"What do you want to be when you grow up?”

Grown-ups would always ask me, as a child of five. Later on I would learn that no question could be more perplexing, more loaded.

But at the age of five, I could be anything that I wanted. So I wanted to be everything I could be: a policeman, a fireman, an astronaut, a pilot, a ninja, and a pirate. All jobs are equal, after all; it was only a matter of preference. It was not until later that I found out that policemen were pot-bellied men who collected kotong from erring drivers, that pilots were underpaid individuals who flew too much and slept too little, and that pirates didn’t man ships that sailed the seven seas, but booths selling counterfeit DVDs.

Most of all though, beyond flying rockets, airplanes and ghost ships, I wanted to be a farmer.

I wanted to be a farmer because I loved seeds. In school, there were vendors who sold us different kinds of seeds that would grow into different vegetables. I bought mongo seeds, corn seeds, kalabasa seeds, and other kinds of seeds that I can no longer recall. I used to think I would make a good farmer because I didn’t eat vegetables. I would sell everything I planted.

I planted them in the garden of our old house.None of them grew. But that didn’t deter me. I bought more seeds and did more planting. When that didn’t work, I had Ate take care of the seeds because Ate came from the province and knew seeds better than I did.

Later on I realized that people don’t grow up wanting to be farmers. All of my classmates wanted to be lawyers and doctors and businessmen. I learned that lawyers and doctors and businessmen made lots of money, and that farmers didn’t have enough money for cars or Cartoon Network. I also learned that magtanim ay di biro / maghapong nakayuko / di naman makatayo / di naman makaupo.

In my textbooks I read that farmers wore tattered sandos and rode carabaos, and were always sweaty because they didn’t have aircon. I learned that they were always dirty and under the sun. When I went to a farm for my Grade 2 field trip I concluded that farmers must be miserable people. It was hard and boring and your skin gets dark, and I didn’t want to be called a negrito.

Much later on, after disillusionment, I would learn that farmers didn’t own the lands they tilled, and that they gave most of their harvest to the landowner who would sell it for them.

In History class I found out that farmers were the ones who first took to the mountains and rebelled against their landowners. As a senior in high school, I would bear witness as the Sumilao farmers marched into our school at seven in the evening to hear mass and take shelter for the night.

It’s funny because I would learn, much much later on, that in places like Japan, Germany and America, farmers are some of the richest people in their population. In those places, farmers aren’t barefooted people wearing tattered clothes, living on the meager subsistence that their patrons deign to give them. Instead, they’re educated individuals who own their own lands, farm with their own tractors, and employ their own helpers, who by the way wear proper clothes, gloves, and gardening shoes.

In other countries, farmers are farm owners. Here, farmers are the broken backbones of the national economy, on the verge of decaying into dust because nobody wants their job. Why would anyone take a degree in Agriculture to end up as a peasant or field hand? I’d rather be a struggling artist.

Now I’m old enough to know that all jobs are equal, but some jobs are more equal than others. And I’m sensible enough to know that people don’t pay good money for good farmers.

That’s why I don’t want to be a farmer anymore.

(The author is a third year BS Management major at the Ateneo de Manila University.)