GRAZING IN PEACE | The Department of Agriculture-run 94-hectare Baguio Dairy Farm, which has been breeding cattle for milk since 1940, as shown in this photo of grazing cattle taken in 2016, has been the target of land speculators for decades. (Photo by EV ESPIRITU / Inquirer Northern Luzon)
BAGUIO CITY, Benguet, Philippines — Fourteen men claiming to be a security team employed by a land claimant were arrested by the police on Friday for breaking into and occupying parts of the government-run Baguio Dairy Farm, the Department of Agriculture (DA) said on Sunday.
The men allegedly occupied the Bureau of Plant Industry cottage on Oct. 4, after tearing through a fence surrounding the 94-hectare animal breeding reservation, which now serves as the DA’s Baguio Animal Breeding and Research Center (BABRC).
The 14 men, who occupied the farm until their arrest on Friday, identified themselves as members of the 8 Dragons Elite Security Agency, a Quezon City-based company, authorities said.
On Saturday, a lawyer sued the Baguio City police for illegal detention on behalf of the men, said Cameron Odsey, DA Cordillera director.
Trespassing
According to the city information office, two of the arrested men surrendered their service weapons but could not provide documents that allowed them to carry firearms outside Metro Manila.
Odsey said the arrested men could be from the same group that was expelled from the dairy facility in June 2021.
All 14 men now face trespassing, forcibly entry, and possession of unlicensed firearms charges, said Odsey.
During a City Council session in July last year, BABRC Director Robert Domoguen said two separate groups of armed men had forcibly entered the dairy farm purportedly to survey private lands that overlapped with the reservation.
One of these groups was also a security team hired to protect a 10-ha lot encroaching into the dairy farm, said lawyer Jennilyn Dawayan, DA Cordillera assistant director for research and regulations, during that council session.
Land speculators’ target
Formerly called the Baguio Stock Farm, the forested property was separated from the Baguio townsite in August 1940 by President Manuel Quezon through Proclamation No. 603.
The reservation has been the target of land speculators since the 1980s. It also sparked a policy conflict between the DA, the Department of Agrarian Reform, and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources when informal settlers attempted to secure certificates of land ownership awards for gardens inside the DA reservation.
Retired and active soldiers once put up a “soldier’s hill” inside the farm. To date, the Dairy Farm is still surrounded by households claiming ancestral land rights.
—VINCENT CABREZA
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