Photo courtesy: Earth Negotiations Bulletin
In the ongoing struggle for food sovereignty and climate justice, one voice rings clear and grounded, that of Esther Penunia, Secretary General of the Asian Farmers’ Association. Representing millions of small-scale farmers across Asia, Esther is not only a powerful advocate for agrarian reform but a visionary leader pushing for public accountability, legal recognition of land rights, and the political awakening of young people.
“A family farm is a farm that is operated and managed by a family or a household… mainly the labor in the farm is by the family,” Esther explains.
This simple truth underscores a much deeper reality: that food is not just grown, but nurtured by the hands, hearts, and histories of families whose relationship to land is intimate, ancestral, and irreplaceable. Yet family farmers remain among the most vulnerable, often lacking legal ownership over the lands they’ve lived on for generations.
Many Indigenous and rural communities across Asia hold land through customary tenure, recognized locally but invisible on official maps. As Esther puts it:
“It’s very easy to grab your lands if you do not have papers to show that you own the land.”
This invisibility has made family farms easy targets for land grabs, development projects, and extractive industries operating with little regard for consent, sustainability, or justice. In the Philippines, one such battle is now unfolding. Activists and farmers are calling for a boycott of San Miguel Corporation, a corporate giant with stakes in agribusiness, real estate, and ecotourism, accused of encroaching on community lands.
“They are calling for a boycott of San Miguel Corporation products,” Esther shares. “It’s still at an early stage, but the campaign is gaining momentum.”
What makes this movement striking is not only its message, but its messengers. The campaign was sparked not by career activists or politicians, but by students.
“They went school to school, room to room to tell the students about the plight,” Esther says. “Three big universities and even one elite university are already supporting them.”
This intergenerational mobilization, where daughters of seed-keepers rise as organizers and university halls become spaces of resistance, offers a blueprint for hope.
Esther sees this. For her, defending family farms is not just about legal titles or policy change. It is about shaping a cultural shift where people, especially young, urban consumers, see the food they eat not as commodities, but as stories. Stories of care, rootedness, labor, and love. Stories that connect a seed sown in rural soil to a choice made at a city grocery shelf.
It is also about global solidarity. Esther draws inspiration from movements like the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign for Palestinian rights—proof that when public opinion shifts, even the most powerful institutions can be held accountable.
In the face of climate breakdown, food insecurity, and rising authoritarianism, defending family farming is a radical act. It demands we rethink our relationship to land, not as a resource to exploit, but as a commons to protect. It means recognizing farmers not as passive recipients of aid, but as political actors, educators, and frontline defenders of our collective future.
Esther Penunia reminds us that the path to justice is not paved solely in courtrooms or government halls. It winds through rice paddies, school corridors, kitchen gardens, and social media threads. And it is walked every day by ordinary people—mothers, daughters, students, farmers—who choose to resist, to remember, and to reclaim.