TAGBILARAN CITY, Bohol (PIA)—Christmas came early to 1,309 Agrarian Reform Beneficiaries (ARB) whose amortizations for their lands they get from the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP)could now go to other priority spending.
This as the government has condoned some P19,208,728.00 in payments to LandBank of the Philippines by virtue of the New Land Reform Emancipation Act, according to Provincial Agrarian Reform Officer Ronald Pumatong.
For the CARP, if the lands given were owned by the government, it is free, but when it is obtained from private owners, recipients have to pay through easy mortgage payments via the Landbank, explains DAR Regional Director and lawyer Shiela Enciso
Department of Agrarian Reform Assistant Secretary for Legal Affairs Virgilio Mendez along with DAR officials handed 1,309 Certificates of Condonation and Release of Mortgage (COCROM) for the 1,089 hectares which the government has awarded to farmers in its flagship social reform program to increase agricultural productivity.
Now that the government has condoned the farmers obligations to Landbank, they can use this to buy farm inputs, use it for their kids school matriculation or use it to pay for the Real Property Tax so they can fully lay claim to the lands, said DAR 7 RD Enciso, during the awarding ceremonies.
The ceremony also included the distribution of 530 Certificates of Land Ownership Awards (CLOA) and electronic titles subdivided from the collective CLOAs which the government issued earlier to CARP beneficiaries.
The issuance of collective CLOAs became an issue as farmers manning collective farms were not as productive seeing that they do not have delineations in the land they till.
With this, the World Bank funded a program called Support for the Parcelization of Lands for Individual Titling (SPLIT) which facilitated the subdivision of Collective CLOAs into individual titles, so that farmers and their families can have their own tenurial instruments to prove their land ownership.
From the SPLIT project, we award these CLOAs and eTitles to these farmer beneficiaries, with the hope that they take care and work on these, hoped Congressman Edgar Chatto.
Agriculture authorities have lamented that the average age of farmers is getting.
Meanwhile, Bohol Governor Erico Aristotle Aumentado who hosted the Province Led AgriFisheries Extension Services Annual Planning proposed that the local government take over idle lands for food productivity.
Bohol has since aspired to be rice sufficient since its rice sufficiency rating surpassed the 100 percent mark in 2010.
Shrinking farmlands due to conversions and diminishing number of young farmers to sustain the food production due to the allure or white collar jobs have worsened the situation here.
As a tourism island, Bohol feeds 1.2 million residents and an equal number of tourists, that the demand for food production doubled
Aumentado proposed that the local government strike a contract farming agreement with private owners, either putting the idle land as capital, or sharing in the earning in the profits, just to make the idle lands productive. (RAHC/PIA-7/Bohol)
