3,000 farmers press Marcos to distribute CARP lands

Three thousand farmers belonging to Task Force Mapalad (TFM) marched in Bacolod City today Nov. 6, 2023 to press President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to continue implementing the agrarian reform program and immediately distribute lands to them as he had promised during his state of the nation address, a TFM press statement said.

TFM also called on Marcos and the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) to speed up the acquisition of private agricultural lands (PALs) and complete land distribution as mandated by the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) and other land reform laws.

The farmers, who stayed at the DAR office vicinity in Bacolod, complained that despite several meetings and agreements, the DAR has failed to abide by its commitments under the R.A. 6657, RA 9700 and the recently issued Memorandum Circular No. 226 series of 2023, which mandates the continuation of the land acquisition and distribution process despite protest of landowners.

Adding to the woes of the landless farmers is the lack of funds for landowner compensation, the resistance of landowners to the survey of landholdings covered by CARP and the filing of a variety of cases to impede the conduct of such surveys.

Moreover, it takes an eternity for the DAR to generate Certificates of Landownership Awards (CLOAs) as landowners pursue their legal options, like splitting the titles to their landholdings, as in the cases of Hacienda San Isidro (which was already titled under the Republic of the Philippines but half of the 60-hectare property is still cultivated by Vicente Gustilo), Hacienda Rose Agri (in which the landlord tried to split the 443-hectare estate into 356 titles.)

With the transfer of P50-billion of LBP funds for the Maharlika Investment Fund (MIF), the bank now seeks to be spared from complying with mandatory reserve requirements imposed by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP.) Under RA 9700 and DAR regulations, agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBs) have usufructuary rights over CARP lands and the CLOA should be generated 180 days after title has been issued under the name of the Republic of the Philippines. There are 47 landholdings which have issued with RP titles but until now the former landowners or its agents (ariendadors) are still cultivating the lands.

TFM President Teresita Tarlac said installing farmers in big Negros Occidental landholdings is long overdue. “Nabayaran na itong mga lupang ito ng gobyerno, may karapatan ang mga magsasaka na makinabang sa lupa pero walang magawa ang DAR officials kapag ayaw ng mga landowners,” Tarlac complained.

With the enactment of a law that condoned the loan amortizations of more than 600,000 agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBs) and the order for DAR to expedite the World Bank-funded SPLIT program or the distribution of individual land titles to farmers with collective CLOAs and resolve the “vintage” agrarian reform cases pending the DAR Adjudication Board, farmers should have received their land but until now, they still have not installed in sugar estates.

Tarlac lamented that DAR records showed the government still has to distribute 173,340 hectares to ARBs nationwide. This is on top of the 147,378 hectares temporarily deleted from the land distribution list in March 2022 through Memorandum Circular No. 112, which ordered the cleansing of the land acquisition and distribution (LAD) balance.

The farmers decried that the DAR has consistently failed to meet its annual LAD targets despite the shrinking number of lands for distribution. Under Duterte, the deleted landholdings, or those expunged from the list of lands for distribution, totaled 147,660 hectares—even higher than his administration’s six-year accomplishment at 127,857 hectares, Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) data show.

Malacanang has also been silent on how to proceed with LAD as many farmers have not been covered by CARP. DAR records show that 173,340 hectares of land have yet to be subjected to LAD aside from the 147,378 hectares the previous administration deleted from the balance based on Memorandum Circular No. 112 released in March 2022. TFM tagged the memo as arbitrary as no clear guidelines and criteria were set to justify its issuance.

TFM figures show that 30,936 hectares of CARP-covered lands have yet to be distributed in Negros Occidental, the biggest tract of CARP land in the country. TFM fears that the Marcos administration must summon the political will and deploy the full force of the law in implementing agrarian reform in the province and the entire country.*