DAR: Hacienda Luisita beneficiaries entitled to support sevices

Hacienda Luisita workers. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines — Farm workers entitled to parcels of land from the Hacienda Luisita sugar estate may avail themselves of support services from government agencies to boost productivity, the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) said Wednesday.

The DAR announced it was embarking on an information campaign to educate agrarian reform beneficiaries in all the 10 barangays (villages) of Hacienda Luisita about how they could make use of government services to make their land productive.

The campaign will be conducted from May 23 to May 25, in coordination with the Department of Agriculture, Sugar Regulatory Administration, National Dairy Authority, Land Bank of the Philippines, and Agricultural Training Institute.

Agrarian Reform Undersecretary for Support Services Jerry Pacturan said representatives of the government agencies agreed to meet with Hacienda Luisita farm workers to explain the programs and projects that are available to the agrarian reform beneficiaries.

On top of the list is the Agrarian Reform Community Connectivity and Economic Support Services (ARCCESS), a project implemented by the DAR to help improve the household income of land reform beneficiaries through their organizations.

Specifically, the project seeks to strengthen the business operations or business units of agrarian reform beneficiary organizations (ARBOs) so that they can eventually manage business assets or activities related to farm production, post-harvest, processing and marketing.

Pacturan said the Hacienda Luisita farm worker-beneficiaries were strongly encouraged to organize themselves into farming blocks to make ARCCESS support service more efficient and effective. These include:

1) Professional services to assist them in implementing their agri-based enterprise, which include agri-extension and business development (organizational, financial and enterprise management);

2) Common service facilities  or farm equipment, which they will use as their business asset; and

3) Access to credit and insurance facilities in partnership with the Land Bank, Philippine Crop Insurance Commission and private financing institutions.

Pacturan said the agrarian reform beneficiaries in Hacienda Luisita may also pool their resources together to engage into diversified Sugar Block Farming, a joint-program of the DAR, DA and SRA that seeks the consolidation of support services for small sugar farms in order to obtain economies of scale.

The block farms, between 30 and 50 hectares each, will be managed as one farm so that the activities on the small individual farms are aligned and implemented according to the plans of the whole block. In this way, resources including farm workers, equipment, inputs, and financing could be utilized efficiently, he said.

While operated as a block, Pacturan explained that “the ownership of each small farm is maintained and respected.” Agrarian reform beneficiaries will not lose their land titles, and will only be helped by a farm manager who shall take charge of the operations of the block farm.

The SRA has estimated that with block farms, the agrarian reform beneficiaries could increase sugar production from 99 to 147 bags of sugar per hectare.

The Sugar Block Farming program was launched in January last year, with 16 pilot block farms in 12 sugar-producing provinces, namely, Albay, Antique, Batangas, Bukidnon, Capiz, Davao del Sur, Iloilo, Leyte, Pampanga, Negros Occidental, Negros Oriental, and Tarlac.

Under the program, DAR shoulders the cost of farm tractors and business development services while DA covers the development of irrigation facilities and improvement of farm-to-mill road. The SRA, on the other hand, handles agri-technology support and overall management of the block farms.

According to Pacturan, individual land reform beneficiaries who do not wish to join the farmers’ engaged in block farming may still avail themselves of other support services for diversified cropping, vegetable production and cattle-raising.