THE militant peasant group Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) on Tuesday warned that China’s renewed proposal to lease lands in the Philippines would “aggravate the problem of landlessness faced by the Filipino peasantry.”

The KMP issued the statement after recent reports quoting Chinese Ambassador to Manila Liu Jianchao as saying, “What we can do is foreign companies can lease the land and then grow the crops and then sell the crops to the local market of the Philippines. And if they still have surplus, they can sell it to the international market.”

“This renewed proposal from China spells land-grab to farmers,” said KMP secretary general Danilo Ramos as he recalled “in 2007, the Department of Agrarian Reform was looking at large tracts of land for agribusiness development under a memorandum of understanding signed with China.”

Because of massive protests from farmers, the Department of Agriculture suspended plans to allow China to use 1.24 million hectares of Philippine agricultural land.

Among the highlights of President Benigno Aquino 3rd’s six-day state visit to China is the signing of a five-year development pact for trade and cooperation that aims to raise some $60 billion in investments for the Philippines.

“It appears that the sell-out of Philippine agricultural lands has always figured in the agenda of President Aquino’s state visits to other countries,” Ramos said noting that “in his visit to Japan last year, capital infusion for a bio-ethanol plant in 11,000 hectares in the province of Isabela was one of the so-called good news that President Aquino brought home.”

Ramos said that “these land lease deals are geared toward producing crops for the industrial and commercial needs of the countries of origin of the foreign investors and entities which leases these lands, while our country has been suffering from perennial under-productivity of rice to the extent that we are now import-dependent.”

This proposed land lease deal with China will aggravate the problem of landlessness in the country. It will surely face strong opposition and defiance from the Filipino peasantry,” Ramos said.