Malis­sa Lara-Pat­ter­son

Rot­ting crops and trau­ma­tised farm­ers are a con­stant re­minder of the cut­lass at­tacks that took place on the San Jose Es­tate two weeks ago. In the serene La Pas­to­ra vil­lage in Lopinot last Thurs­day, con­fused farm­ers spoke of thou­sands of dol­lars in loss­es since the dra­ma took cen­tre stage on Feb­ru­ary 17. They have been un­able to tend to their pi­men­tos, baigan, plan­tains and many oth­er crops af­ter the in­ci­dent, though po­lice ac­com­pa­ni­ment was promised. And al­though five peo­ple were placed on bail Fri­day by an Ari­ma Mag­is­trate, the farm­ers said more men had al­ready ar­rived to "guard" the lands.

"Right now, if you see the gar­den," Mark Chu­ra­man said. Like the oth­ers, farm­ing is Chu­ra­man's liveli­hood. He said the string beans grow­ing at present need­ed to be picked every three days and they have start­ed to rot from the lack of care. On Thurs­day, he said, 20 pounds of beans were in the grow­ing stage and the price of bean seeds is $60 per pound. "That's just the price of the seed. I have lost near­ly 2,000 pounds of beans," he ex­plained. Chu­ra­man said nor­mal­ly beans sell for $8 per pound.

Thugs de­stroy crops

The land dra­ma ac­tu­al­ly start­ed two years ago. Farmer Ben Lal told that sto­ry, ex­plain­ing that his crops were be­ing de­stroyed by thugs since 2009. Look­ing more dis­traught than an­gry, Lal said every­time he plant­ed his crops, men would de­stroy them. He still had crops to be reaped last week, but he was un­able to tend to them since last month as men have oc­cu­pied the land. "Right now they oc­cu­py­ing our gar­den, they al­so de­stroyed pipes in 2010," he ex­plained. He said on sev­en oc­ca­sions men cut the pipes in his gar­den. The Gomez fam­i­ly has al­so been se­ri­ous­ly af­fect­ed as they stand to lose around $50,000 worth of crops. "They throw trees in the road so we can't pass," Mar­lon Gomez said.

Farm­ing their liveli­hood

Pres­i­dent of the Lopinot/La Pas­to­ra Vil­lage Coun­cil Don­na Mo­ra, who was al­most at­tacked in the melee with the thugs, said the prae­di­al lar­ce­ny of­fi­cers nev­er came to aid farm­ers last week. In a vil­lage meet­ing with po­lice of­fi­cers last Sat­ur­day, of­fi­cers said they would have ac­com­pa­nied farm­ers to the es­tate from Mon­day to Wednes­day. "That didn't hap­pen. No one is able to go up in their lands. So their pro­duce is rot­ten­ing," she said. Mo­ra said the Se­nior Supt of the North­ern Di­vi­sion, Stephen Ram­sub­hag, deemed the sit­u­a­tion "ex­plo­sive" and ad­vised farm­ers not to go on the es­tate un­til the mat­ter was cleared up. "These farm­ers don't want to work URP or Cepep.

They just want to tend to their crops, that is their liveli­hood, that is what they de­pend on to feed their fam­i­lies. Every day that they are not able to go to their gar­dens is thou­sands of dol­lars in loss­es," she said. Con­tact­ed for com­ment on the mat­ter, Ram­sub­hag said, "I hav­ing noth­ing to say on that. How can I deal with that? That's for the min­istry." How­ev­er, Ram­sub­hag did keep his word that the men would have been put on an ID pa­rade.