DAR to block conversion of agricultural lands
The Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) has assured the public that it would guard against the wanton conversion of the country’s remaining agricultural land into other uses, including real estate development, following President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos’ recent signing of the New Agrarian Emancipation Act.
DAR Undersecretary Luis Pangulayan said in a Quezon City media forum that part of the government’s commitments under the agrarian reform program was to prevent the conversion of the remaining arable tracts of land into purposes other than agriculture.
“The arable lands that we say must be planted on, we will have them planted on—we will guard them against conversion,” Pangulayan said.
The President signed Republic Act No. 11953 last Friday, condoning more than P57.56 billion in unpaid amortizations among 610,054 agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBs) working on 1.173 million hectares nationwide.
Concerns about massive conversion of agricultural land were raised by a number of civil society organizations working in agrarian reform, on grounds that with more than half a million farmers due to get titles to the lands they have been tilling for decades under the New Agrarian Emancipation Act, it will now become easier for them to sell to developers dangling high price tags for their land.
Agrarian Reform Secretary Conrado Estrella III had reminded agrarian reform beneficiaries that they could not sell nor transfer the titles to the lands awarded to them under the agrarian reform law for 10 years after receiving their titles.
Agrarian justice
In a joint statement last Friday, social development organization Kaisahan and six other groups said that with the debt condonation, the “hindrances” to the sale and transfer of rights over agricultural lands distributed under the 1988 Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program “have been effectively removed.”
They added that the new law was “eerily silent” about preventing the sale of agricultural lands to the “usual landowners who would then reconsolidate the farms under their control.”
Pangulayan said DAR would continue the agrarian reform program, promising land to the tiller, as mandated under the 1987 Constitution.
“As long as there’s Article XIII, Section 4 [in the Constitution] which says that it’s a policy of the State to make the landless farmer and landless regular farmworker owners of the land they till—there our agrarian reform mandate will always be,” Pangulayan said.
The DAR official added that the agency’s mandate does not stop with the awarding of lands to ARBs as it also includes agrarian justice delivery, land tenure improvement and provision of credit facilities and support services to the farmer-landowners.
“These must not be cut off even if the last plots of land have been given to the ARBs,” he said.
Pangulayan said DAR also aims to push for the economic empowerment of farmers through agricultural productivity, profitability and rural development.
Continuing support
For Speaker Martin Romualdez, the new law writing off the unpaid obligations of some 610,000 agrarian reform beneficiaries, most of whom are rice farmers, would raise production of the staple and thus contribute to the country’s rice sufficiency.
“Now that our farmers will soon be free of debt, I hope that they will be able to increase their produce to at least 100 50-kilo bags [of rice] per hectare, from the present 60 to 70 cavans. But of course, the government will have to help along the way,” he said.
But he pointed out that erasing the agrarian reform beneficiaries’ indebtedness is just the first step in helping them increase productivity, improve their lives and achieve rice sufficiency for the country.
“The next step is aiding them to those objectives by providing them with or giving them access to credit, technology, equipment, inputs and other vital support services,” Romualdez said, adding that agrarian reform emancipated farmers without access to credit for production and other needs may turn to usurers who would put them deep into debt again. INQ
