Beyond a Single Story: Homidi Edsla and the Collective Voice of Young Farmers

Photo credit: @searice.youth.advocates

The rice plants in Homidi Edsla’s field rise taller than him. These heirloom varieties, passed down through generations of his family in Kabacan, North Cotabato, are flood-resistant and resilient, a living proof of biodiversity nurtured by farmers’ hands. At 26, Homidi has been experimenting with the System of Rice Intensification (SRI), even planting heirloom rice in fish ponds. Homidi is proof that young farmers are not relics of the past, but innovators shaping the future of agriculture.

This September, his voice traveled beyond his 1.5-hectare farm to the global stage. At the 2nd Global Symposium on Farmers’ Rights in Manila, Homidi sat beside panelists from across the world: Ms. Irish Baguilat (Asian Farmers’ Association for Sustainable Rural Development), Mr. Andrew Mushita (Community Technology Development Trust, Zimbabwe), Mr. Ricardo Bocci (Rete Semi Rurali, Italy), and Mr. Marciano Toledo da Silva (Movimento dos Pequenos Agricultores, Brazil). The session, Experiences in Promoting the Implementation of Farmers’ Rights by Farmers, Civil Society Organizations and NGOs, brought together diverse voices with one shared truth: Farmers’ Rights are not abstract—they are lived, fought for, and defended every day.

A Young Farmer in Policy Spaces

Homidi is not an outsider to decision-making. As a member of the Makakalikasang Magsasaka ng Kabacan and a long-time partner of SEARICE, he has also participated in the Municipal Agriculture and Fisheries Council (MAFC), where he contributes to local ordinances affecting farmers. For him, the recognition of Farmers’ Rights has created spaces for Learning Farms—venues for farmer-to-farmer exchanges where knowledge about seeds, biodiversity, and agroecology is shared across generations.

Yet, Homidi makes it clear that his participation does not make him the “face” of youth in agriculture. He is one of many. And it is precisely this plurality that should guide policy—ensuring that countless young farmers, not just a handful, are given platforms to speak.

Farmers’ Rights in Practice: Homidi’s Reflections

During the panel, Homidi responded to questions on Farmers’ Rights and biodiversity. His reflections revealed both opportunities and challenges:

• Implementation of Rights: He affirmed that he is free to use and exchange heirloom and traditional varieties, and that farmer participation in local decision-making is possible through councils and community-led initiatives.

• Challenges: Many government programs, he noted, are not designed with farmers in mind. Meanwhile, limited access to formal education prevents some farmers from fully engaging with or questioning policies.

• Good Practices: He pointed to farmer-to-farmer seed exchange, advocacy lectures on organic farming, capacity-building efforts, and linkages with other ngo like Philippine Rural Reconstruction Movement (PRRM) and SEARICE as key practices that strengthen both communities and biodiversity.

• Youth Advocacy: Beyond crops, Homidi’s concern is also for the youth—especially those out of school. He believes farming can provide them not just livelihoods, but alternatives to harmful vices and a sense of belonging to something larger than themselves.

• Future Aspirations: He called for backup seed storage facilities, stronger youth advocacy campaigns, and the expansion of planting areas, including parts of the Liguasan Marsh, to preserve heirloom and traditional varieties.

Why Youth Voices Matter

Older farmers at the symposium expressed how seeing youth like Homidi participate gave them renewed strength. Yet this should not obscure the reality that youth participation remains scarce and fragile. In many policy spaces, young farmers are either sidelined or invoked as symbols of the future—rather than engaged as actors of the present.

Homidi’s interventions reminded the audience that youth are already practicing agroecology, conserving biodiversity, and engaging in governance. What they need is not token recognition but systemic inclusion: platforms, resources, and policies that secure their role in shaping agriculture.

The Significance of the Panel

The panel on experiences from farmers, civil society, and NGOs underscored that Farmers’ Rights are not only legal provisions under Article 9 of the Plant Treaty—they are community practices of saving, exchanging, and innovating seeds. By putting farmers like Homidi in conversation with global movements, the symposium highlighted the interconnectedness of struggles across regions: from resisting restrictive seed laws in Asia, to defending agroecology in Latin America, to sustaining farmer-led seed systems in Africa and Europe.

Beyond a Single Story

Homidi Edsla’s story is one seed in a much wider field of youth farmers across the Philippines and the world. To highlight him is not to single out one harvest, but to remind us of the many others still taking root, whose voices and struggles deserve to be nurtured and heard.

If the global symposium is to have meaning, it must go beyond celebrating participation and ensure that youth farmers are structurally included in decision-making at every level. Farmers’ Rights, after all, cannot be realized fully if the generation that will inherit the land, the seeds, and the struggles is left on the margins.