A farmer, agrarian-reform and organic-farming advocate. This is how Jimmy Tadeo describes himself today.
Tadeo, or “Ka Jimmy” as he is called by friends and colleagues in acknowledgment of his works as a fighter for farmers’ cause, is a soft-spoken farmer-leader from Bulacan.
He prominently figured in the historic, but infamous, Mendiola Massacre on January 22, 1987, being the leader of the militant Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas, which he formed along with other militant farmers to struggle for agrarian reform after the ouster of the late strongman Ferdinand Marcos, during the Edsa People Power Revolt in February 1986. It was the following year, after the Mendiola Massacre, where 13 farmers were killed by the police during the violent dispersal, that then-President Corazon C. Aquino signed the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform law and implemented the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP). During the more than 25 years after the historic signing of the law, Tadeo was at the forefront of the struggle for the implementation of the CARP.
Ka Jimmy is, perhaps, the oldest living farmer-leader and agrarian-reform advocate who witnessed how Filipinos, especially farmers like him, lived their lives more than 50 years ago, and how they now live their lives today, when everything is moving fast and the postal service is almost a thing of the past, with the majority of the Filipinos having at least one cellular phone in the pocket, and information about almost anything can be downloaded through smartphones or in just a click of a mouse in the computer through the Internet technology.
Tadeo the government employee
BUT more than 50 years ago, Ka Jimmy was a passionate government employee who lived a simple life, helping farmers in Bulacan, his home province, how to make their conditions better.
Born in Bocaue, Bulacan, on March 28, 1938, the 77-year-old farmer-leader paused for a moment when asked to narrate how life was during his youth and to go down memory lane.
“I came from a poor family from Bocaue, Bulacan. We were six siblings. That was before the International Rice Research Institute came to the Philippines. Before the Green Revolution,” he recalled.
“When I was 25, I was an employee of the Bureau of Agricultural Extension of the Department of Agriculture [DA]. My job was to help farmers. In Bulacan I saw how miserable farmers lived their lives whenever pests and diseases struck,” he said, admitting that he was part of those who helped introduce agrochemicals to farmers.
“Before, rice harvest was very low. And the use of chemicals was seen as solution. Harvests doubled. But that did not last long,” Ka Jimmy said, a reason he decided to advocate organic farming.
Tadeo the farmer
AS a farmer who owns a small farm in Plaridel, a town near his hometown Bocaue, he now practices organic farming, which, he believes, will help solve the multifaceted problems faced by Filipino farmers.
He remembers visiting farms being an extension worker of the DA then, and there was an emerging disease affecting watermelon farms in Bulacan.
“Farmers were helpless because they didn’t know what to do then. The disease was killing their crops. Our job was to teach them how to prevent losses,” Ka Jimmy said.
At that time, in the rural areas, life was simple. Outdoor activities were the fun way to spend idle time for the young and energetic. Food was not as hard to find and put on the table as it is today.
“In my youth, I remember that you have to learn how to swim to be able to cross the river, otherwise, you can’t get mangoes on the other side. I learned how to swim by myself. When I started swimming, I dripped and started to drown, but somehow, I learned how to kick and kick hard and was able to swim across,” he said.
P2:$1 exchange rate
“You plant vegetables for food, catch palakang bukid, or frogs, from time to time, hito [catfish] or dalag [mudfish], and your problem is solved for the day,” he said. Before, he said, farmers do not mind giving away vegetables to passersby.
“You just ask, and farmers give whatever you ask for,” Ka Jimmy said.
But even when the peso was strong, with the exchange rate at P2 to $1, money was hard to find.
Rice then was cheap and he remembered that rice farmers in Bulacan and other provinces were calling for an increase in the buying price of palay (unhusked rice) from P3 per kilo to P5 per kilo.
Even then, since farming was the only known way of life to many Filipinos after the war and many were landless, farmers had to enter into a 50-50 sharing deal with landed families who provided capital and seeds, an arrangement that still exists in many areas until now, only the share is 70-30, with farmers getting less of the harvest.
“Before, we don’t need fertilizers and not much on pesticides. Fertilizers then were organic. Just carabao poop and other animal manure,” he said.
‘Bakya’ for men
But at 30 metric tons to 50 MT of harvest, farmers barely had enough to put food on the table. During those times, men wore a wooden sandal called bakya, a footwear associated with women today. “If you were rich, you got to wear shoes from Marikina,” Ka Jimmy quipped.
“Marcelo and Elpo, those were the popular shoes then. Then later, Converse came. Before, when you had Converse, you were definitely rich,” Ka Jimmy said.
The most common means of communication, he said, was the mail. “You write and send it via postal service. You go to postal office,” Ka Jimmy said.
“But you have to go downtown,” he laughed. No computers, no Internet, no cellular phones and, although there was already the telephone service, only a few had the privilege of having one in their homes, he said.
The rich also wore watches. “The most famous then was Relova,” Ka Jimmy recalled. People read komiks and magazines. There were very few newspapers, no television, and news of what was going on were heard from battery-powered transistor radios.
“Whenever there’s a transistor radio, you can see men and women gathering around, eagerly listening and waiting for news about incoming typhoons. That was the only way we learned if our farms were threatened by bad weather,” he said.
According to Ka Jimmy, there were not too many hospitals around then. But doctors went directly to their patients’ homes whenever they were requested.
“You just had to go to the clinic downtown, give a message about a sick person, leave a location or direction, and the doctor would come. I remember when I was injured playing basketball, a doctor came to our house,” Ka Jimmy said.
Unlike today, transportation then was hard to find. In rural areas, there’s no other means of transportation but the kareta, a cart pulled by carabao.
Public transportation then was very rare. There were a few jeepneys, and the fare was only 10 centavos.
There were also a few buses, but he said they only take buses when going to school, such as for a Bulakenyo like him going to the Araneta University, where he graduated college.
When former President Diosdado Macapagal introduced the agricultural land reform, he remembered being active in helping farmers fight for land. “We were pushing then for agrarian reform for farmers to have their own farms,” Ka Jimmy said.
Even before, even after agrochemicals were already popular, farmers had a hard time making ends meet, he said. “Even when harvest doubled, the cost of fertilizers was high,” he said.
“When Marcos took over, after he declared martial law, I remember that he was hailed as a champion of landless farmers because of his declaration that all lands are subject to agrarian reform,” he said.
Tadeo the activist
But just one month after, Marcos backtracked and announced that the lands covered are only those planted with rice and corn, he lamented.
As years passed by, and as transporta-tion cost also started to go up—from 10 centavos to 20 centavos—and farmers were still landless and struggling for land and depending on government support to make ends meet, he said he decided to do something.
“That struck me; because I belong to a poor family. Even when I was a young boy, there was sadness. Life was not complete. I asked myself what’s wrong. I asked why I was born to a poor family. Somehow, I got my answer. Seeing how farmers lived as an extension officer, that was the time I started to think hard how to help my fellow farmers,” Ka Jimmy said.
Ka Jimmy remains passionate in helping his fellow farmers in his own little way until now. He wants them to become owners of the land they have been cultivating for decades through agrarian reform and learn ways to increase yield and income by shunning agrochemicals and going back to the organic way of life.
Except for the new technology, where farmers now have the television in their homes and cellular phones for communication—and even the know-how to use the Internet, life then and now remains basically the same for many poor farmers who remain poor and landless.
Ka Jimmy now leads a small group of Bulakenyo farmers under Paragos-Pilipinas and is the chairman of the National Rice Farmers’ Council.