A Cebuano scholar from the University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman urged global action on agrarian reform and pro-poor food systems at an international conference in Colombia, which over 400 academics and rural advocates attended alongside a major UN-facilitated multilateral forum.
UP Assistant Professor Karlo Mikhail I. Mongaya, born and raised in Cebu City, presented the co-authored paper “Food Regimes and Radical Movements in Agrarian Change: An Invitation for Rethinking the Agrarian Question in the Philippines,” at the International Academic Conference for Land, Life & Society held at the University of Cartagena from February 20–22, 2026.
The academic gathering ran parallel to the Second International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ICARRD+20), an international multilateral forum hosted by the Government of Colombia with support from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the Government of Brazil, and other social movement and academic partners.
The academic conference brought together 410 participants representing 321 universities, research institutions, and academic organizations across all continents.
The Collective of Agrarian Scholar-Activists of the South (CASAS), a solidarity-based network of Global South agrarian studies scholars, led the event alongside over two dozen Colombian and international universities, ministries, academic networks, and research institutes. Mongaya and co-author Sheila Mae Pagurayan, a junior research analyst at UP Diliman, are members of CASAS.
Mongaya and Pagurayan’s paper contends that academic literature has largely overlooked key issues in Philippine agrarian change since the 1980s. This oversight persists despite four decades of rural transformation marked by land redistribution efforts, market liberalization, labor migration, and deepening food insecurity.
The co-authors assert that these dynamics are not merely historical concerns. “The combined crises of food, energy, and climate change have made the agrarian question more urgent than ever,” their paper states. The study offers a historical overview of how global food regimes and radical social movements have shaped agrarian transformation in the Philippines.
Both authors also volunteer as researchers for KATARUNGAN (Kilusan para sa Repormang Agraryo at Katarungang Panlipunan), an organization that advocates for small farmers’ land rights and food sovereignty. Their academic inquiry connects directly with ongoing agrarian issues.
Mongaya also served on the drafting committee that produced the Cartagena Declaration, a collective statement summarizing the discussions and debates of the academic conference. The Declaration was read during the plenary session of ICARRD+20.
The Cartagena Declaration reaffirms the commitment of engaged scholars to conduct rigorous, evidence-based, and co-produced research grounded in the lived realities of rural communities. It emphasizes that securing land and territory “for people, for work, for food, and for life” is not a utopia but a necessary and achievable response to today’s global crises.
The academic conference in Cartagena highlighted how scholarship informs international policy debates on agrarian reform and rural development.
