KMP is seeking urgent donations and support to aid farmers in need of immediate relief — rice, food, relief packs, hygiene kits, drinking water, clothes, sleeping kits, and medicines. A more long-term rehabilitation effort is also needed and farmers and fisherfolk will need seeds and seedlings, farm tools, farm animals, bancas and fishing equipment, and production subsidies.
The media should resist all commercialist trappings and not favor profit over truth-telling. Journalists and news media organizations need to brush up on the normative standards of journalism, if only to realize that bias is inherent and should not be hidden.
The agriculture department said 18,000 farmers have been affected, and at least 17,000-hectares of crops were destroyed. In Catanduanes alone, local government officials estimated at least P400-million ($8.26-million) damage to the abaca industry and 90 percent of their public infrastructure reduced to rubble.