The time of the virus is, in the ideal world, the time to end the assault on the country’s small farmers. Small farmers in the country are the country’s wretched: invisible to government, prey to repressive laws like the Rice Tariffication Law, avoided like a plague by the banking mainstream — and voiceless and cowed. The average age of the Filipino farmer is 57 years as the young generally shy away from the heartbreaks those small-scale farming deals on the young. I come from a long, uninterrupted line of small farmers. The current reality is this: I may be the last of the hardscrabble Ronquillo males foolish enough to sustain the small-farming tradition.

The Department of Agriculture (DA) is so engrossed with propaganda and image building that it totally jettisoned its legal and moral mandate to help the small farmers.