05/06/2008 [ tribune.net.ph ]
The Senate committee of agrarian reform is currently conducting a thorough review of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) to determine if there is a need to extend the 20-year-old program which ends on June this year.
“The option is, to put it simply, one extension, second is extension with reforms. If extend(ed), how long and how much funding should be given it, or termination. But there should be alternatives,” Sen. Gregorio Honasan, chairman of the Senate committee on agrarian reform, told Senate reporters in an interview.
He also assured all stakeholders that every aspect of the issue is being looked into by the panel.
Honasan said the aim of the committee is to uplift the state of the country’s farmers, their families and local rice production, making them competitive with their counterparts in the region.
The committee had conducted at least three consultation meetings recently, first in Cagayan de Oro City, second in Legaspi City and third in Roxas City last Friday.
Asked for his views on the CARP’s implementation, Honasan said the program had not been very fruitful, which he said is a matter to be considered in the ongoing debates in Congress on the program’s extension.
“It’s not totally negative, it had gains. (But) It’s also not encouraging, meaning there is a need for us to focus this time,” Honasan said.
He said he and the members of his panel have not been “visible articulating our position” because they have been acting as a mere “receptacle of the inputs” from those they speak with in the consultations.
In explaining his committee’s work, the senator cited the case of the Sumilao farmers, whom he and his panel members met.
“My representatives met them. We met the local government and the San Miguel people without prejudice to executive action. Our objective is for the uplifting of the farmers and their families,” Honasan said, citing the case of Sumilao farmers as an example.
He said the Senate is inclined to support an extension of CARP possibly between three to seven years.
“The consensus really is to support the extension but the real issue is to enhance the support services (for the farmers). It is not enough that we re-distribute the land in the true spirit of land reform but re-distribute also the means of production and support services like irrigation,” Honasan said.
Honasan made the statement after two farmers’ groups cited over the weekend major concerns which should be considered on the extension of CARP.
Lawyer Gil Marie Alba, legal counsel of the two groups, lamented that while the CARP was intended to give farmers the control of the lands that they tilled, the government failed to foresee its adverse impact on rice production.
“Traditionally, landowners provided three factors of production: Land, capital and entrepreneurship; while farmers provided one, namely, labor. When the lands were taken from the landowners, the policy-makers apparently forgot that, aside from land, landowners also provided capital and entrepreneurship,” Alba explained.
Without preparing adequate safety nets or the so-called “support services”, the local farmers were unable to sustain better rice production because they also had to face other concerns such as financial resources and marketing their production.
“Without the landowner, the poor farmer must fend for himself, and face the burdens, risks and losses alone with his meager resources,” Alba said.
A consolidated bill extending the life of the CARP for another five years was been approved by a committee at the House of Representatives last month. Sixteen members of the committee on agrarian reform voted for the approval of the bill, while three others — Bayan Muna Representatives Satur Ocampo and Teodoro Casiño and Gabriela’s Liza Maza — objected to it.
The measure, a consolidation of 13 bills, was approved upon the motion of Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman, chairman of the committee on appropriations. It also provides for a P100 billion allocation to fund the program for the next five years.
Meanwhile, Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) Secretary Nasser Pangandaman expressed optimism that the CARP will be extended for another five or 10 years.
Pangandaman said there is a need for the extension of the CARP to fully accomplish its more or less 5.3 million-hectare target for land acquisition and distribution.
In the 1970s, then President Ferdinand Marcos started the agrarian reform program by mandating the distribution of rice lands under Presidential Decree 27.
The law was later amended to include sugar lands.
Republic Act (RA) 6675, otherwise known as the CARP law, was enacted and implemented in 1988 for 10 years but the DAR failed to meet the deadline in 1998.
RA 8532 extended the deadline until 2008 under RA 8532.
The CARP will expire on June 10. Angie M. Rosales, with PNA
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