[ Manila Bulletin Online ] March 7, 2008
By MARVYN N. BENANING
Several farmers groups of varying ideological persuasions have agreed on the issue of overhauling the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) and stripping it of the loopholes that allowed large estates to be converted into agro-industrial zones and plantations cultivated to high-value commercial crops (HVCCs).
The Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP), Task Force Mapalad (TFM) and the Ugnayan ng Nagkakaisang Organisasyon sa Kanayunan (Unorka) are convinced that the many pro-landlord provisions of CARP like voluntary land transfer (VLT), stock distribution offer (SDO) and dubious municipal zoning ordinances that lead to thousands of applications for reclassification of erstwhile agricultural land must go.
The KMP is working for the enactment of House Bill 3095, otherwise known as the Genuine Agrarian Reform Bill (GARB), which is considered to be the most radical proposal to have been filed so far before the House of Representatives.
It calls for the expropriation of agricultural land and their distribution to farmers, tenants and farm workers for free, with the state appropriating large sums to pay landlords.
Under CARP, landlords are paid by the Land Bank of the Philippines (LBP), with the farmers amortizing the bank and accepting the provision for the non-disposition of the land for at least 15 years.
GARB does not contemplate farmers’ paying for the land, arguing that absentee landlords have been profiting from the farmers through rent and production sharing which goes as high as 75 percent for the owners and 25 percent only to the tillers.
It also proposes to provide farmers with irrigation, farm inputs and other forms of technical assistance to make them productive and not beholden to loan sharks, who also supply fertilizers and other inputs.
On the other hand, the moderate, church-backed TFM still believes that in spite of its loopholes, "the CARP must be extended beyond 2008, along with necessary reforms, as a constitutionally mandated social justice program."
For TFM, CARP, "despite its shortcomings, remains the only answer to the cry of millions of farmers and farm workers to own the piece of land that they themselves till."
Unorka, which is battling large commercial interests in Laguna and Batangas, wants no reclassification of agricultural land and demands that at least 30,000 hectares of land in the two provinces that have been transformed into commercial, industrial and residential zones be reverted to farming.
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