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By Nora O. Gamolo, Senior Desk Editor
A GROUP of landowners calling itself the Council
of Agricultural Producers (CAP) is blaming the comprehensive
agrarian reform program (CARP) for the current rice shortage and is
urging legislators not to extend its program life beyond the 10
years already given to it that will end on June 10, its 20th year
anniversary.
In a statement released to media, CAP said that
CARP was “merely experimented” on already productive farmlands
36 years ago “by politicians out to perpetuate themselves in
power.” At that time, the Philippines had 31 million hectares of
tillable land.
The group, however, did not explain what
mechanisms under the CARP facilitated or made possible the current
rice shortage. Enacted in 1988, CARP did not create any centralized
production, post-production, marketing and distribution network for
any cash crop produced or farmers’ group assisted under the
program.
CAP was apparently referring to the issuance of
Presidential Decree (PD) 27 by then strongman Ferdinand Marcos. PD
27 applied only to rice and corn lands, whose areas of coverage are
comparatively lower than lands planted to other cash crops, and
which were under the control of Marcos’ adversaries, particularly
in Central Luzon.
The agrarian reform program of the government is
actually a continuing series of programs and projects started as
early as the 1930s with the homestead program in Mindanao, and which
only saw modification over various decades that it was implemented
by different administrations operating under varying conditions.
“The disturbance and divisiveness brought by
CARP, plus the fragmentation of lands and the abandonment and/or
underutilization of lands by supposed beneficiaries led to unproductivity
as what happened in 33 other countries that experienced food
shortages and rationing,” said CAP.
“CARP gives premium to laziness, doleout
mentality, disguised robbery and denies dignity of labor [to those]
who earlier had strived to save, and therefore immoral,” the group
said.
Noting that at least 35 bishops had signed a
petition to Congress to extend the program, CAP decried that “The
Church dangerously compounds the problem by its advocacy of
anti-birth control, which is more theoretical than real; and mob
rule, as many of them refused to respect even the decisions of the
Supreme Court as the highest court of the land and arbiter of
disputes.”
The group also bewailed the rampant selling of
awarded lots which proves that the alleged farmers, “many of them
fake”, are “only after valuable land, not productivity.”
The Department of Agrarian Reform has reported
that some 92 percent of rice and corn lands were already distributed
under CARP, while the remaining 8 percent are contested by
landowners’ children. Hence, CAP said that practically, there are
no more rice and corn lands to give away, blaming farmers who
continue to hanker for land redistribution.
Farmers, on the other hand, are bewailing the
non-implementation of CARP-mandated coverage of big landed estates
and agroindustrial plantations, whose areas reach to thousands of
hectares.
The group showed statistical data from a study
conducted by the Department of Agrarian Reform and the German
development group GTZ (Gesselschaft fur Technische Zusammenarbeit)
that said only 42,000 hectares were converted out of 6.5 million
hectares already distributed as of 2005, saying the number is
insignificant.
Land conversions became a political issue in
CARP since farmers charged that many lands for CARP coverage were
converted to escape forced land acquisition and distribution.
Farmers rooting for CARP also riled against
massive conversion of CARP-able lands into agro-industrial purposes,
such as what happened in Sumilao, Bukidnon and many lands
transformed into jatropha plantations so owners could cash in on
incentives provided by the Biofuels Law.
The landowners’ group added that only 1
percent of all lands in 1986 were landed estates that CARP intended
to break up, and now the average landholding is less than one
hectare per ordinary farmer. The massive transformation of landed
estates into agroindustrial land has not happened, said CAP.
CAP also said that since there is no reason to
acquire new lands, there is no need for the release of an additional
P100-billion budget for CARP.
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