Farmers, Advocates Push for Land-Reform Extension

By Ruby Thursday More
Philippine Human Rights Reporting Project

MABINI, Compostela Valley — As lawmakers debate on the fate of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) before the session in Congress ends this year, farmers in this rural town believe — and have proven – that owning and having control of a piece of land and the means to cultivate it is their way out of hunger and poverty.

One of these is 36-year-old farmer Efren Cagumbay, who has lived all his life in this sleepy town, about two hours away from Davao City by bus.

After more than a decade of struggle, he and other agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBs) in Sitio Mampising in Barangay (village) Tagnanan here have finally taken full control of their land – but not without effort and sacrifices.

Their struggle is a tale of ups and downs to have full control of their lands until receiving equal opportunities to develop these, Cagumbay recalled.

Passed in 1988, CARP aimed to address inequality in the countryside by providing landless farmers access and control of lands and means to cultivate these. It became the cornerstone program of former president Corazon Aquino two years after the 1986 People Power uprising ended the Marcos dictatorship and catapulted her to power.

CARP ended in June 2008 after 20 years of implementation but was extended for another six months until end of this year.

On December 17, the Philippine Congress on its last session day agreed to extend CARP for another six months until June 2009 but took out the compulsory acquisition of lands, a move that favors landowners opposing CARP. The extension period would give them ‘breathing space’ to study proposals to extend CARP, lawmakers said as they issued Joint Resolution 19.

In Manila, the Congress resolution drew flak from several farmers on hunger strike including farmers from the lands of the husband of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo in Negros Occidental in central Philippines.

The hunger strike, now on its 17th day in front of the House of Representatives, drew an unprecedented support from the Catholic Church to press for the extension of CARP. A total of six Catholic bishops have already joined the hunger strike, saying extension of CARP is crucial to end social unrest in the countryside.

Watered down

The recent deliberation is reminiscent of what CARP faced 20 years ago in the same halls of Congress, composed mostly of patriarchs or scions of landed clans, including former President Aquino’s family.

Critics say that a ‘watered down’ land reform was passed, sparing vast tracts of privately owned agricultural lands or allowing arrangements that in effect take away farmers control of their own lands.

Such was the case in Cagumbay’s land.

The Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) awarded the 707-hectare land to Cagumbay and 251 other ARBs in 1991 under CARP. A year after they were awarded their lands, the farmers signed a lease agreement with the Tortuga Valley Plantation Inc. (TVPI), a subsidiary of the Lapanday Agricultural Development Corporation (LADC), owned by the family of former agriculture secretary Luis Lorenzo Jr.

In retrospect, the farmers said it was a bad decision.

The agreement said TVPI would lease a total of 425 hectares for 30 years at PhP 3,500 (USD 71) per hectare per year with possible increase only after every five years. This was way below the average gross income of PhP 400,000 (USD 8,163) per hectare yearly.

“We really regretted leasing our land to TVPI. We could have earned more if the land was completely ours,” Susie Tabar, wife of a one of the farmer beneficiaries here and head of a women’s group in her village, told the Philippine Human Rights Reporting Project.

The farmers, grouped under the Mampising CARP Beneficiaries Multipurpose Cooperative (MCBMPC) pushed for the renegotiation of the arrangement but the TVPI refused to release the farmers from the agreement.

For more than 10 years, the farmers held protest actions — including land occupation and picket camps in DAR provincial and national offices — to defend their right to fair share in the produce and income from the land.