Saturday, May 10, 2008 Carvajal: Carping on Carp By Orlando P. Carvajal Break Point
LAND reform’s essential and sub stantive goal is to increase the productivity of the small farmer so he can earn enough from his farm to support a family and grow economically self-sufficient. Ownership of the land he tills is only a fundamental motivational tool to improve productivity but does not guarantee it.
This explains the failure of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (Carp) to empower the small farmer economically because its operative underlying assumption is that land ownership is the farmer’s magic wand to progress. Hence, Carp’s continuance must be based on a re-definition of such fundamentals as its basic goals and the basic elements of a true methodology.
Maybe the program’s declared assumptions are correct but corruption in the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) has effectively buried them under piles of “sweetheart deals” in the determination of just compensation for the landowner and in the listing of qualified beneficiaries. If that is the case, which is quite likely, an accounting of the billions of pesos spent for Carp becomes another pre-requisite to its continuance.
The tenant-farmer was unproductive not so much because he did not own the land he tilled as he did not have access to the financial resources needed for essential production inputs like quality seeds, fertilizer, essential machinery or beasts of burden not to mention those resources needed to market his products.
When he acquired ownership of the land through Carp, he remained unproductive because he continued to lack access to essential financial inputs for intensive and productive farming.
If the purpose of Carp is to give land to the tiller (which seems to be how DAR has oversimplified the program) then Carp has been at least a partial success. But if the purpose is to substantially improve the small farmer’s productivity, then Carp is a dismal failure. After billions of pesos spent for “just compensation” to big landlords and for “consultants,” the small farmer remains the poorest of the poor in this country.
More than ownership, access to production capital is basic to improve the small farmer’s productivity. Government investments in physical and social infrastructure like irrigation, drying facilities, cooperatives and agri-skills training are even more basic pre-requisites.
If Carp, therefore, must be extended, it must be extended in a radically revised way, correcting the deficiencies of the first Carp. To do this, an accounting of the funds for the first Carp must be done and corrupt practices in DAR have to be eradicated. The public will also need to know exactly for what items in the revised program will DAR spend the P162 billion it is asking for the new Carp.
