagum's share of 10-percent of the yearly excise taxes paid for tobacco produced and bought in town, but that the assistance is intended by law for farmers who will opt to grow crops other than tobacco, Legaspi and the rest of the forum's audience were quizzical, and balked at the idea.

They thought that since the government is getting a bonanza from shares of the tobacco excise taxes, it is logical to support the survival of tobacco farmers. They asked, why must a law that mandates for more revenue gains from tobacco products support those who would stop planting the crop?

Five years since the implementation of RA 10351, the sin tax reform law, and yet the women farmers who grow native batek tobacco in Gitagum are barely aware of its impact on their farming lives and why they needed to shift to another crop.

The tobacco control policy

Mejos,who co-manages a tobacco farm with her husband, learned over the radio about tobacco excise taxes. She told a discussion group of farmers held recently at the Sangguniang Bayan Hall here that she had further heard that the town's recent share of the taxes had been used to build farm-to-market roads. But LoAn Legaspi, 33, another farmer, has barely heard about it.

But for the rest of the group of a dozen women farmers at the gathering, the implications of the sin taxes in their lives had not sank in yet.

But they are not alone. In a nationwide survey among tobacco farmers in 2014, ''The Economics of Tobacco Farming,'' by the policy think tank, Action for Economic Reforms (AER), researchers noted that a majority of their 600-plus respondents had also shown lack of awareness on Republic Act (RA)10351.

The RA 10351, which amended certain provisions in RA 8424 (The Internal Revenue Code), increased excise taxes from alcohol and tobacco products, thus, making these products much more expensive. For tobacco, the levy increased by more than 117 per cent, and after 2017, there will be an annual levy increase of four per cent. The law is a measure to fulfill the country's commitment to the World Health Organization's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC), particularly Article 6 on reduction of demand for tobacco products.

The international treaty, ratified by the Philippines in 2005, had recognized the scourge of tobacco use as ''a global epidemic'' that has caused more than 7 million deaths a year worldwide, and is a risk factor in cancer, and other lung and heart diseases. The FCTC considers the excise tax as most effective to curb the use of tobacco as ''it is applied solely to tobacco products, increasing their prices relative to the prices of other products and services.''

Harnessing women's power for crop shifting

In interviews, the Gitagum town officials have also pointed out another concern that is linked to the deployment of the excise taxes among local government units (LGUs) : few batek farmers have switched to crops other than tobacco as envisioned by the government's supposedly tobacco control policy.

As the share of the taxes are to be used to support those who cease planting tobacco or those who grow other crops instead, the tobacco farmers are left baffled and smarting.

Yet in the mid-2000s, many thought the twilight years of the crop in Gitagum had finally arrived. Abellonosa, a former municipal agriculturist and present town administrator, thought that batek farming has reached its end, and people would finally begin to seriously plant other crops.

''There was no market for the sapud,” she recalled, ''farmers did not harvest it anymore.'' The sapud, priced now at ₱20 a kilo, are the leaves on the lowest end of the shrub's stem and are used as cigarette fillers. Abellanosa said the downward trend was due to cheaper leaves for fillers from China.

Aside from middlemen buyers for cigarette fillers, the bulk of the crop from Gitagum as in the province's tobacco-growing towns, are bought by viajeros, peripatetic wholesale buyers who in turn sell the tobacco to retailers in provinces in Visayas and Mindanao. The slowdown also came after the implementation of the RA 9211, the Tobacco Regulation Act of 2003 and the global glut of the market in 2004.

But a recent report from the National Tobacco Administration (NTA) noted that the production area in Misamis Oriental climbed to 559 hectares in 2011 from a low of 250 hectares in the previous year and reached 615 hectares in 2015, and 974 hectares in 2016. The production has also upped from a low of 311 metric tons in 2011 to 567 metric tons in 2015 to more than 600 in 2016. But, nationwide, production, hectarage and number of farmers have all been on the downward trend for burley and batek varieties in the past five years.

NTA records show that the number of tobacco farmers in the province had see-sawed from a high of 1,850 in 2013 down to 1,345 in 2015 and up again to 1,717 in 2016. But while the number of farmers in the five towns has lowered steadily in five other towns, it increased considerably in Gitagum, from 361 in 2013 to 727 this year. Three hundred and nine of these farmers, 42.5 per cent, are women.

The women farmers in Gitagum whom I talked with are decisive about various matters of consequences on the farm but are, like their male counterparts, wary of switching to another crop at the moment.

All but four of the 47 respondents of my survey from Alubijid, Laguindingan and Gitagum already periodically grow other crops like corn, cassava, munggo and bananas, which are grown rotationally after the tobacco has been harvested, and most grow fruit trees and vegetables in home gardens and backyards for food. But most Gitagum women farmers confess to an almost unyielding preference for the controversial crop at present.

''I can understand why, having been in town since 1982. Tobacco has always been the more profitable crop to grow here. People grow it when they have children to send to college, or are building a house or want to buy a vehicle, or are thinking of doing any big project,'' said Grace Palasan, municipal agriculturist, “because the income is received in bulk.''

''Likit Morris''

According to Ayco, the boost in demand for native tobacco has fueled the bandwagon for growing the crop again, thus the increase in the number of growers.

''Have you heard of 'likit morris'? When the excise taxes increased the prices of cigarettes in 2013, raw tobacco leaves gained a new market,'' she explained.

''People could not afford the branded cigarettes anymore so they shifted to tobacco. They would make their own 'likit morris','' she said. She suggested that smokers did not stop smoking. They only shifted to tobacco leaves thus the unprecedented widening of the market, and consequently of the supply.

'Likit morris' is a coined term for sheared leaves of tobacco rolled in tiny sheets of old newspaper pages. ''Likit'' is Visayan for ''roll'' and morris is taken from a popular cigarette brand, Phillip Morris.

''Also, tobacco can stand long-term storage compared to rice or corn that spoils after a few months, and the prices have been competitive in the past three years,'' she added.

Most of all, as far as the farmers are concerned, the government has not reached out seriously to them about alternatives. In fact, they thought because the crop is the source of the excise tax bonanza, it should grant incentives to tobacco farmers.

The government had previously provided measures to promote, for a period of five years (2004-2009), economically viable and sustainable alternatives to tobacco in RA 9211. But it hasn't legislated yet a comprehensive program of alternatives for farmers in order to reduce supply and to complement the efforts to reduce demand for a product that is considered by WHO ''to threaten development, with women and children bearing the brunt of the consequences.''

The RA 9211 has provided for funding research and development by NTA and the Department of Science and Technology of possible tobacco by-products, other than cigarettes and cigars. In fact, the NTA continues to collect research and development fees from tobacco wholesale buyers.

But the government has not adopted yet the guidelines issued by the FCTC Conference of Parties (COP) in 2014 for Article 17, comprising measures to reduce the supply of tobacco, particularly drawing up alternatives for growers.

In the updated country implementation data submitted to WHO FCTC last April 2016, the government reported that it still has to organize an alternatives-to-tobacco program for growers. The report said a team of ''representatives from the Department of Agriculture, Department of Agrarian Reform, Department of Health, with representatives from Regional Health and Agricultural Offices, will travel to Brazil to study the country's alternative livelihood program.''

The report also said, after the Brazil trip, the Philippine team will develop a country-specific project on alternative livelihood, which the COP guidelines indicated, ''must be time-bound and phased, and might take decades to implement.''

But it looked like the few women leaders of Gitagum at the forum would not wait till the national government can set up its alternative program to win over farmers. Already, a little bit of enlightenment on tobacco control policies during the forum had stoked their enthusiasm to organize among themselves.

Seventy-two per cent of the 47 women farmers, who spoke to me, decide alone or jointly with their husbands on which crop to switch from tobacco. Their eminent power in the household to choose can be harnessed for crop shifting.

''We probably did not understand much what this law means to us, that's why we were complacent. But now I think we need to organize so we can have a strong voice before the local government,'' said Legaspi.

Then their voice, she said, will have more weight to haggle for a slice of the excise tax funds. Still, she expressed doubt on an alternative crop soon, thinking it is going to be dire and problematic to shift. Mejos, together with two other women, was open to try alternative crops but only if subsidies and technical assistance such as soil analysis and marketing, are provided by the government.

For Leizel Ubanan, a pesticide subsidy from the government is a must. ''Whatever crop we cultivate needs to be sprayed (with pesticide). Without pesticides, you cannot defeat worms as fat as bean pods,'' she insisted.

Tarrah Ubanan, on the other hand, expressed her thirst for applied knowledge instead. ''Government does not have to give us financial subsidy but we can use some training on do-it-yourself organic fertilizer and pesticide that we can use on tobacco and other crops,'' she said. But still she thought it is not time yet to make the switch. For her, no crop has yet emerged to compete with tobacco's profitability.

The women also wanted to lobby for its own trading center where sellers and buyers can congregate, and collection of taxes and fees is more efficient, if not guaranteed.

Cesaria Zambrano, municipal social worker, pledged in behalf of the government to include a women farmers summit in the Gender and Development (GAD) Plan next year and to provide financial support for the summit to accommodate more members and ensure the bigger group will have realistic goals and direction.

Zambrano, who is also GAD Focal Pointperson, further said, ''Don't be limited to concerns on tobacco alone. Or on how to get fertilizers from the government. Because the trend now is to go organic. Grow trees so we can have more rain. Be active in cooperatives and try out new livelihood (projects).''

Then, she sparked the day's most serious call to action: ''The challenge for you all is to contribute to changing the face of agriculture in our town.You have to really begin to lie low in cultivating tobacco. Lie low, because a time will come when most of you will have to plant something else. Be prepared now for that future.''

This story was produced under the ‘Mga Nagbababang Kuwento: Reporting on Tobacco and Sin Tax Media Training and Fellowship Program’ by Probe Media Foundation with the support of the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids. A serial version of this story first appeared in Mindanao Daily News.