Mindanaotoday.com | Town mayor: Hunger, root cause of conflicts
By: URIEL QUILINGUING
The root cause of armed conflicts is hunger, a local government chief executive and organic agriculture champion said Tuesday, May 30 — four days before Kauswagan town, Lanao del Norte, Philippines will host a global gathering of leaders, advocating that food security is vital in achieving lasting peace.
“It’s not religious, it’s not ideological … it’s more of land-dispute and land-grabbing, then poverty and hunger,” said Kauswagan Mayor Rommel C. Arnado, in a Philippine Information Agency-10 hosted forum at SM Downtown Premier mall in Cagayan de Oro.
This, he said, was the result of a multi-stakeholder investigative study that was commissioned by the municipal government, hence they decided to focus on agriculture – particularly on the organic way of crop production — because the main issue is food security.
Asked for comment on a line from Bob Marley’s song that “a hungry man is an angry man,” Arnado said: “That’s true, we have proven that out. It’s one of the testimonies of the commanders. He said it painful for him to see his children going to sleep hungry, so he can do a lot of criminality to earn.”
And Kauswagan, in almost four decades, had witnessed bloodshed from skirmishes between the so-called Blackshirts (Maranaw fanatics) and Ilaga (Christian fanatics) armed bands, the former later became secessionist groups and had encounters with government troops, sowing fear among town residents and nearby areas.
But over a decade ago, the town mayor said the rebel commanders asked for assistance to end the animosities, hence “From Arms to Farms” program was conceptualized, where some 600 former combatants were reintegrated into their communities through farming.
Eventually, the “From Arms to Farms” gained national and international recognitions [Galing Pook and Bogota, Columbia Peace Award] as an innovative peace initiative.
This, Arnado said, was long before the Executive Order No. 70 was issued in 2018 by former President Rodrigo R. Duterte, which created a National Task Force and called for a whole-of-nation approach to “End Local Communist Armed Conflict” of NTF-ELCAC.
He said the rebel commanders and town officials supportive to his administration realized the solution to hunger is within reach, thus a Municipal Ordinance was passed requiring every household must have a backyard garden.
All government officials, he said, must develop a communal garden, and that 8,000 hectares or 80 percent of the municipal land area must be devoted to organic agriculture, thus Kauswagan became a 100-percent organic agriculture town. Some 2,000 hectares consist of residential areas and open public spaces.
“Kauswagan is already declared a hunger-free municipality,” Arnado said, claiming they have achieved food-security as they do not depend from outside for most, if not all, their food supply. “We’re rice eaters, and corn-eaters as well, promoting even root-crops as alternative sources of food.”
He said their farms are rainfed, planting rice and corn and other crops under coconut trees, because there are no national and communal irrigation projects in the town.
The town mayor said he is optimistic their push for organic agriculture to stabilize food supply can be sustained because their farmers are young, ranging from 35 to 40 years old, and there are about 200 who are currently enrolled in senior high school, focusing on agriculture and fisheries.
He said they have tie-ups with the Agricultural Training Institute (ATI) of the Department of Agriculture (DA-ATI) and the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) for continuing livelihood trainings and competency upgrading.
“Just lately, we have 50 NC II and NC III passers from TESDA,” Arnado said, who has recently been elected national president of the country’s League of Organic Agriculture, Municipalities, Cities and Provinces.
Starting Sunday, June 4 until Monday, June 10, next week, Kauswagan will be hosting the 6th Organic Asia Congress, with the theme: “Building World Peace Through Organic Agriculture.”
This event, which is under the auspices of the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movement (IFOAM), is expecting some 2,000 delegates from 35 countries. It is backed by the South Korean-based Asian Local Governments for Organic Agriculture, now headed by the Kauswagan mayor.
Among Arnado’s frequent visitor is Minister Abdullah G. Macapaar, currently a member of the Bangsamoro Transition Authority Parliament, and whose nom de guerre is “Commander Bravo,” but could not attend the biggest gathering of organic agriculture advocates this year.
“He is supposed to be part of the program and to speak on June 4 (Sunday),” the mayor said, but he’s leaving tomorrow (Wednesday, May 31) on hadj (pilgrimage to the Holy Land), who was required to undergo health protocols, including vaccination.
Commander Bravo, a brigadier general in the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) for Northeastern Mindanao Front, is a native of Delabayan village, Kauswagan.
“But two of the seven commanders are joining us, on his behalf, Commander Alem Ansari Murad of the 127th Base Command of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, and Commander Dante Batinggolo of the Moro National Liberation Front, former mayor and current vice-mayor of Munai, Lanao del Norte.
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