Landowners, leftwing farmers oppose CARP extension
By Jerome Aning
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 22:44:00 05/07/2008
Filed Under: Agrarian Reform
MANILA, Philippines -- An agricultural producers’ group opposed on Wednesday the extension of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program, saying the P100 billion that Congress has been eyeing to fund the program’s extension would be better spent on other pro-poor services.
In a statement sent to the Philippine Daily Inquirer, the Council of Agricultural Producers (CAP) blamed CARP for the ongoing rice crisis, claming that many of the lands distributed under the program ended up unproductive.
According to CAP, the program resulted in “disturbance and divisiveness” in the countryside, arising from the fragmentation of lands and the abandonment or under-utilization of the distributed lands by the beneficiaries.
“The unproductive and divisive CARP should be stopped since it is induced by individuals with hidden agenda ... or those with misplaced ... sympathy to farmers at the expense of other poor sectors,” CAP said.
CAP blamed farmer-beneficiaries for CARP’s failure, bewailing that the sale of awarded lots “gives proof that alleged farmers, many of them fake, are only after the valuable land, not production, as envisioned by CARP.”
At present, 92 percent of rice and corn lands have been distributed and the remaining eight percent are being contested by landowners’ children, according to CAP.
CAP added that CARP gave premium to “laziness and dole-out mentality.” Landowners, it said, became victims of “disguised robbery.”
Meanwhile, peasant group Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (Peasant Movement of the Philippines, KMP) called for the scrapping of CARP and the introduction of a genuine agrarian reform program.
KMP chair Rafael Mariano, who led KMP members in a protest action at the University of the Philippines-Diliman, called CARP a “fake” undertaking, saying it was through the program that massive land-use conversions and crop conversions were legitimized.
He called on the members of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines to resist being used by “pseudo-farmers’ groups and opportunists” who saw CARP as their milking cow.
“Our good bishops should see beyond the brouhaha of CARP extension and see the real call of peasants on the ground. Up till now seven out of 10 peasants are landless. How can they justify that?” Mariano said.
Mariano said that in Southern Tagalog alone, 1,302,375.37 hectares were already submitted to the process of land-use conversion and 172,967.30 hectares have been converted. Landlords and big real estate companies used the CARP to evict peasants and convert the land from agricultural to other purposes, said Mariano.
In fact, he said, the Sentro para sa Tunay na Repormang Agraryo (Center for Genuine Agrarian Reform), a group of volunteer lawyers for farmers, have been handling many cases of irrigated rice lands in the process of being converted to non-agricultural uses.
The peasant leader said big agro-transnational corporations controlled at least 220,000 hectares of land in Mindanao and under CARP, they might expand this by 300,000 hectares more.
Also under CARP, Mariano said, foreign firms have been planning to lease 1.2 million hectares of land for jatropha plantations through the Philippine-Chinese agricultural deals.
“With these in store under the extension of CARP, only 2.5 million hectares of rice lands will be left,” added the peasant leader.
CAP, however, disputed farmers’ claims of rampant land-use conversion, saying that statistics from the Department of Agrarian Reform showed that around 42,000 hectares out of the distributed 6.5 million hectares of farmlands were converted to non-agricultural uses.
“This is insignificant in affecting production and is now being used as scapegoat,” CAP said.
Agrarian reform, according to the group, was intended to break the alleged landowning class in 1986, of whom less than one percent, actually owned big lands.
CAP said CARP was envisioned to increase agricultural productivity but it only resulted in rice shortage and the high prices of farm products.
Founded in 1987, CAP claims hundreds of individual, organization and company members that own or lease farmlands which produce crops such as rice, corn, coconut, pineapple and sugarcane.
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