The Biofuels Act by itself would not address the most urgent problem of exorbitant and soaring oil prices caused by foreign monopoly control. Worse, only landlords and bourgeois-compradors like Zubiri and his co-authors are the ones who will benefit the most from the Biofuels Act, at the expense of genuine land reform. Going by the hype on it, Republic Act (RA) 9367 or the Biofuels Act of 2006 is the silver bullet that would end all our energy woes. In fact, the law’s principal author Representative Juan Miguel Zubiri (Lakas, 3rd district, Bukidnon) is now capitalizing on the Biofuels Act to boost his senatorial bid. But what really is the milestone in the Biofuels Act and what does the country stand to gain from it?

Unfortunately, the law by itself would not address the most urgent problem of exorbitant and soaring oil prices caused by foreign monopoly control. Worse, only landlords and bourgeois-compradors like Zubiri and his co-authors are the ones who will benefit the most from the Biofuels Act, at the expense of genuine land reform.

Most ardent supporters

The Biofuels Act intends to maximize the production of sugarcane and coconut in the country to supply the needs of bioethanol and coco-biodiesel. Sugarcane has been identified as one of the primary sources to produce the requirements of bioethanol production which under the law is required to comprise at least 5% of the total annual volume of gasoline actually sold and distributed in the country within two years from the effectivity of the Biofuels Act. Coconut, on the other hand, will serve as the feedstock for biodiesel that the law mandates to account for at least 1% of all diesel engine fuels within three months.

Note that among the most ardent supporters (i.e. co-authors of the bill) of the Biofuels Act in Congress, led by Zubiri, are some of the biggest landlords and bourgeois-compradors in the Philippines. Even while the law was still pending in Congress, these politicians have already started to position themselves in the biofuels business, which is expected to be lucrative. These politicians and their families and/or their landlord/bourgeois-comprador patrons are the ones who stand to reap the gains of government’s biofuels program at the expense of farmers and farm workers. Zubiri himself has close “sugar connections” in the sugar-producing province of Bukidnon. His father, Bukidnon’s third district representative (1987-1998) before Zubiri took over and now the province’s governor, was the former executive vice president of the Bukidnon Sugar Milling Corporation (BUSCO) from 1975 to 1988. BUSCO, as claimed by Zubiri himself, has been working on feasibility studies as early as 2005 for facilities that work both as an ethanol distillery and sugar mill in anticipation of the Biofuels Act.

Another author, Rep. Herminio Teves (Lakas, 3rd district, Negros Oriental), on the other hand, has been pushing for the construction of a projected P2-billion integrated production complex for ethanol in Negros Oriental. The complex would span four municipalities (Sta. Catalina, Siaton, Valencia, and Sibulan) covering 214,116 hectares of government land. The proponent of the project, the Tamlang Valley Agricultural Development Corp., is 35 percent government-owned while 65 percent is controlled by a consortium composed of alcohol distillery Tau Commodities and Teves’s own family. Teves, who owns agricultural lands in Sibulan, Tayasan, and Sta. Catalina (all in Negros Oriental) is also involved with Tolong Sugar Milling which is based in Sta. Catalina.

Increased production

Sugarcane production is expected to increase to meet the requirements of the Biofuels Act. At present, the sugar industry can only supply 79% of the needs of the 5% bioethanol blend which is between 200 and 400 million liters per year. Thus the country needs to expand the current 167,300 sugarcane farms in the country covering a total area of 344,700 hectares (has.) to meet the bioethanol demand. Estimates show that to produce a minimum of 120,000 liters of ethanol daily, a sugarcane plantation needs 7,000 to 8,000 has. aside from another 10 to 20 has. for each ethanol processing plant. The Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA) already identified 237,748 has. of new sugar fields, mostly in Mindanao, that can be tapped to produce ethanol for fuel. They include Maguindanao (69,550 has.), Agusan del Norte and Agusan del Sur (45,000 has.), Palawan (20,808 has.), Saranggani (19,700 has.), Lanao del Norte (19,035 has.), Cagayan (16,918 has.), South Cotabato (15,000 has.), Isabela (12,337 has.), Masbate (8,000 has.), Bohol (6,400 has.), and Kalinga (5,000 has.).

Aside from developing sugarcane production for ethanol, government also announced its plan to launch massive propagation and cultivation of jathropa seeds covering around 2 million hectares of unproductive and idle public and private lands nationwide in order to produce some 5.6 billion liters of biofuel in the next 10 to 12 years. To implement the project, government would provide lands to PhilForest Corp., corporate arm of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), under a 25-year stewardship program. Philforest has already begun pilot plantations or nursery, in partnership with the DAR, in Carmen, North Cotabato (5,000 hectares); Isabela, Cagayan (900 hectares); Pili, Camarines Sur (20 hectares); Tigaon, Camarines Sur (20 hectares); and Davao City (50 hectares). It is also negotiating with the DENR for additional jathropa nursery areas in regions I, II, V (Bicol), and XIII (Caraga) covering 167,107 hectares of land.

More landlessness

According to the pro-biofuels lobby group Philippine Fuel Ethanol Alliance, increased ethanol production in the country would create additional 300,000 new jobs. But the biofuels program, in the long run, threatens to aggravate joblessness in the countryside because a farmer, including agrarian reform beneficiaries, losing their land is a real threat under the Biofuels Act. An official of the Department of Agriculture (DA) admitted that the conversion of sugar haciendas for ethanol production will be a major consideration of the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) in the exemption of lands under the loophole-ridden Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP). Because of the oil price crisis, ethanol production is now considered a strategic investment by NEDA and thus, the DAR must take into account the supposed “economic benefits” of ethanol business ventures as against the actual physical distribution of lands to farmer-beneficiaries.

At present, 55,285 sugarcane farms in the country covering 83,772 has. are either tenanted, leased, or under various forms of tenurial arrangement while 799,700 coconut farms with an area of 1.02 million has. are in the same situation. Overall, 3.42 million farms covering 3.10 million has. are either tenanted, leased, or under various forms of tenurial arrangement. Note that these figures do not fully reflect the extent of non-ownership of agricultural lands in the country considering the flaws in the reporting methodology of government and flawed definition of ownership under the CARP.

Landlessness is bound to worsen as landlords, including those who helped author the law, would surely apply for land use conversion and/or CARP exemption (or employ schemes such as corporative arrangements, contract growing, joint venture, lease arrangement, etc.) under the biofuels program. In a newspaper article, for instance, Task Force Mapalad claimed that Rep. Iggy Arroyo (Kampi, 5th district, Negros Occidental) has been conditioning the minds of farmers in the family-owned Hacienda Bacan in Negros Occidental that the said landholding would be exempted from the CARP under the biofuels law. Arroyo, one of the Biofuels Act’s co-authors, allegedly claimed that the 157-hectare hacienda would be converted for ethanol production and thus exempted from CARP.

Furthermore, while the jathropa program targets “unproductive and idle” lands only, there is no guarantee that even CARP-able lands and lands of CARP beneficiaries would not be included for jathropa production considering the promise of high returns from such agribusiness venture. PhilForest, for example, estimates that an investor in a jathropa plantation could reap a 20% return on investment on a petroleum price of only $46 per barrel and could further increase as global oil prices go up. This is the case of the contract growing scheme of San Miguel Corporation (SMC) in Isabela which promised huge profits and enticed not only the targeted holders of stewardship contracts but including Emancipation Patent (EP) and Certificate of Land Ownership Award (CLOA) holders. Instead of profits, the farmers incurred huge debts that now threaten their control and ownership because the contract stipulates that the cooperative commissioned by SMC to supply its cassava needs can take over the land of farmers who incur debts for two consecutive harvest seasons.

Genuine energy security

There is no doubt about the need to explore, develop, and utilize alternative sources of fuel if the country intends to achieve energy security and independence, and long-term, sustainable national economic development. But the Biofuels Act, conceived with the narrow and self-serving interests of landlords and bourgeois-compradors would not address the most urgent issues that threaten the country’s energy security, namely exorbitant and soaring oil prices and intense foreign monopoly control in the upstream and downstream of the energy industry.    

Energy independence can only be achieved if energy resources are effectively controlled and managed by the people through the state, and not by landlords, bourgeois compradors, and foreign corporations that have a very narrow interest. A pro-people alternative fuels program should not allow the wanton conversion agricultural lands for biofuels production and ensure that genuine agrarian reform would not be compromised. It will also ensure sustainability because potential crops that would be used as alternative fuels would be truly developed, including protection from unnecessary competition brought about by liberalization.

Finally, even a genuine alternative fuels program would not bring immediate relief to the economy and people battered by exorbitant oil prices and unabated oil price hikes. The most urgent problem today as far as oil is concerned is prices and the only reform that can bring instant and meaningful solution to this problem is to reverse the oil deregulation policy and institute price control to fight monopoly pricing. (IBON Features)

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