LIBONA, Bukidnon (MindaNews / 30 January) — For over a decade, I have closely witnessed the systemic oppression within the agricultural sectors of Manolo Fortich and Libona in the poverty-stricken Province of Bukidnon. The expansion of Transnational Corporations (TNCs) which seize vast lands for profitable mono-crop plantations stands in stark contrast to the persistent economic hardship faced by local residents. Drawing on a framework of integral ecology, let me offer an analysis on the complex interplay between systemic ecological destruction, rampant labor exploitation, and the necessary, yet potentially insufficient, response from church social action ministries.
The Plight of Agricultural Laborers
My pastoral concern for these workers began in 2011 upon returning from post-graduate studies. While serving as a guest priest on weekends, I visited various parishes surrounded by large-scale plantations, such as those in Camp Phillips, Damilag, and Manolo Fortich. Since 2021, I have served as the administrator and later as the parish priest of Jesus Nazareno Parish in Libona.
Many of my parishioners work in pineapple and banana plantations; others are small-scale vegetable farmers forced to sell their produce cheaply, a price legitimated by the law of supply and demand. Their plight extends beyond trading problems and agricultural issues; it also encompasses labor concerns.
My years of ministry have made me a witness to the profound struggles of exploited laborers who, under oppressive work conditions and unrelenting schedules, are denied quality time for religious activities.
A simple analysis reveals that their dehumanizing poverty is largely fueled by social injustice and systemic oppression perpetrated by companies with exploitative labor practices. For instance, to secure employment, many workers are forced to sign with agencies that claim a significant percentage (up to 40%!) of their wages.
The demands of the capitalist system force field workers into grueling, unending labor, ultimately ensuring they become sickly and remain trapped in a cycle of exploitation and poverty.
The Irony of the Capitalist Development
The irony of the capitalist “ethic of improvement” is that it has neither improved the life of the majority nor prevented the ecological degradation of natural resources. By making market imperatives the supreme value of this improvement ethic, both human labor and natural resources must be exploited beyond sustainable limits. In other words, capitalism cannot prosper without impoverishing the great multitude of laborers and degrading the ecological condition of the environment.
Karl Marx clearly saw this double danger in his analysis of 19th-century agricultural capitalism in England. On the one hand, according to Marx, the capitalist system of production requires that only a few own the means of production. The majority, having lost their own means of production, are forced to migrate to urban centers where they must sell their labor power at a cheap rate to the wealthy social class that owns the means of production. This practice explains why, for Marx, there is concentration of wealth among the small capitalist class at the expense of the working class.
On the other hand, agricultural capitalism must meet the demands of the global market by exhausting the natural fertility of the soil. At the local level, it has become common practice for urban traders to rob and exploit the “capital stock” (i.e., available assets and resources) of rural peasants. At the global level, one country imports raw materials and goods from another—usually a developing country—for the global market. Indeed, capitalist countries must force non-capitalist territories to open up to global trade, as well as “permit capital to invest in profitable ventures using cheaper labour power, raw materials, low-cost land, and the like.”[1]
The Development Model that Kills
The preceding analysis is not mere speculation. In our generation, it is appropriate to speak of “universal capitalism.” This term refers to the perverse logic of economic domination that emerges as capitalist imperatives become a truly global phenomenon, penetrating all aspects of life more deeply than ever before.
Marx foresaw the class antagonism within this system, noting that as the number of “capitalist magnates” decreases, the bourgeoisie of stronger nations dominate those of weaker ones, making “the globe as … battlefield” of their commercial war. As Terrence Ball states, “Simply by being itself, capitalism is its own worst enemy.”[2]
It can be shown that the same capitalist logic exploits both labor power and the natural power of the soil. As Marx highlighted, large-scale industry and large-scale agriculture have similar destructive effects on both human and natural resources: “the industrial system applied to agriculture also enervates the workers there, while industry and trade for their part provide agriculture with the means of exhausting the soil.”[3]
The essence of the liberal-capitalist system is the unlimited pursuit of profit at the expense of the poor and their natural resources. Its main obsession is to gain the greatest profit in the shortest possible time. Under this system, there appears to be little hope for the poor wage earners and the degraded environment. The type of economic development it envisaged cannot be realized without at the same time impoverishing the laborers and ravaging the environment.
Alternative to Capitalist Development Model?
Proponents of capitalist development are unwilling to let the ecological crisis stall their pursuit of economic growth. Consequently, they face a dilemma: how to maintain ecological advocacy without sacrificing economic development. This puzzle found a theoretical resolution in the concept of “sustainable development,” understood as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”[4]
In ecological science, “sustainability” refers to the tendency of ecosystems toward a dynamic equilibrium sustained by a web of interdependencies. It has been argued, however, that integrating this ecological concept into the dominant development model—the primary driver of the current crisis—creates an oxymoron. From this perspective, it appears that “sustainable development” under neoliberal capitalism remains mere rhetoric.
Addressing the ecological crisis and the urgent need for care for our common home is a primary duty of the State, demanding not just reform but a profound systemic shift. A sustainable alternative to current development models is imperative. This alternative must move beyond the “economy that kills” and the “throwaway culture” inherent in modern capitalism, while simultaneously avoiding failed Marxist models. The Church’s role is to insist on the moral framework of integral ecology and justice for future generations; it is up to competent societal actors to detail the specific economic models that embody these values.
Labor Concerns and Social Action Ministries
I am sadly aware of the fact that the exploitation of labor—across both industrial and agricultural sectors—is scandalously neglected within the existing church ministries related to the social apostolate of our diocese and many others nationwide. This profound failure must be rectified: concern for the plight of laborers should be pastorally considered an integral and non-negotiable part of the Church’s preferential option for the poor!
Our Catholic social teaching (CST) consistently places labor concerns among the Church’s main advocacies, beginning with Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum novarum (1891), which rightly addressed the condition of workers in modern times. This was powerfully developed by Pope John Paul II in Laborem exercens (1981), an encyclical that establishes the “priority of labor over capital”, arguing that workers are persons, not mere instruments of production, and condemning economic systems that treat them as such. Furthermore, Pope Francis’ Evangelii gaudium (2013) has intensified this critique, forcefully condemning an “economy of exclusion” and “savage capitalism” that prioritizes profit over human dignity and marginalizes the poor, labeling the exploitation of labor a grave social sin (see EG nos. 53-58).
Given this historical commitment, it would be a profound and indefensible irony—indeed, hypocritical—to neglect these same concerns within the Church’s practical social action ministries. We simply cannot authentically pursue a synodal church of the poor while simultaneously ignoring the very real struggles of laborers, who constitute the vast majority of the People of God.
(MindaViews is the opinion section of MindaNews. Fr. Reynaldo D. Raluto is the parish priest of Jesus Nazareno Parish in Libona, Bukidnon. He is the author of the book ‘Integral Ecology Ministry: Doing Ecological Theology and Advocacy in Light of Laudato Si,’ published in September 2025 by the Mindanao Institute of Journalism.)
[1] David Harvey, The New Imperialism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 139.
[2] Terrence Ball, “History: Critique and Irony,” in Terrell Carver, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Marx (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991): 124-42, on p. 134.
[3] See Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy [1894], vol. 3, translated by David Fernbach (London: Penguin Books, 1991), 950.
[4] World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED), Our Common Future (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 43.
