Monday, April 28, 2008 'Land reform key to sustainable agri'
"ALL efforts at promoting organic and sustainable agriculture will become useless if our farmers do not have lands or do not own the lands they till."
Professor Renato Banas, head of the conveners of the Negros Organic Agriculture Movement (Noam) and a staunch advocate for land reform program, especially in the sugarlandia, explained that the advocacy on sustainable agriculture and rural development, though important to achieve rural peace and progress, would be for nought if the land reform campaign fails.
In his introductory remarks in Saturday's opening ceremony of the trainer's training on advocacy against GMO (genetically modified organism) hosted by the
Negros Organic Agriculture Movement, Banas said there have been numerous efforts at promoting small scale sustainable farming in Negros.
He, however, said that in cases where the farmers have no control over the lands or farms they use, they are eventually ejected from the lot.
In other cases, agrarian reform beneficiaries who do not have adequate support services to manage and develop their lots end up selling or leasing their lands to previous landowners or 'leaseholders.'
"In effect, all their agricultural initiatives become useless," Banas added, saying, "there is no substitute to land reform because it gives the farmers power and dignity to redirect the course of their lives from present enslavement and poverty."
Banas, though he lauded the recent approval of the House committee on agrarian reform on the five-year extension of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (Carp), expressed apprehensions that unless the Congress strengthens the provisions that would give adequate support services to farmer-beneficiaries, "The extension would be nothing than nominal and could only continue and even exacerbate the past problems of the Carp".
The Bagong Alyansang Makabayan-Negros also expressed pessimism on the Carp extension.
Felipe Gelle, the group's spokesperson, said: "if it is the same program with minor amendments or cosmetic reforms, we doubt that if it will succeed in truly dismantling the land monopoly and ending widespread poverty and hunger in the countryside."
"Extending the timetable and pouring of billions of funds for a failed land reform program, without eliminating its inherent weakness, the Carp extension is bound to fail again. Carp itself is full of legal loopholes which were use by big landlords to evade land reform and dupe the landless peasants and farmers," Gelle said.
Gelle said: "after 34 years of land reform, since the Presidential Decree 27 of Marcos, the government land reform failed to dismantle the monopoly of lands. The economic elites of Negros such as Ledesma, Montilla, Zayco, and other big landlords still hold the vast sugar haciendas and even coastal lands."
He also said it is Eduardo 'Danding' Cojuangco who still lords over the 11 haciendas with almost 6,000 hectares scope, after he successfully evaded land coverage by employing the corporative scheme.
"The corporative scheme was even hailed as 'model of land reform' by then President Estrada but is considered as hoax by militant farmers." (Karl G. Ombion)
