THE farmers’ group Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas on Sunday supported the move by Agrarian Reform Secretary Rafael Mariano to suspend former President Benigno Aquino’s “midnight resolution,” signed by former Agrarian Reform secretary Virgilio delos Reyes, which seeks the “parcelization” or subdivision of collective Certificates of Land Ownership Awards to individual land titles.
The KMP issued its statement after recent reports quoted Mariano saying that Administrative Order 3, series of 2016, may tempt cash-strapped farmer-beneficiaries to pawn or sell their individual farm lots instead of tilling the land for lack of money to buy farm inputs.
AO 3 was signed and issued by Delos Reyes on June 8, 2016, days after Mariano’s appointment as Agrarian Reform secretary was announced by President Rodrigo Duterte.
“The ulterior motive of this ‘midnight order’ approved by Aquino’s DAR is to pave the way for the reconcentration of vast tracts of lands to landlords,” said KMP secretary-general Antonio Flores.
“First, AO 3 seeks to ensure that farmer beneficiaries would pay amortization for the land supposedly awarded to them through the bogus Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program. Individual farmer beneficiaries’ failure to pay will obviously lead to the cancellation and disqualification of farmer beneficiaries.”
Flores said that “LandBank data would show that nine out of 10 farmer-beneficiaries were not able to pay for amortization.”
Worse, the subdivision of collective CLOAs would make individual farmer beneficiaries highly vulnerable to land-grabbing.
“Big landlords will surely exploit the farmers’ poverty and compel beneficiaries at gunpoint to sell their land,” Flores said.
“The issuance of AO 3, among several other Administrative Orders approved at the last hour by Delos Reyes, was a ‘conscious and deliberate move of the former DAR management to undermine whatever drastic reforms and changes that Ka Paeng is set to implement at DAR,” Flores said.
“We are confident that Ka Paeng will junk this anti-farmer and anti-land reform AO 3.”
AO 3 covers all the collective CLOAs issued by Agrarian Reform to farmers’ cooperatives and associations and groups of farmer-beneficiaries who are not organized.
With individualized CLOAs, the farmers would become all the more vulnerable to the deception and manipulation of landowners, Flores said.
They could be forced to sell their land or enter into unfair lease contracts with landowners and agribusiness corporations.