Last week, Dominican trade unions and grassroots farmers cooperatives from across the country marched to the Presidential Palace in Santo Domingo in protest against a proposed merger of the Dominican Agrarian Institute (IAD) with the Ministry of Agriculture. Crusito Toribio, General Secretary of the Dominican Banana and Agricultural Workers Union SIUTRAPBAA spoke to a reporter about the impact of the proposed merger, calling it a ‘death sentence for the rural population”.
The IAD was established in the 1960s following the enactment of the Agrarian Reform, which was designed to improve the lives of small farmers and rural workers, alleviate poverty, create food security and prevent mass migration to cities. The reform noted that while 70% of the population depended on farming for livelihood, half of small farmers at the time had insufficient lands for their own subsistence, with the best farming land concentrated in the hands of a few large landowners and businesses. The act positioned itself as a socio-economic revolution enacted peacefully, in order to ‘raise the standard of living of our populous rural sector, taking it out of the misery in which it struggles and leading it to a life of honest work, with the hope of an adequate remuneration that will contribute to the continuous progress of the peasant family.’
The protests come after an open letter signed by the Via Campesina’s Latin American branch called for the guaranteed autonomy of the IAD and “the reactivation and deepening of a comprehensive, participatory and democratic Agrarian Reform in the Dominican Republic”. The letter stated that “Agrarian reform is not only a historic demand of Dominican peasants, but also an urgent necessity for building a more just, equitable and sovereign society in terms of food security that guarantees food sovereignty.”
As a result of historic agrarian reform, the Dominican banana industry is composed predominantly of small and medium sized farmers, who are already facing serious issues resulting from the dual challenges of labour instability and the impacts of climate change. While the government expects that $25 billion Dominican Pesos will be saved and government to become more efficient through the merging of the IAD and the Ministry of Agriculture, along with other restructuring, it is feared that losing the institutional support of the IAD could lead to a loss of vital support services and farmer evictions where historic land titling was not properly documented. For small banana farmers, the merger could not come at a worse time.
Photo and video: SIUTRAPBAA
