Another big boost! Biggest Farmers’ Group Supports Our Senate Bid

The Federation of Free Farmers, a 69-year-old farmers’ organization with 200,000 members has endorsed our Senatorial bid based on “outstanding record of public service and firm support for the agriculture sector.”

The FFF endorsement is the second major commitment of support for our bid for a seat in the Senate this year.

Yesterday, the aggrupation of electric cooperatives with 14-million members, One EC MCO, pledged to support our Senatorial run and conduct a “house to house” campaign.

In a press statement issued yesterday which followed the FFF National Board Meeting, FFF Board Chairman and former Agriculture Secretary Leonardo Q. Montemayor said four other candidates as Francis Escudero, Richard Gordon, Risa Hontiveros and Jose Matula will also be endorsed by the FFF.

“Our Board’s decision was based on these candidates’ outstanding record of public service and firm support for our agricultural sector, especially on critical concerns like Philippine membership in the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) free trade agreement,” Montemayor said.

Over a hundred mass-based organizations of farmers, fishers and workers – including the FFF – are opposing efforts of the Duterte administration and pro-RCEP legislators to secure the Senate’s concurrence in the treaty, despite the generally acknowledged unpreparedness of local producers to compete under RCEP’s free trade regime.

According to Montemayor, “Our senatorial bets have also pledged to work closely with the FFF in setting up honest-to-goodness safety nets and competitiveness-enhancement measures in agriculture and reversing the government’s reliance on food importation instead of domestic production.”

These are among the major policy recommendations earlier sent to candidates by the FFF that will enable agriculture to achieve food security, job creation and equitable growth, he added.

Other groups that adopted the policy paper last October 2021 are Alyansa Agrikultura, Bayanihan sa Agrikultura, Coalition for Agriculture Modernization in the Philippines, and Philippine Chamber of Agriculture and Food, Inc.

Founded in 1953, the FFF has an extensive grassroots presence and membership base of some 200,000 farmers, fishers and other rural workers. It was the principal affiliate of the ABA farmers party-list coalition that served in the 11th and the 12th Congress, and of the ABA-AKO farmers-urban poor coalition in 14th Congress. The FFF is a member-organization of the National Trade Union Center-Philippines.

I thank the FFF for this support.