Household income went down considerably, and it was all Boboy could do to keep food on the table. Their small savings was decimated when one of their children had an accident, and the burial expenses of a brother took care of the rest. Things are a little better now, but recent increases in gas prices and school tuition are making things tough. Boboy's situation is practically affluent compared to the rural poor out in the provinces. Most available land is devoted to sugar cane, which is not competitive on the global market and is often sold at below cost on the glutted world market.
Wage rates are abysmal and sharecropping arrangements are brutally exploitative.
The incredible polarization between rich and poor in the Philippines is nothing new. For that matter, globalization has also been around for centuries. But let's not dwell on the colonial era, even though many of the seeds of today's situation were sewn then. Successive generations of Filipino politicians determined how land was to be exploited and by whom. Those with the right connections got the timber and mining rights.