Let me share with you this reflection of a friend whom I have known for decades. It is about time that we give more focus to our farmers, most of all those who are underprivileged and are victims of wanton globalization and trade liberalization. May this be an eye-opener and an inspiration towards meaningful action.
Farmers’ Reflection, a six-minute intervention on the theme Financing Family Farmers at the Global Forum on Policy Solutions on Family Farming
Friends, allow me to begin with the story of “Ameng”and Dante Pajaron, a farming couple from Bukidnon in the Philippines.
Two decades ago they tilled a small 1.2-hectare plot awarded through our agrarian reform program. Credit was scarce; informal lenders charged crippling rates. But through their cooperative, AFARBEMCO, and with training, tools and markets from government and NGO partners, they accessed affordable, farmer-friendly finance.
Today their diversified organic farm earns two-and-a-half times our national poverty line and has sent all their children to college. Dante now serves as General Manager of AFARBEMCO, guiding other farmers on the same path. Ameng is helping replicate this model as Provincial Coordinator of the Integrated Diversified Organic Family Farming System (IDOFFS) BARMM project under the SPADe-MINPAD RISE program, implemented by GIZ and co-financed by the European Union and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). And in a beautiful full-circle moment, their daughter Dianne is now a staff member of PAKISAMA—proof that one generation’s struggle can become the next generation’s profession.
Their success has rippled outward—creating jobs, restoring soil health, and inspiring neighbors. This is what happens when finance and policy reach the hands of organized family farmers.
Because it works, PAKISAMA is now building the capacity of agri-cooperatives and their federations in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao and across the Philippines.
Through the IDOFFS BARMM project we are helping establish 15 agricooperatives and a federation that can deliver full value-chain services and provide resilient livelihoods in communities long affected by conflict. We are taking the AFARBEMCO example and replicating it—so that thousands of Bangsamoro farm families, and many more nationwide, can achieve the same transformation.
Since the first day of this Forum, colleagues have already underscored the urgency of land rights, land grabbing and the vested interests of multinational corporations. Allow me to reinforce those points with some fresh evidence.
Worldwide there are about 608 million family farms producing 80 percent of the planet’s food, yet they received only 0.3 percent of total international climate finance in 2021—about US $2 billion out of US $653 billion.
Meanwhile the Land Matrix Initiative of the International Land Coalition documents a continuing “land rush” of more than 50 million hectares in over 1,700 large-scale land deals, with Africa alone attracting roughly 37 percent and hundreds more deals recorded in Southeast Asia by 2023. This has created what IPES-Food calls a “land squeeze”: 1 percent of farms now control about 70 percent of global farmland.
Many of these deals are signed and implemented faster than governments can carry out agrarian reforms, frequently without full, free and informed consent and often accompanied by local conflicts.
At the same time, agrochemical multinationals tighten their grip on the very inputs—seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, machinery—that lock farmers into fossil-fuel-based agriculture. In Europe, for example, the flagship law to cut pesticide use in half by 2030 was killed in late 2023 after an intense industry lobbying campaign, and companies continue to export pesticides banned at home to poorer countries.
Such corporate capture—even of regulatory bodies—undermines government and international efforts to scale up agroecology.
This reality weakens all seven pillars of the UN Decade of Family Farming (UNDFF)—from securing land rights to building climate resilience—and it demands a stronger, more coordinated multilateral response.
From PAKISAMA’s and AFA’s experience, involving 13 million of our members in 24 national farmers organizations in a score of Asian countries, echoing the call for strong multilateralism and defense of democracy, we urge four bold policy moves:
1. Secure Resources and Rights. Dedicate at least 3 percent of national budgets—about US $75 billion globally—to complete agrarian, fisheries, and forest reforms, prioritizing women and youth.
2. Strengthen and Professionalize Farmer Organizations. Invest 4 percent of national budgets—around US $100 billion globally—to professionalize cooperatives and federations so they can deliver full value-chain services, from agroecological production to markets. In the Philippines we call for redirecting at least 10 percent of the Department of Agriculture’s budget to this professionalization.
3. Create an International Family Farmers’ Fund. International financing institutions—GAFSP, IFAD, the Green Climate Fund—must channel more resources directly to professional family-farmer organizations, both for policy advocacy and land rights defense and for cooperatives capacity building for delivering full value-chain services to members especially transitioning to agroecology.
4. Budget for Agroecology and Farmers’ Rights. Public budgets and climate finance must reward farmers who adopt agroecology, ensuring that the shift away from fossil-fuel-dependent agriculture is both just and rapid.
These steps give life to the agenda of a global alliance Family Farmers for Climate Action (FFCA):
- National reforms that give farmers an equal seat at every decision table;
- Global reforms to ensure family farmers have a permanent voice in the architecture of international finance; and
- A Dedicated Family Farmer Resiliency & Empowerment Fund—farmer-organization-led, transparent and permanent.
We have the capacity to absorb and repay financing:
- AFA’s own 1.8-million-dollar COVID-era revolving fund reached over 20,000 farmers with 100 percent repayment.
Our leader Nong Rene Peñas, Sumilao farmer leader and martyr, summarizing their successful 20-year agrarian reform campaign against a conglomerate and a complicit government said:
“Walang imposible kung maninindigan at magkakaisa lamang.”
Nothing is impossible if we stand and unite.
Ameng and Dante’s journey—with Dante leading AFARBEMCO, Ameng guiding the IDOFFS BARMM project, and their daughter Dianne now serving as PAKISAMA staff—shows that transforming rural poverty and strengthening food systems is not a dream but a concrete, scalable path.
Let us leave this forum resolved to turn the untapped potential of family farmers into unstoppable power—financed, organized, and ready to lead the transformation our planet needs.
Let me end by sharing with you four Filipino words. Early this year, educating the public about our mid term elections, we waged a 4,000 km march caravan. Our 20 core marchers were chanting these four words in the spirit of the global celebration of Jubilee Year of Hope:
Mabuhay ang Pamilyang Magsasaka!!! Mabuhay!
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