Thursday, May 08, 2008 [ manilatimes.net ]
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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