At its core, combining redistributive reforms and capacity-building will enable the rural population, especially the poor and the underprivileged, to take responsibility for their own development
Make no mistake about it: The Department of Agrarian Reform will continue to work against the conversion of agricultural lands into other uses, such as subdivisions.
This assurance was given by DAR Undersecretary Luis Pagulayan in a recent Saturday News Forum in Quezon City where he discussed the key features of the New Agrarian Emancipation Act.
According to USec Pagulayan, the department will monitor arable tracts of land in the country and keep them from being converted into other purposes than agriculture.
“We’re talking here of land that can be tapped for agricultural development. Arable land that can be planted to crops, we will guard against converting these to other uses,” he emphasized.
“The Department will continue the agrarian reform program which is mandated under the 1987 Constitution. Article 13 of Section 4 of the fundamental law says it is a policy of the State to make the landless farmer and landless regular farm worker owners of the land they till,” Pangulayan explained.
The DAR official pointed out that under Republic Act 6657 or the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP), Congress will continue to allocate funds to agencies implementing agrarian reform.
Pagulayan said the main components of agrarian reform— agrarian justice delivery, land tenure improvement and provision of adequate support services to agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBs)—will continue even after the remaining hectares of land have been distributed to landless farmers.
He emphasized: “In my view, the agrarian reform program implementation will remain the same: to make landless farmers owners of the land, coupled with adequate support services and credit facilities…The agrarian reform program is closely tied to the goals of food sufficiency and food security, even national security.
“We cannot separate them from one another, as they are interlinked. DAR seeks the economic empowerment of our farmers as this will boost agricultural productivity and rural development.”
Having worked as a writer for DA in the late 1990s to mid-2000s, we are familiar with the mandate of the agency and its significant role in the government’s food security and poverty reduction programs.
CARP puts the farmers, who make up the vast majority of the rural population, right at the center of development.
Farmers should no longer be passive recipients of government help, but active participants in their own development.
They should no longer be held in perpetual bondage to the soil, but empowered to utilize the bounty of the land to improve their lives.
More than an instrument for social and economic emancipation, CARP is an indispensable tool to expand the limits of human freedom for the millions of Filipino farmers.
The agrarian reform program has three key objectives: equity, capability, and sustainability.
One, it establishes equity by democratizing control over the country’s lands, incomes and opportunities to a large section of the population and enabling them to directly participate in nation-building.
Two, it builds the capability of farmer-beneficiaries to manage reformed lands productively by giving them the support services they need.
And three, it promotes sustainability by incorporating the ecosystem and stakeholder approaches to land use and management.
Through CARP, government, working in close partnership with the business sector and civil society organizations, can transform rural society and economy into an integral and vital component of equitable and sustainable national development.
To meet the three key objectives of equity, capability and sustainability, the government closely integrates land tenure improvement with program beneficiaries development.
This means that farmers will not be left to their own devices after they get land they can truly call their own. The basic approach is to help them manage the land so it becomes more productive.
The first step, however, is land distribution. Government has yet to complete land distribution.
Here, there is the need on the part of government to exercise political will.
But it also calls for cooperation by landowners.
A change in attitude—on the part of government, landowners, and the farmers themselves—will facilitate consensus and common action that will lead to social change for the benefit of all.
The other key step is maximizing the productivity of farmers and reformed lands through targeted support services and the promotion of private investments in the agricultural sector. By integrating support services to the land transfer process, government builds the farmers’ capacity at claim-making, the first step in the empowerment process.
Equally important, the integration of land distribution and provision of support services will ensure that land is transferred together with the means that will make its new owners productive and competitive in a globalized economy.
At its core, combining redistributive reforms and capacity-building will enable the rural population, especially the poor and the underprivileged, to take responsibility for their own development.
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