THE government is hoping to generate 30,000 jobs for landless farmers and women in 44 provinces through the P10.2-billion Inclusive Partnership for Agricultural Competitiveness (IPAC) Project of the Department of Agrarian Reform.
The National Economic and Development Authority has approved IPAC which aims to develop agribusiness, particularly in copra production, organic and low-chem rice, cacao, cassava, coffee, oil palm, muscovado sugar, abaca and rubber.
It will enhance linkage of 300,000 farmers and 650 farmer-organizations to viable markets and establish productive partnerships with relevant private enterprises.
The project will assist smallholder farmers and farmer organizations in 50 agrarian reform community clusters across 14 regions.
The project is part of the reforms DAR Secretary Rafael Mariano hopes to implement as he announced the prohibition of further land conversion in the next two years.
“The [Presidential Agrarian Reform Council] has adopted the two-year moratorium on the conversion of agricultural lands. We are now drafting an executive order for President [Rodrigo Duterte] to review and sign,” Mariano said.
He said that the order will cover all awarded lands under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program, Presidential Decree 27, and other agrarian reform laws and agricultural lands with notices of coverage issued by DAR.
Mariano said this will immediately protect more than 4.7 million hectares of agricultural land that have already been awarded to farmer-beneficiaries.
The decision to impose the moratorium was reached after a meeting of the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council, the highest policy-making body for agrarian reform, which had not convened in 10 years.
“The President fully supports [the] agrarian reform program, wants land distributed directly to land beneficiaries. [He wants] PARC to be more responsive to the issues by imposing timelines,” Mariano said.
More than 621,080 hectares of land still have to be distributed to farmers.
Mariano had earlier said the DAR aims to distribute a total of 400,000 hectares of land to 379,236 beneficiaries by 2019 which he hopes to fulfill via a new agrarian reform law since CARP expired in 2014.
