Farmers abandoning Bondoc Peninsula, says group

LUCENA CITY—Farmers who have given up hope on agrarian reform and face persistent threats for fighting for land are abandoning farms in one of the country’s agrarian reform hot spots, Bondoc Peninsula, according to a a group of farmers demanding genuine agrarian reform.

Jansept Geronimo, spokesperson of Kilusan Para sa Tunay na Repormang Agraryo at Katarungan Panlipunan (Katarungan), said farmers frustrated with the slow pace of land distribution and facing constant threats and harassment by landowners were now leaving Bondoc Peninsula to settle elsewhere.

While calling it “isolated,” Geronimo said Katarungan and local farmer leaders would convene soon to prevent a mass exodus of farmers from the Bondoc Peninsula.

“We can’t blame them,” said Geronimo in a phone interview.

He said aside from frustration over the slow pace of land distribution under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP), farmers also suffered from continuing harassment, “petty court suits, death threats and worse, bullets.”

He said Bondoc Peninsula farmers supported calls for a genuine agrarian reform program to replace CARP, the centerpiece program of the late President Corazon Aquino.

Geronimo said instead of extending CARP, “what the DAR should do is hasten the distribution of lands and provide support services to the lucky few who have already received lands.”

Samuel Solomero, provincial agrarian reform officer in Quezon province’s third and fourth districts, said an estimated 16,000 hectares of lands, most of them in the Bondoc Peninsula, could not yet be distributed under CARP.