The food crisis is both scourge and irony: hunger amidst plenty, starving millions existing side by side with the overfed few. Nothing better demonstrates the distorted priorities of the capitalist world than the terrible inequities of food distribution. … While millions of Third World peoples are underfed or starving, their countries are exporting food.
(Philippine scholar RENATO CONSTANTINO 1988: 1–2)
∵
Between 1998 and 2015, the Philippine GDP growth rate averaged less than 1.2 percent, inflation repeatedly escalated, and the unemployment rate averaged nearly 9 percent.1
The economic performance of the Philippines has lagged behind most other developing countries in Asia. Whereas the Philippine economy and its agriculture sector performed moderately well in the 1960s and 1970s, because of the early advent of the Green Revolution in rice and the world commodity boom, the country has had the lowest average growth rates in gross domestic product, gross value added in agriculture, and agricultural exports over the past two decades in South and Southeast Asia. (David et al. 2007: 1)
Since 2013, the country has exhibited some industrial growth fueled by the production of components outsourced by electronic corporations based primarily in China and South Korea (Clelland 2014). As a result, the Philippines was the world’s largest center for business process outsourcing by 2015, making its economy highly vulnerable to the continuing expansion of Chinese manufacturing exports and to consumer technology demand in the United States, the European Union and Japan.
Despite these unstable economic trends, the Philippines carries a higher debt burden than most Asian countries. In 2010, Philippine debt was nearly eight times greater than its 1990 level and had grown to 56 percent of the Gross Domestic product, representing per capita debt of $768 (ADB 2012).2 As a result, the Philippines has borne more severe economic, social and ecological costs for its external indebtedness than most of its Asian neighbors. Since 1984, the Philippines has undergone economic restructuring through nine structural adjustment programs, four standby programs, and two extended fund programs. Each of these restructuring phases increased its external debt. Moreover, the country will be servicing the huge debt incurred by the Marcos dictatorship until at least 2025 (Escobar 2004: 17). By 2003, debt had reached 78 percent of Philippine GDP, and service on the debt amounted to 27 percent of the national budget (Abinales and Amoro 2005: 286). By 2006, the country’s debt had climbed to more than $53 billion, and the government was expending one-third of its annual budget to service external debts (Patenio and Tan-Cruz 2007: 3). The “urgent need for foreign exchange” to meet debt obligations pushed the government to target natural resources for export agendas (Anderson 1987: 263). In the sections that follow, we will explore the processes through which the Philippines integrated its agriculture and fisheries into the global agro-industrial food regime.
By the 1960s, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank were broadening their activities in the Philippines, and they were pressuring the country toward an export-led growth model. In the 1970s, the World Bank initiated loans to the Philippines that were designed to increase agricultural production for export and to improve rural infrastructure, such as trade roads. The Bank’s top-down approach was “oriented away from domestic needs” and was intended to restructure the country’s peasant production systems (Kwiatkowski 1998: 39–41). Since 1980, the Philippines has undergone fifteen phases of structural adjustment, with the IMF goal of positioning the country to repay its accumulated debts through widened export production. In the 1980s, debt repayment amounted to a “financial hemorrhage” of 10 percent of GDP annually. Expansion of the domestic market and poverty reduction to build local purchasing power were “sacrificed to the national priority of repaying the foreign debt.” Between 1980 and 1983, the IMF economic restructuring required trade liberalization, followed by the 1983–1992 era in which the focus was upon debt repayment strategies, accompanied by export agendas to earn foreign exchange. Between 1992 and 2000, the IMF mandated free market transformations for the Philippines, including privatization, rapid deregulation, and opening the country to foreign imports and investments (Bello and Dorcena 2004: 14–27). The 1989 IMF-mandated structural adjustment program: (a) devalued the Philippine peso; (b) liberalized import mechanisms to such an extent that the country developed a trade imbalance between agricultural exports and imports, particularly foodstuffs; (c) privatized lands, industries and public service; and (d) deregulated price controls and subsidies, inflating prices on food, goods and services.3 The IMF and the World Bank bypassed the state to provide financing for credit programs directly to processors, traders and market retailers of food. By routing their funding through banks, the two agencies insured that most of the loans fell into the hands of the largest capitalists, with extremely limited assistance to small producers and peasants (Lindio-McGovern 1997: 56–65).
In the early 1990s, structural adjustment loans “were designed to accelerate industrial growth, invigorate the agricultural sector … and expand rapid growth of nontraditional exports.” Throughout this era, there was a steady flow of foreign loans and grants into the Philippines, and all these projects were conditioned upon further liberalization of the country’s economy, especially
2 Philippine Elites and Economic Restructuring
Between 1979 and 1982, one of the direct effects of the restructuring policies of the IMF and the World Bank was the transformation of national politics. “Within the state, nationalists lost every foothold of influence on policy formation, as transnationalists assumed hegemonic control of all major ministries. Within the private sector, economic nationalist factions whose enterprises depended on domestic markets were decimated as a class” (Broad 1988: 13). Only 134 families have controlled the country’s Congress over the past century (Coronel 2004), and these elites also own the nation’s manufacturing companies and agricultural land (Rivera 1994). According to Bello and Dorcena (2004: 71), much of the fiscal and economic crisis of the Philippines derives from the nation having been “subjugated by a succession of ruling elite factions who served narrow interests instead of the larger goals of sustainable development and social justice.” According to Kang (2002), crony capitalism lies at the heart of the country’s economic inequalities. Coronel (2004: 112) contends that the ruling elites “represent what is so wrong with the Philippines and so many other poor countries: the rampant bribery and fraud, the unbridled rent-seeking, the brazen patronage politics, the flagrant abuse of public resources for private gain, and the widespread clientelism.” Bello and Dorcena (2004: 34) point out that the state has been strangled “by competing factions” that render it “too powerless to even chart the country’s direction, much less subordinate ruling elites under its control. Further sapping the state’s potential to act … have been external interests constraining its range of allowable actions in the larger context of the North’s persistent and often successful efforts to subordinate the South.”
Through such liberalization polices, this powerful political cadre imposed the policies that would best serve the interests of economic and political elites in the country. “These academics and consultants came to power armed with a very uncomplicated approach to policy making: radically reduce the role of the state, radically expand the play of market forces. “In the name of market efficiency and weeding out corruption, they set about dismantling the state’s role in planning, production, trade and finance. Not surprisingly, under their watch, an already weak Philippine government bureaucracy was even more thoroughly colonized by private interests” (Bello and Dorcena 2004: 23–24). Paul Hutchcroft (1998: 2) refers to these economic elites as “booty capitalists” because they are “a powerful business class that extracts privilege from a largely incoherent bureaucracy.” One Philippine economist points to the system of patronage that underlay the relationship between these elites. The government provided to elites crucial resource advantages, such as licenses and fishpond leases, effectively assigning to them relatively monopolistic control over public lands and waterways (Krueger 1980: 52–57).
3 Government Promotion of Agricultural Exports
In the 1980s and 1990s, the incidence of hunger and malnutrition steadily rose, and the Philippines was the seventh poorest country in the world. By
Even if one believes that it is possible for a peripheral country to attain Ricardo’s comparative advantage in the world economy, there is certainly no “specialized market niche” reflected in any of the exports that have been leaving the Philippines since 1994.5 In 2006, UN COMTRADE ranked the Philippines 140th out of 181 nations that exported the same agricultural commodities. Clearly, the country’s share of the world market had declined. Many developing countries export the same commodities because there is demand in richer countries and because all the poor countries receive the same advice from international development agencies. As a result, the high supply of those
In 1980, the value of Philippine food exports was 3.6 times greater than its food imports (FAO 1989). By the early 1990s, the country shifted from being a net agricultural exporter to being a net agricultural importer. In 1994, the country expended 2.5 percent more on agricultural imports than it received for its agricultural exports. By 2006, the situation was far more grim because imports were worth 1.9 times more than exports. Between 1994 and 2006, the value of imports swelled 84 percent while the value of exports grew only 34 percent. Even though the government advocated increased output to offset its declining terms of trade, that strategy did not work. While the quantity of exports increased about 25 percent between 1994 and 2006, the quantity of imports escalated 84 percent.6 Obviously, producing and selling greater amounts has not generated greater revenue for the country, but the government continues to promote expansion of these cash crops, despite the country’s declining terms of trade in these commodities. Because the country’s debt has been steadily rising due to development loans and annual cost of food shortfalls, the government intensified its commitment to exports that require natural resource exploitation. Rather than solving the country’s debt crisis, this export orientation has generated massive trade imbalances that have driven the country deeper into debt.
Contemporary Philippine politicians, technocrats, and capitalists continue to pursue world markets for plantation crops that have been in place for decades, without assessing the likelihood that there will be future price declines as more competing countries enter the trade arena. As a result, a few export crops have been deeply embedded in corporate agro-industrial commodity chains for decades. Thirty years ago, coconuts and bananas were the country’s major farm exports, and the Marcos regime shielded banana and coconut plantations from agrarian reform (New Internationalist 1979). The government continues to prioritize the interests of these plantation owners and corporations (cf. Republic of Philippines 2000). Banana and coconut farming receive heavy government subsidies, and the monopolies controlling these industries have never been fully dismantled (Dolan 1991). In 1985, more of the cultivable land was planted in bananas, coconuts, pineapples and sugar than any other crops. Two multinational corporations, Campbell and Hershey, operated food processing plants that prepared mango puree and tomato paste for export, and
During the 1990s, coconut oil and bananas were still the country’s largest volume agricultural exports, and the Philippines was the third largest banana exporter in the world. Between 1988 and 1997, world export of bananas doubled, and Dole Philippines enlarged its plantations and contract farming throughout the country. Between 1995 and 2007, the production of bananas grew more than any other major cash crop. Over this period, the country’s banana output increased nearly 77 percent and was employing nearly 29 percent more land area in 2007 than in 1995.7 In reality, only 5 percent of the profits from the retail price of a banana accrues to the producing country (New Internationalist 1999a). At the turn of the 21st century, three multinational corporations (Dole, Chiquita, and Del Monte) controlled two-thirds of world trade and pricing in this commodity (FAO 1999). Because revenue returns were small, the government had to count on high volumes of bananas, so public funds were allocated to double the number of banana trees between 1990 and 2008.8 The coconut monopoly that was established in the Marcos era was successful at securing legislation that excluded coconut plantations from redistribution by the agrarian reform program (Kang 2002: 140; Bello et al. 1982: 186).9 The government-funded Coconut Industry Development Fund financed the research for a hybrid coconut tree and undertook a replanting program to replace older trees on 2.9 million hectares with a hybrid that merged qualities of Malaysian and West African varieties (Dolan 1991) and transformed the country into a coconut monoculture (Constantino 1988: 55). By 1988, one-third of the country’s coconut trees were still low-producing, so the government subsidized the replacement of older coconut trees with new higher-yielding varieties that were imported from the Ivory Coast (Cruz 1997: 11). Even though government attention had been directed to expansion of the coconut industry in the 1980s,
In June 2009, the Philippine Secretary of Agriculture conducted a public briefing for potential foreign investors that reflected the continuing prioritization of plantations. The country widened its production of “big-ticket, high-value crops for potential ventures by foreign investors,” he told the group of Asian and European business representatives, and the country’s “preferred investment areas” were coconuts, bananas, pineapples and mangoes. He bragged that the country supplied 12 percent of the world market in bananas but was the world’s number one producer of dried banana chips. He added that the country was third in the world in export of pineapples and seventh in mangoes. He told the group that the Philippines produces and exports half of world trade in coconut oil, making the country number one in this commodity (Fresh Plaza, 8 June 2009).
In addition to these cash crops that had been cultivated for decades, the government targeted expansion of livestock and poultry for export, starting in the mid-1980s. While these increased outputs are a reflection of the government’s reaction to global demand, the growth in export meats is largely due to the expansion of contract farming in chickens and hogs since the late 1980s. In 1986, the Philippine Minister of Agriculture called for an expansion of livestock production through contract farming. Calling for foreign capital from multinational corporations, he alerted “all the people, institutions, and countries that want to invest in agriculture to direct their attention to the establishment of processing plants and to develop areas they would need for contract farming” (Malaya, 9 June 1986). As a result of this government priority, there was a shift to hog and cattle production that led to deforestation of vast areas to make way for foreign-controlled corporate ranches. At this point, the new livestock industry was dependent on imported feeds, and hybrid pigs and chickens displaced traditional varieties. Since 70 percent of 1980s livestock and poultry production cost lay in imported feeds, the government subsidized rapid increases in corn that could be used as animal feeds (Constantino 1988: 41). In its Medium-Term Development Plan the government set the goal of opening 45,000 new hectares for livestock and poultry (Republic of Philippines 2000). Between 1995 and 2007, the volume of chickens processed in dressing plants doubled while processed hogs increased 1.5 times over 1995 levels. Since 1980, corn production has steadily increased to accommodate local and global demand for animal and aquaculture feeds. Over the 1980s
Despite government projections for large crop expansions, the country increased the land available for farming by less than 2 percent between 1995 and 2008.12 Since a high proportion of these targeted cash crops are produced in Mindanao, this island will be inequitably impacted by any long-term effects from more intensive agriculture strategies (Menguita-Feranil 2007: 4). More than 43 percent of the country’s farms are situated in Mindanao, producing 87 percent of the country’s pineapples, 77 percent of bananas, 58 percent of coconuts, and 56 percent of corn. For that reason, the government allocated $19.1 billion for Mindanao agribusiness infrastructure and the expansion of “high-value” export cash crops between 2007 and 2010 (Balane 2009).
Since farm land area has barely increased between 1995 and 2005, how does the government expect to expand the country’s output of additional exports? First, the country’s Medium-Term Development Plan allocates $1.8 billion to develop 2.4 million additional hectares in “non-traditional high-value crops” through the “transformation of farm lands into agribusiness enterprises” (Republic of Philippines 2000: Ch. 1). This strategy will require conversion of land to export crops, large agribusinesses and fishponds that once produced for domestic consumption (Menguita-Feranil 2007: 16). Second, the plan will stimulate widespread adoption of hybridized and genetically-modified strains and dependency on imported fertilizers, pesticides, and livestock feeds. Every year since 1994, fertilizers and feeds have accounted for nearly one-fifth of the total value of all agricultural imports, and the cost of these inputs has steadily risen. By 2006, the import value of these agricultural inputs negated 24 percent of the total value of all agricultural exports.13 Third, small producers were put at risk, as corporations and absentee investors structured contract farming as the primary mechanism through which cash crops and livestock production were expanded.
4 Government Promotion of Capture Fishing for Export
Just as valuable to the country as its farm lands are its resource-rich coastal areas. Nestled along the Pacific Rim a few degrees above the equator, the 7,100-island Philippines possesses one of the world’s best natural endowments
In the 1980s and 1990s, the Asian Development Bank provided $32.7 million to fund a public credit program for capture fishing. Even though the government claimed in its loan proposal that its intended beneficiaries would be small fishers, a majority of the loans were extended to commercial fishing companies and to large fishpond operators. In a subsequent evaluation of this program, the Asian Development Bank (1999: 22) acknowledged that “these loans to fishery projects … aggravated the marine resource depletion … as more powerful motorboats and modern fishing gear were purchased.” Such policies stimulated expanded use of intensive fishing gear, such as large stationary netting systems that ensnare massive amounts of fish from the tidal flows. Overfishing was further exacerbated after the 1998 Fisheries Code which broadened the access of large vessels to deeper municipal waters (Krinks 2002: 131).
As a result, government policies prioritized the acceleration of capture fishing to support export of fish, crustaceans, and exotic species in high demand in richer countries. Throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s, the government promoted the country’s fisheries “to other countries as a new economic frontier: ‘untapped, ‘vast,’ and ‘rich’” (Goldoftas 2006: 89–90). By the late 1970s, the twenty largest licensed corporations dominated commercial fishing through
By the early 1990s, there was a boom in tuna exports to the US, western Europe, and Japan from the island of Mindanao. In Mindanao, the primary export point for tuna is General Santos City Fish Port that was funded by Japan to provide markets, ice plant, cold storage, and canneries for rapid processing of the fish. Since 1998, 400 metric tons of tuna have been unloaded daily at this port, 60 percent of it exported to Japan. By 2009, dwindling tuna catches were impacting livelihoods of Mindanao commercial fishers (New Humanitarian 2009). In 2019, however, the General Santos City website bragged: “What was once packaged in makeshift baskets in the domestic market has metamorphosed into canned, fresh, chilled, frozen, and smoked commodities in the international market.”18 In addition to tuna, the Philippines annually averages 35,000 metric tons of crabs, 16,000 metric tons of shrimp, 281,000 metric tons of roundscad, and nearly 58,000 metric tons of squid and cuttlefish (PDA 2005). Since 1995, captured fish accounted for two-thirds of the value of all the country’s fishery exports.19
The Philippines has the world’s largest area of brackish water fishponds that lie at the interface between freshwater and marine ecosystems. Despite this infrastructure, aquaculture is not a major contributor to the country’s GDP. However, this massive agri-industry employs one million out of the 30 million labor force (Philippine Annual Fisheries Profile 2008). The Philippine government has promoted the expansion of aquaculture through five historical stages: (a) small-scale traditional fishing and polycultural fishponds before 1950; (b) polycultural fishponds of the 1950s and 1960s; (c) the boom in monocultural ponds for world markets, 1975–1980s, (d) the aquaculture crisis of the 1990s; and (e) aggressive aquaculture promotion since 2000.
Fish farming has existed in the Philippines for many decades. The country’s first fish pond was recorded in 1863, and small-scale pond fishing was common at the turn of the 20th century. Surrounded by earthen dikes, these early extensive fishponds were used for polycultural production of fish and shrimp, and they degraded the ecosystem far less than later intensive technologies. In 1920, the country had 450,000 hectares of mangroves which were slowly developed into fishponds at the rate of about 760 to 1200 hectares per year between 1920 and 1940. In the 1940s, the mangrove conversion rate increased to about 1,176 hectares annually. In 1947, fishpond development was further spurred by the formation of the Philippine Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (Primavera 1995).
Fishpond construction increased at 5,000 hectares per year in the 1950s and 1960s after the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development provided loans “to accelerate the conversion of vast areas of marshlands (mangroves) … into productive fishponds” (Primavera 2000: 93). In this period, the Philippine government prioritized aquaculture as a strategy to feed its own citizens, and there were national import substitution restrictions to protect this fledgling industry. In 1965, the Philippine Fishery Commission was established to conserve natural fishing resources for domestic consumption and to restrict importation of fish. In 1967, there were 140,055 hectares of fishponds, about 40 percent privately-owned, the rest operating on 25-year renewable leases from the government (World Bank 1976). In 1968, the total fishpond area rose to 165,873 hectares of which 53 percent were privately-owned. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, most of the country’s fishponds employed traditional polycultural methods that relied on tidal waters to feed fishpond stocks. In the late 1960s, smaller-scale polycultural ponds predominated, with larger aquaculture ponds generating about 10 percent of farmed fish. Aimed at local markets, milkfish constituted 95 percent of the production (Primavera 1995).
5.1 The Boom in Monocultural Ponds for World Markets, 1975–1980s
In 1973, the World Bank pressured the Philippines toward re-orienting its fishery sector for export production. The Bank offered loans of $23.6 million on the condition that the country liberalize its fisheries and commercialize its production processes. The Bank required the government to use the funds to extend credit to fishing vessels no smaller than 45 to 70 tons, thereby excluding peasant fishers from this economic growth agenda (Illo and Polo 1990: 19). At the same time, Japan and the US pushed for relaxation of Philippine restrictions on foreign investments and exploitation of fishery resources, and both countries dangled loans and development aid to facilitate the transition. The 1975 Fisheries Modernization Act effectively integrated into the global agro-industrial food regime fishing grounds that had traditionally provided the livelihoods of peasant fishers. With the passage of this act, contends Philippine scholar Renato Constantino (1988: 38–39), “the country’s fishing industry ceased to be ours and became Japan’s.” The legislation declared fishing a “preferred area of investment,” opened the country’s coastal waters to foreign capitalists, and re-defined the country’s resource-rich mangroves to be “swamplands available for development.” To entice foreign investors, the government offered the incentives of a 40 percent equity ratio in joint ventures, tax exemptions, and freedom from national expropriation (Republic of Philippines 1975). Through other Presidential decrees, coastal waters were opened to large foreign vessels, especially many from Japan, and the government began to subsidize facilities to freeze and can seafoods for export. International aid to aquaculture almost doubled between 1978 and 1993, and Dole Philippines and companies from thirteen countries made significant investments in Philippine shrimp farming. Early shrimp aquaculture relied heavily on Taiwanese technology, and the Philippines pioneered export of black tiger shrimp to Japan (Krinks 2002).20
Despite the egalitarian rhetoric of the legislation, fishponds were too expensive for development by small fishers. An applicant for a fishpond lease was required to pay a $400 fee, along with proof of capital assets of about $200 per hectare. An initial investment of $13,700 to $27,300 was needed to construct and stock a one-hectare pond, followed by a similar amount in operating funds. However, lease fees for public lands were cheap (Philippine Annual Fisheries Profile 2001). The Asian Development Bank (1999: 7) reported that the fees “paid for the privilege of using fisheries and fisheries-related resources are significantly below what the scarcity of the resource and its long-term value demand.” However, “a successful lobby by the aquaculture industry has indefinitely postponed the implementation of a fee increase” (Krinks (2002: 98–99). Large Philippine agribusinesses in joint ventures with foreign investors have had “a monopoly on the industry and the credit offered by banks and financial institutions” (Primavera 1991: 36). By allocating 70 percent of the loans to large pond operators in the 1980s and 1990s (ADB 1999: 22), the government
Following World Bank advice to increase export-oriented fish productivity, the Philippines established its Fishery Development Authority in the 1970s (World Bank 1976). This new public agency accelerated pond development by extending government leases from ten years to 25 (Primavera 2000). Subsequently, fishpond land use more than doubled, and the expansion in this era would account for a majority of the ponds that operated through 2005.23 Peasant fishers who surrounded redeveloped mangroves were publicly stigmatized to be outdated relics in need of modernization (Primavera 1995). The 1975 act promised to develop “modern fishpond villages” run on a cooperative basis with government supervision and financial assistance (World Bank 1976: 145). However, most small fishers were transformed into squatters on public lands that had been reallocated to individual users with sole legal right of access to former public commons. Even though the decree promised credit and research support, commercial and foreign investors benefitted from the vast majority of these funds. By the early 1980s, less than 10 percent of small fishers had received any government credit, and many fishers were dispossessed of their traditional fishing grounds after the government granted monopolies to commercial fishers (Illo and Polo 1990: 18).
In the early 1980s, Japan began to encourage neighboring Asian nations to embark in shrimp culture production (Bailey 1988a; Chong 1990). In this period, most fishing corporations were Japanese or were joint ventures with Japanese investors, and a majority of the technology and technical expertise were provided by Japan (Mindanao Focus, 4 May 1984: 17). When the Asian “shrimp fever” in aquaculture was fueled by external loans and Japanese investments in the early 1980s, the Philippine government sponsored an 8,000-hectare new pond for export-oriented shrimp culture (Chong 1990: 41). In 1984, the Philippines took on new indebtedness for aquaculture, by soliciting a $21.8 million loan from the Asian Development Bank to construct hatcheries and ponds. New
5.2 Trade Crisis of the 1990s
By 1994, external debt had skyrocketed to nearly $656 per capita (Asiamoney Magazine, March 1996), partially because the government used external loans to finance expansion of shrimp farming. Between 1951 and 1995, the land area re-oriented to fishponds had more than tripled, and about one-third of those ponds were derived from government privatization of public mangroves through its fishpond lease program (Primavera 1995). Through vast exports to Japan and the United States, Philippine export shrimp held its highest value on world markets in the 1980s, reaching its peak in 1989.25 Even though shrimp farming more than tripled between 1988 and 1995, the Philippines encountered problems with prawn farming to such an extent that it was no longer competitive in the world market by 1995.26 On the one hand, Philippine shrimp production costs were nearly double the expenses paid by Thai and Indonesian competitors. The shrimp industry was heavily dependent on imported feeds, chemicals and equipment that accounted for 40 percent of operational costs (Krinks 2002: 132). On the other hand, overproduction of shrimp and fish by so many Asian countries led to falling prices. Simply put, world prices crashed in 1989 because the world market was flooded with Chinese shrimp (Chong 1990: 42). Between 1985 and 2003, the Philippines almost quintupled its shrimp exports, but the market value of those exports did not even double (FAO 1995). For the Philippines and many other Asian countries,
To cope with its declining aquaculture outputs, the Philippines established its Fishery Sector Program and its Fishery Resource Management Program, using loans from the Asian Development Bank and Japan’s Overseas Economic Cooperation Fund (ADB 1999). In 1995, the land reform law was amended to exclude large landowners who operated fishponds. This act of support for the fishpond operators was prompted by the large dollar earnings from shrimp export and the strong competition among neighboring countries (Yap 1999). In 1997, the Agriculture and Fisheries Modernization Act put emergency measures in place to make fisheries more profitable in the face of trade liberalization and international competition.28 New ponds were necessary because older ponds became unproductive and were abandoned after about a decade. For that reason, 15 percent of leased fishponds were idle in 1998 (ADB 1999: 7). In 2000, the Philippines supplied only 4 percent of world output of shrimp while Thailand and China accounted for 48 percent (Aksoy and Beghin 2005: 277).
5.3 Aggressive Aquaculture Promotion since 2000
Shrimp production declined 34 percent between 1995 and 1999, and the country’s ranking in aquaculture exports fell precipitously. By 2007, the country was generating 53 percent less shrimp than it had in 1995. In the same time period, aquaculture outputs of exotic finfish (e.g., tilapia) rose.29 By the late 1990s, it was clear to fishery officials and to university technocrats that the Philippines needed to rethink its aquaculture priorities. Legislation and new funding initiatives started in the late 1990s laid the groundwork for post-2000 directions. The 1998 Fisheries Code permitted holders of fishpond leases to become land owners when their leases expired (Republic of Philippines 1998), cementing large-operator control over aquaculture (Krinks 2002: 131). In 1997, Philippine
the establishment of multi-functional mariculture parks,
recruitment of foreign direct investment and joint aquaculture ventures,
government incentives for investment in aquaculture expansion,
development of strategic agricultural and fisheries development zones,
expansion of hatcheries and processing facilities,
government-funded research into improved feeds, and
use of more genetically-modified species that produce higher yields and/or are more resistant to diseases.
In addition, the Medium-Term Development Plan set the goal of 16,000 new hectares of aquaculture projects by 2010 (Republic of Philippines 2000). To assess the status of aquaculture, the government conducted a 2002 census of fisheries which reported that the number of aquaculture operators grew eightfold since 1980 and that the number of aquafarms had swelled to 8.5 times the 1980 level.31 There were 123,500 fishponds (52.5 percent of the total), and 90,100 seaweed farms (38.2 percent of the total). The census reflected new remedial directions that expanded in the 1990s, including 10,600 fish cages and pens, 1,800 fish tanks and 758 hatcheries to breed seed fish. The census also documented the growing trend away from problem-ridden brackish water ponds, for nearly 85 percent of fish farms were situated in marine or fresh water. In addition, more than 20,000 farms were engaging in experimental oyster, mussel, crab, and other shellfish (Republic of Philippines 2002).
Why would the Philippines continue to subsidize aquaculture despite the high costs of public programs and imported inputs? Why would the Philippines continue to try to compete with China, Thailand, and Vietnam which account for a majority of the world’s aquaculture output (FAO 2012e)? On the one hand, both marine and inland capture fishing are in a state of crisis in the Philippines, evidenced most strongly by declines in tuna fishing– the number one Philippine fishery export for decades. The rest of the world is facing the same
Reflecting these global food trends, external funding agencies continue to advocate Philippine aquaculture expansion. After the country dropped from fourth to twelfth in global aquaculture rankings, the Food and Agriculture Organization (2004b: 8) recommended that the Philippines undertake deeper integration into the global agro-industrial food regime, advising that: “The future growth of Philippine aquaculture may not be sustained unless new markets are developed, market competitiveness is strengthened and farming risks are reduced. In this age of international trade and competition, the Philippine aquaculture industry needs to plan and implement a development and management plan with a global perspective.” In addition to such continuing pressures from international development agencies, the US has broadened its funding of “high-value aquaculture” in the Philippines, especially in Mindanao, around three agro-industrial goals: (a) “expanded production and marketing of lucrative, non-traditional commodities;” (b) establishment of refrigeration methods essential to distant shipping; and (c) “a major expansion of exports to the large and growing China market.”32 To “accelerate economic growth in Mindanao between 2008 and 2012,” USAID funded several infrastructure projects, including a seaweed warehouse, seaweed solar dryers, boat landings, port upgrades, road construction, a multi-species hatchery and mariculture park. A new grouper and abalone hatchery was managed by Mega Fishing Corporation, a deep sea purse seine operator that ships canned fish to 22 countries.33 In 2019, the US Department of Agriculture “Buy USA” website made clear why the US calls attention to aquaculture projects in Mindanao, i.e., “materials and
Since 2000, the Philippine government has reacted to world demand and to external development agencies to prioritize new export targets. The motivating factors for aquaculture are not local food security, but distant market demand. In the words of one fishery official, “China is still the main export market for high-value seafood such as live grouper, snapper, abalone, and sea cucumber. Frozen tilapia, catfish and pompano are selling well in the US while Japan is a major market for shrimp and crustaceans” (PIA News, 17 September 2008). In 2004, the director of the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources announced that aquaculture outputs had grown three times more than farming outputs since 2000, and he pinpointed the explanation for the new surge in fish farming. “Aquaculture has been growing tremendously,” he said, because “this sector is the most influenced by government interventions. Aquaculture is really where the growth prospects are as marine culture parks, bangus [milkfish] hatcheries, research on superior tilapia strains, bangus and tilapia fishponds, and seaweed nurseries are being established by the government” (Aguiba 2004). When the Secretary of Agriculture and the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources director claimed publicly in 2001 that aquaculture was exhibiting the “biggest growth” of any sector of agriculture (Asia Pulse, 8 December 2004), they were overstating the success of shrimp aquaculture. Between 1994 and 2006, the country’s agricultural exports increased 34 percent, but fish and shellfish exports declined 27 percent.35 Moreover, shrimp– the most valuable Philippine aquaculture export commodity– fell 53 percent
The public rhetoric is intended, no doubt, to legitimate the surge of new programs and subsidies to expand export aquaculture. Because of the decline in shrimp production, the government initiated a new thrust in 2006 “to optimize production in more than 240,000 hectares of brackish water ponds, reinvigorate the shrimp industry and spur development of more than 1,000 hectares of new brackish water fishponds, pens and cages” (Philippine Star, 23 July 2006). Since 2000, the largest government investments in aquaculture have been directed toward the construction of forty mariculture parks, 23 of them situated in Mindanao. A typical park is 500 hectares or more, with farm plots for fish cages and seaweed farming. Cages are employed to grow high-value export marine fish, such as grouper, pompano, snapper and Asian sea bass. In addition, these parks permit aqua-polyculture of several compatible species. “The mariculture park concept is similar to an industrial estate where an area in the sea is subdivided into different plots for the farming of fish and other aquatic life. … Important facilities that entail a large capital outlay, such as storm-resistant mooring systems and other support structures, are set up by the government to encourage investors. The fishcage operators, in turn, would lease an area from their local government” (Philippine Annual Fisheries Profile 2009). According to fishery officials, a sea cage costs 85 percent less to construct and maintain than a small fishpond, but a single fish cage can produce as much as a one-hectare fishpond.37 Adjacent to the parks are ancillary facilities, such as ice plants, cold storage, canneries, feed mills, and sea cage fabrication (Agriculture Business Week, 29 April 2009). Much like a government-funded industrial park in the US, the mariculture park represents an attempt to rationalize the aquaculture production process into a vertically-integrated commodity chain. The goal is “to develop an area with appropriate equipment and infrastructure that will allow fishermen, fish farmers, and investors to operate cost effectively and securely” (Rosario 2006: 9). The government also promoted partnerships with foreign investors to intensify commercial fish cage farming, like the Zamboanga City Mariculture Park (Manila Bulletin, 23 February 2008).
In addition to mariculture parks, the government subsidized and promoted infrastructure, technology and new genetically-modified species that they claim will maximize production and accelerate processing. For example, the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources distributed experimental fish cages and fish pens (Rosario 2006) and recruited foreign investments for
In 2009, the agency’s director reported that “the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources regards the aquaculture sector as the driver for growth for the overall fisheries production. … This is why the agency intensifies and promotes the production of several lucrative species.” Because of rising global demand and trade value, the Philippines began in 2009 to promote African hito and freshwater shrimp, along with other nontraditional fishpond species (Philippine Annual Fisheries Profile 2009, 2010). Geared for the global export market, a new French-engineered tilapia breed can be grown in both fresh and brackish water, making it possible to farm tilapia and shrimp in polycultural ponds. Despite ecological problems, diseases, and fish kills in brackish ponds, the Philippines continues to advocate expansion of these types of fishponds. According to one fishery official, “fish grown in brackish waters compared to fresh water tastes better, the quality is also better, the flesh is darker which is what the market prefers” (Felix 2006). By 2005, tilapia accounted for 18 percent of the country’s aquaculture production, showing rapid expansion in a few years (Philippine Annual Fisheries Profile 2006). Because it matures faster, requires less production inputs, and has strong resistance to diseases, fishery officials were convinced that Thailand’s genetically-modified white freshwater shrimp will salvage the Philippine shrimp industry. In 2007, the Philippines
Because the island produces 42 percent of the country’s seafoods, Mindanao was targeted for an intense new phase of aquaculture expansion after 2000 (Menguita-Feranil 2007: 4, Mindanao Magazine, 20 January 2009). According to a Philippine Chamber of Commerce representative, “Aquaculture production in Mindanao offers opportunities for growth. With a variety of species available, Mindanao is an ideal location for mariculture activities due to its large production areas and year-round fish production” (PIA News, 17 September 2008). Because 43 percent of the country’s aquaculture production occurs here (Menguita-Feranil 2007: 3), government funds were earmarked for “realizing Mindanao’s aquaculture and mariculture potentials.” To move fish to market as quickly as possible, the government developed a “mariculture highway” system that connects Mindanao aquaculture facilities to ports, in order to “enable the country to be an important player in the live food-fish export market” (Philippine Annual Fisheries Profile 2009). Much of the attention is aimed at moving foods more quickly and more safely to the National Capital Region, so the government developed a food logistics system to deliver the island’s surpluses to Manila (Balane 2009). “We have a food security problem,” the Secretary of Agriculture told the Third Aquaculture Congress in Mindanao. “So we need you to ship more of your products, and we need your food to help feed the 15 million people of Metro Manila” (Minda News, 30 November 2004). At the Sixth Philippine Food Congress, the President of Cruz Aquaculture told reporters, “Mindanao can increase its aquaculture production and can further compete with other Southeast Asian countries since it has promising resources that can boost its growth. Aquaculture is the fastest growing sector of agriculture, and by 2017, the sector is projected to overtake the capture fishing
5.4 Seaweed Farming
Despite all the attention to fish farming, seaweed is the fishery commodity that has the most consistent track record. In terms of global trade value, seaweed represents the country’s second most profitable fishery export, following tuna. World and national demand for seaweed has remained high since 1977, and seaweed prices have been less volatile than the prices of fish and shellfish. Between 1980 and 2003, most of the increased production in Philippine aquaculture came from seaweed outputs (Barut 2004). While shrimp production declined 53 percent between 1995 and 2007, seaweed production increased. There were 73,549 seaweed farmers in 2002, representing 22.7 times more operators than existed in 1980.40 Following the decline in shrimp production, the Philippines prioritized expansion of seaweed production, and this type of mariculture increased 160 percent between 1995 and 2007.41
Unlike food fads in fish and shellfish that change erratically, seaweed has been developed into a wide array of industrial and health uses around the world (Manila Bulletin, 17 April 2008). The need for durable foods in the global agro-industrial food regime stimulated world demand for colloids like carrageenan. Seaweed farming of the Euchema species originated in the southern Philippines in the mid-1960s under the auspices of the American-based Marine Colloids, Inc., the world’s largest carrageenan processing company, which had exploited Canada’s Irish Moss from the 1940s until the 1970s. By early 1970s, the corporation had selected the Philippines as the most ideal area for mass cultivation of seaweed. By 1978, Philippine production had unseated Canada as the world’s top producer of seaweeds (Blanchetti-Revelli 1995: 108–10). Since then, the Philippines has been one of the world’s largest producers of seaweed and its by-product, carrageenan (Philippine Annual Fisheries Profile 2009–2015).
However, this agro-industry is showing signs of crisis. Production expanded steadily between 1977 and 1999, then declined between 2000 and 2005. Pollution and diseases periodically lower production levels (Rosario 2006: 4–5). Since 2000, seaweed production has dropped nearly 43 percent but the value of exports rose nearly 9 percent, reflecting the increased Chinese demand for dried seaweeds.42 In the face of shortfalls and high global demand, Philippine processing plants have experienced raw material shortages, sometimes importing from Indonesia and Malaysia to produce carrageenan for export. After 2006, Indonesia produced seaweed at lower costs, threatening Philippine competitiveness in the world. Seedlings represent 26 percent of Philippine production cost, but only 8 percent of Indonesian costs (Cruz 2008). To try to overcome these shortfalls, the government enlarged its funding base to provide more loans for seaweed farms (Philippine Annual Fisheries Profile 2009), sought foreign investors (Fresh Plaza, 8 June 2009) and promoted new technologies, including 297 seaweed nurseries and solar dryers (Aguiba 2004). Through a grant from Japan, Philippine universities have developed a seaweed gene bank and new strains of high-yielding, fast-growing seaweed (Manila Bulletin, 29 April 2007).
6 Ecological Impacts of the Philippine Agro-Industrial Export Strategy
Through such export intensification strategies, the Philippines has pushed its resources to the crisis stage to supply a majority of its fishery exports to the
6.1 Land and Forest Degradation
The country’s farm lands are at risk from industrial encroachment, from aquaculture effluents, and from the waste generated by human settlements. Only about 7 percent of the households are connected to sewer systems, and the country generates 2.2 million tons of organic pollution every year (World Bank Philippines 2003). Total farm land area has expanded very little since 1995, exacerbating the pressure on small farmers. “Unfavorable market integration, high levels of surplus extraction, and policies that engender indebtedness have double consequences. Not only do they perpetuate poverty and underdevelopment, but the strategies that smallholders adopt to insure their survival under such circumstances are frequently incompatible with sustained, environmentally appropriate land use and lead to deterioration of … natural resources” (Collins 1987: 19–20). The government has subsidized use of fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides and other agricultural chemicals, and the intensification of production has taken its toll on farm lands. For example, banana production requires 30 milligrams of chemicals per hectare annually, a level that is ten times the average for intensive agriculture in richer countries. One ton of bananas generates two tons of waste that is contaminated with chemicals and plastic. Banana plantations aerially spray fungicides forty times per year and herbicides eight to twelve times a year, and they utilize massive amounts of disinfectants after harvest. In addition, copper and other the residues sterilize the soil, leading to erosion (New Internationalist 1999a).
Nationally, such practices in all types of crops have left nearly 46 percent of hectares moderately to severely eroded (Domingo 2001). “The global agro-food system relies heavily on inorganic nitrogenous fertilizers. … Nutrient export through long-distance transport of crops…depletes soil nitrogen at rates exceeding the capacity for biological regeneration” (Mancus 2007: 269–71). To
In the 1980s, the Philippines exhibited the most rapid deforestation in the world, as mangroves shrunk to one-third of their 1900 level (Anderson 1987, Cruz and Repetto 1992: 23). After 2000, deforestation occurred at the rate of 227,000 hectares yearly (World Bank Philippines 2003). Between 1951 and 1990, the country lost two-thirds of its mangroves, more than half those losses caused by deforestation for fishpond construction (McGinn 1998). Mindanao was deforested at a rate that exceeded the rest of the country, so it lost more than three-quarters of its mangroves (Primavera 1995: 304).
6.2 Degradation Caused by Capture Fishing
Capture fishing has taken a serious ecological toll on the country. Fishery resources are more depleted in the Philippines than most other Asian countries. The Philippine fish catch is among the highest 10 percent of countries in the world, so fish are harvested at a level 30 to 50 percent higher than the natural production capacity. A majority of the country’s coastal and inland waters are over-fished, and many of its 1970s species have been depleted (World Bank Philippines 2003). By the late 1990s, stocks of bottom-dwelling fish were less than one-third of their 1940s levels (ADB 1996: 35). About 80 percent of the country’s coral reefs are severely damaged, fifty of the country’s 421 rivers are dead and many lakes are ecologically endangered (World Bank Philippines 2003). Export pressures on coastal fisheries are probably greater than parallel exploitation of other types of ecosystems. “Increasing foreign and domestic demand for coastal and marine products led to huge capital inputs which transformed fisheries technology. … Overexploitation stressed the fisheries resources beyond their reproductive capacities” (Anderson 1987: 261).
Commercial fishing vessels cause far more resource depletion than peasant fishers, as is evidenced by the threats to tuna stocks. After 2000, tuna exports increased more than any other trade commodity, outputs doubling over
6.3 Degradation Caused by Aquaculture
In every peripheral country where aquaculture has been prioritized, “satisfying the huge export market for cultivated fish and shellfish has led to significant environmental damage” (Aksoy and Beghin 2005: 277). The core can pay cheap prices for peripheral fish and marine resources because most of the real costs of production are externalized to Asian ecosystems and communities. In Asian countries, aquaculture has been accompanied by land seizures, privatization of commons (especially mangroves) and the displacement of tens of thousands of people. To make way for fishponds, Philippine mangroves have been destroyed to such an extent that only a tiny percentage of the original forest cover remains. Renowned Philippine scholar Jurgenne Primavera (2000: 99) observes that “an aerial view of the Philippine coastline will show a monotonous succession of fish ponds with hardly a relief of green.” Furthermore, fish farming has led to dwindling fish stocks, damaged and reduced crop areas, endangered traditional peasant activities and eroded household income (Cabanilla 1997: 10).
More than 400 plant and animal species found in the Philippines are threatened with extinction (World Bank Philippines 2003). Monocultural fish and seaweed farms have caused loss of biodiversity, eliminating hundreds of fish, crustaceans, mollusks, and grass species. First, aquaculture ponds engage in mass monocultural production, using up the space that was once occupied by hundreds of different species. Second, that export species must devour high
Fourth, escapes of genetically-modified fish can invade and displace the gene pool of wild fish (Emerson 1999). Fifth, fishpond waste builds up as silt and sedimentation in rivers, bays, and along coasts, “risking all the animals and threatening the livelihoods and living conditions of humans” (McGinn 1998).
Shrimp farming requires four to six tons of feed per hectare. Only 17 percent of this feed is converted into shrimp biomass. The rest becomes waste, heavily contaminated with pesticides and antibiotics, which is flushed directly back into the sea or onto neighboring mangrove and agricultural lands. The shrimp pond is then refilled with new sea water. The high level of pollution resulting from this open drainage of effluents into both irrigation channels and the sea has resulted in fish mortality, the contamination of groundwaters, and various health hazards. (Shiva 2000: 46)
Loaded with antibiotics, pesticides and other chemicals, the waste builds up as sedimentation to lower depth of waterways, and it smothers coral reefs and seagrass. It also triggers harmful algae blooms and can cause the emergence of resistant new strains of pathogens (Primavera 1991).
While the Philippine government advocates the expansion of fish farming in cages and pens because it is less ecologically harmful than fishponds (Philippine Annual Fisheries Profile 2008), that claim is not supported by research. Fish cage farming is incompatible with fishery sustainability (Pauly 2002). Worldwide, fish farming in cages or pens requires three tons of wild fish to produce every ton of trade fish (Staniford 2002). In the Philippines, each caged fingerling is fed five kilograms of mixed wild fish, fishmeal and grain over six months (Espejo 2005), a rate that exceeds world averages. The ecological footprint of every cage or pen is the size of a football field. For example, farmed tilapia needs a spatial ecosystem support that is 10,000 times larger than the cage (Kautsky et al. 1997). For every ton of fish produced, one ton of organic waste accumulates on the ocean or bay floor (Rosario 2006). The release of nutrients from the sediment triggers growth of algae and the release of toxic levels of hydrogen sulfide
Even though it is far more sustainable than export-oriented fishponds or cage production, seaweed farming is not without ecological shortcomings (Japan Times 2020). Seaweed farms require poles and stakes from mangroves, and they threaten coral reefs when they are constructed near or above them. Abandoned farm gear, lines and plastic bottles litter the ocean floor, coral reefs, and surface water (Sievanen et al. 2005). Since it is monocultural, seaweed farming threatens plant and grass diversity along coasts, and genetically-modified strains rapidly explode and destroy biodiversity (Lindstrom 2004). Seaweed is cultivated in tightly-packed parcels, changing the feeding habits of snails, oysters, and small fish that naturally utilize sea grasses and plants as their habitat. Seaweed farmers limit the mollusk populations that normally feed around such plants, disturbing their natural habitats and threatening their survival (Feng 2004). Toxic substances, such as ammonia and arsenic, are excreted at unnaturally high levels by seaweed farms, causing small mollusks and snails to move out of these areas (Radford 2002). There is also evidence that seaweed farmers utilize pesticides that get absorbed at high levels by seaweed (US Food and Drug Administration 1994: 17). In the Pacific Rim where seaweed is part of the human diet, poisonings were common throughout the 1990s, and hospitals pointed to pesticides as the causative agents (Vincent and Guibal 2014: 4340).
7 Looking to the Future
less destructive development approaches have been repeatedly eroded by the government’s consistent commitment to neoliberal economic policies…and subverted by the power of narrow economic interests. On the one hand, the government passed– but failed to meaningfully enforce–laws to protect natural resources. On the other, it encouraged– and strongly promoted– the exploitation of these resources by giving investors unhampered access and allowing them unfettered operations.
In 2017, two antithetical public documents were published in the Philippines to propose reforms of national macroeconomic policies: the national mid-century development plan and recommendations to reform national anti-poverty policy. By 2040, the National Economic and Development Authority (2017) claims,” the Philippines shall be a prosperous, predominantly middle-class society where no one is poor.”46 Even though this document does not examine food security, it claims that real per capita income will be tripled, eradicating unemployment, poverty and hunger. For those farmers and fisherfolk who produce food, the plan prioritizes strategies to further strengthen exporting, replicating the goals of previous plans that have led to the class inequalities and ecological damage that Bello and Dorcena (2004: 222) criticize, including:
innovation, expansion and diversification in high value export crops and fishery species, accompanied by new “production and marketing schemes;”
increased access of farmers and fishers to global commodity chains;
increased access of farmers and fishers to financing and insurance;
increased capacity of farmers and fishers to employ new technologies; and
the reclassification of agricultural lands for other uses.
These economic agendas are set alongside the goal of promoting sustainable ecological policies and approaches. In order to implement its “strategic external trade policy regime,” the Development Authority recommends pursuit of trade partnerships and new markets and intensified promotion of Philippine goods and services. The plan calls for a “new national competition policy” that will “steer regulations and administrative procedures of government agencies toward promotion of competition” (PNEDA 2017: 11–20, 34–38, 48).
The National Anti-Poverty Secretariat (PNAPC) describes the state of the Philippine economy quite differently, emphasizing that more than one-fifth of the country’s population is in extreme poverty while half to three-fifths live
Poor development performance is due to liberalization and market-oriented reforms since the 1980s. … Agriculture and manufacturing have declined rapidly and the availability of decent work has, correspondingly, greatly decreased. … Liberalization has resulted in a weaker service-oriented economy. … The economy has deindustrialized despite large foreign investments in manufacturing exports. … The government’s capacity to invest in education, health, housing, and infrastructure has been weakened by foregone revenues from tariff cuts and excessive fiscal incentives.
over-prioritizes foreign investors and organized domestic business interests. Robust ties between political and business elites inhibit more aggressive policies for poverty reduction. … Elites still exert a powerful influence on the electoral system and governance structures, which, as a result, become guided by privileged interests rather than the broader social and public concerns. Short-term profits also tend to prevail over strategic long-term economic development. Clientilism and elite capture of economic policy-making hinder policies that remove imbalance in power relationships. … The tendency is for policies and laws to favor oligarchs of foreign capitals in general and, often, specific business interests. (PNAPC 2017: 3)
Analysis of economic data and trends, OpenSTAT, 1998 to 2015.
All monetary values are expressed in $US. In order to insure that we are comparing monetary values that were not distorted by inflation over time, we standardized all values at the 2000 exchange rate with the $US.
The value of the country’s currency has steadily declined. In 1985, the exchange rate was 26 pesos per dollar (McCoy 1994: 540). By 2005, the exchange rate had climbed to 55 per dollar.
Analysis of export-import data, 1994–2006, BAS.
For an explication of Ricardo’s notion of comparative advantage, see Pullen (2006).
Analysis of export-import data, 1994–2006, BAS.
Analysis of banana crop data, OpenSTAT and FAOSTAT.
Analysis of crop data, OpenSTAT and FAOSTAT.
According to Kang (2002: 140), “sugar, coconut and grain all became monopolies under Marcos and were given to his cronies under the guise of rationalization.” By presidential decree, Marcos “ordered all coconut processing companies to sell out or affiliate with UNICOM” (Bello et al. 1982: 186).
Analysis of coconut crop data, BAS.
Analysis of corn crop and land use data, BAS.
Analysis of land use data, BAS.
Analysis of land use and import data, BAS.
Until 1998, larger commercial vessels were prohibited from fishing in municipal waters, but the 1998 Fisheries Code opened deeper municipal waters to some larger vessels (Republic of Philippines 1998).
Calculated using Primavera (1997) and Philippine Annual Fisheries Profiles (2000, 2006, 2008).
Calculated from Philippine Annual Fisheries Profiles (2008). The total export value reflects the free-on-board value of all fresh and processed seafood in each category.
Analysis of fishery data, 1992–2008, BAS.
See www.gensantos.gov.ph/fishery1.php (accessed 5 July 2019).
Calculated from Philippine Annual Fisheries Profile (2008, 2010). The total export value reflects the free-on-board value of all fresh and processed seafood in each category.
Companies from the following countries invested in 1980s Philippine shrimp farming: Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, Australia, Canada, Germany, England, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Switzerland, and the USA.
A fish corral is a large commercial stationary netting system that captures fish from tidal currents.
These were the San Miguel Corporation, Lim Family Enterprises, and Dole Philippines.
Analysis of Philippine Annual Fisheries Profile (1977, 1984, 1988, 1995, 2005).
Analysis of Philippine Annual Fisheries Profile (1988).
Primavera (1997: 47) maintains that Philippines shrimp production reached its peak in 1989, then production declined, peaked again in 1992, and subsequently declined steadily. Yap (1999) is convinced that the “shrimp fever” was over in 1989 when prices collapsed and bank lending rates rose to 25 percent.
Analysis of annual data in Philippine Annual Fisheries Profile (1984, 1988, 1995, 2000, 2006, 2008).
Analysis of annual data in Philippine Annual Fisheries Profile (1984, 1988, 1995, 2000).
That same year, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources banned the use of mangroves for fishpond development (Philippine Annual Fisheries Profile 2003). However, this government agency has never been able to implement this ban or to police violations effectively. Despite the ban, private corporations continued to exploit mangroves for fishpond development (Primavera 2000).
Analysis of Philippine Annual Fisheries Profile (2000, 2006, 2008).
https://www.globalseafood.org/aboutgsa/ (accessed 4 Oct. 2021).
The 2002 fishery census reported 220,500 operators and 235,400 aquafarms in 2000, compared to 27,300 operators and 28,000 aquafarms in 1980.
USAID-Philippines website (accessed Jan.–April, 2019).
See https://usaidlearninglab.org/library/evaluatinggrowthequitymindanao3program. (accessed 2 Oct. 2021).
BuyUSA website (accessed April–July, 2019).
Analysis of export-import data, 1994–2006, BAS.
Analysis of Philippine Annual Fisheries Profile (2000, 2006, 2008).
A typical fish cage is 10 by 10 by 4 meters.
BFAR News 1 (3) (2008).
USAID-Philippines website (accessed Jan.–April, 2019).
Analysis of Philippine 2002 Census of Fisheries, OpenSTAT.
Analysis of fishery data, 1992–2008, BAS. Analysis of Philippine Annual Fisheries Profile (2000, 2006, 2008).
Analysis of Philippine Annual Fisheries Profile (1977, 1984, 1988, 1995, 2000, 2006).
Analysis of Philippine 2002 Census of Fisheries, OpenSTAT.
Calculated from Philippine Annual Fisheries Profile (2008). The total export value reflects the free-on-board value of all fresh and processed seafood in each category.
For examples of organized opposition in richer countries, see www.watershed-watch.org, www.ecotrust.org, www.factoryfarm.org, and www.davidsuzuki.org.
This is an impossible exaggeration that is not made by the rich western countries where far less poverty exists.