Lawmakers seek moratorium on land conversions

Lawmakers are urging President Benigno Aquino III to declare a moratorium on the conversion of agricultural lands into residential communities and industrial zones which has become a threat to the country’s food security.

In a report, Batangas Representative Mark Llandro Mendoza, chairman on the committee agriculture and food, and Negros Oriental Representative Pryde Henry Teves chairman of the committee on agrarian reform and agriculture and  food, said thousands of hectares of rice and corn lands were converted to to nonagricultural use from 2008 to 2010—even without the approval of the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR).

The two committees recommended that the President issue an administrative order declaring a freeze on the approval of land conversions to the end of his term in 2016.

They also urged the DAR and the Department of Justice to strengthen the National Task Force on Illegal Conversion and to focus on pending cases of illegal land conversions, particularly during the last two years of the Arroyo administration

The probe was triggered by Butil Farmers party-list Rep. Agapito H. Guanlao who cited the of 836 hectares of rice lands in Bocaue, Bulacan, that were tilled by 603 farmers into a mere 73 hectares after the property was converted into housing projects, commercial establishments, fish ponds and a 147-ha economic zone.

Guanlao warned that the P24 billion allocated for irrigation projects in the proposed 2012 national budget would go to waste if local governments and national agencies would tolerate the conversion of even lands with existing irrigation facilities.

The committee report noted how some companies  had been amassing agriculture lands by getting permits from local municipalities to convert them.

DAR Undersecretary Anthony Parungao had told lawmakers that the biggest impediment to prosecuting the companies behind the illegal conversions was the failure of prosecutors to prove that the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program had indeed been circumvented by these conversions.

Lawmakers are pushing for the  enactment of the National Land Use Act to ensure a balance between economic development and food sufficiency.

Meanwhile, a committee of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) advised governments to think twice about opening up agricultural lands to foreign investors.

FAO’s Committee on Food Security, in a report prepared for the world organization’s 37th session this week, warned that leasing vast tract of lands to foreign companies could lead to more inequalities and push the prices of basic commodities out of the reach of the world’s poor. With a report from Kristine Alave