To enable more farmers to gain from its support services, the Department of Agrarian Reform will organize more agrarian reform beneficiaries’ organizations (ARBOs) nationwide.
DAR Secretary John Castriciones said most of the support given to farmers are passed on through the ARBOs, since they are usually united in their goals to improve their agriculture and economic lives, thus they know what to prioritize in terms of identifying the concerns and requirements of the organization.
“Provisions of infrastructures, farm machineries and equipment, farm inputs, credit assistance, and livelihood training, among other support services of the DAR are given to ensure our ARBs’ success,” Castriciones said.
“Thus, we will see to it that farmer-beneficiaries who will receive their land titles join ARBOs, we will help them to organize through orientations and training prior to the awarding of their certificates of land ownership award,” he said.
Aside from encouraging new farmer-beneficiaries to organize ARBOs, they would also resolve low ARB membership among existing groups, the agrarian reform chief added.
According to Support Services Office Undersecretary Emily Padilla, as of 2019, DAR only has 5,662 ARBOs, while as of 2020, the agency was able to organize 1,007 new ARBOs leading to a total of 6,669 ARBOs nationwide.
“Because of DAR’s aggressive implementation of support services we have organized more ARBOs and we would continue doing this in the next few years. The more ARBOs we have, the more farmers we can help,” she said.