DAR checking available gov’t land for farmers

Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) Secretary John Rualo Castriciones. INQUIRER.net PHOTO/CATHY MIRANDA

LA TRINIDAD, BENGUET—The Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) is making an inventory of government reservations that have not been used for the last 30 years to heed a directive by President Duterte to distribute idle government land for an agrarian reform program that Mr. Duterte promised to be more sweeping than previous ones.

Agrarian Reform Secretary John Castriciones said it was Mr. Duterte who wanted to convert idle government land into agrarian reform areas.

He said he had asked the President for an executive order to simplify the process of using idle government land for agrarian reform and Mr. Duterte heeded it.

1991 EO

Executive Order (EO) No. 448, issued in 1991, currently governs the use of government land or those registered to government-owned or controlled corporations. It said government lands that “are suitable for agriculture and no longer actually, directly and exclusively used shall be segregated and transferred to DAR.”

But some government agencies and institutions, which have custody of idle land, do not want to turn them over to the DAR, Castriciones said.

A new executive order would also skip the tedious process of passing a law for the conversion of lands classified as forests into agricultural lots, he said.

Unfinished business

Castriciones did not say which reservations were being tapped for land reform but a DAR task force is conducting an inventory of government-owned lands, many of which belong to schools and universities.

He said the distribution of more farmlands would ensure food sufficiency.

According to a paper published by the Philippine Institute for Development Studies in December last year, over 4.8 million hectares of private and public agricultural land had been given to 2.8 million farmers. It said there were some 600,000 ha still left to be distributed.

Mr. Duterte has repeatedly announced a plan to distribute land to the landless, particularly in the resort island of Boracay, which he ordered stripped of polluting establishments and structures built on protected areas. —KARLSTON LAPNITEN