A lawmaker at the House of Representatives has filed a measure that would promote investments in agriculture by easing farmland landholding restrictions and rationalizing land transaction processes.
House Ways and Means Committee Chair Joey Salceda filed on Aug. 9 House Bill 9955 or the Agrarian Lands Easing Act, which seeks to condone the loans of agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBs) and allow more productive use of agrarian reform land to sale, lease, or joint venture with farmers.
This bill also proposes to open a low-interest loan facility to help farmers repurchase mortgaged agrarian reform land.
“This bill will remove many of the hindrances to growth in the agriculture sector. Our farm sector is inefficient not because farmers are lazy. The system has several flaws that stunt the agriculture sector. This bill will lift many of them,” Salceda said.
The bill seeks to increase the landholding limit to 24 hectares, help farmer-beneficiaries upgrade titles to electronic titles for free, and allow banks to hold mortgage rights on agrarian reform land.
“It’s a fair balance. Farmers get plenty of benefits under this law. But, at the same time, it also allows more efficient users of agricultural land to use them. Under the current agrarian reform framework, we distributed land that is very difficult to transfer or convey. As a result, we tied farmers to land they may no longer want to farm. Many of them may not even want to be farmers anymore,” Salceda said.
He noted that under current laws, there are restrictions to landholding size and using agrarian reform land fairly that hinder many citizens and businesses who want to engage in farming.
He further argued that banks are also hesitant to lend to farmers because they cannot have mortgage rights to agrarian reform land.
Salceda cited the 2019 study by economists Tasso Adamopoulos and Diego Restuccia, which found that the government’s agrarian reform program has resulted in land fragmentation, reducing average farm size by 34 percent, agricultural productivity by 17 percent, and the share of landless individuals by 20 percent.
He said the current restrictions on farmlands under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law — such as the five-hectare limit and non-transferability of the land within 10 years of issuance and 30 years of amortization — has effectively discouraged efficient rural land market operations, eroded the value and collateral value of awarded lands, reducing the farmers’ incentive to invest in land improvements, and limiting the choice of more efficient contractual arrangements.
“Thus, decades into the government’s land reform program it has only created a new class of people: the “landed poor,” Salceda said.
Salceda said there are around 680,000 ARBs in 1.2 million hectares of agrarian land, noting that they are now saddled with debts with the land that the government awarded to them.
He said unpaid agrarian lands are covered by restrictions, reducing the land value and farmers’ options to increase their productivity to pay off the debt.
“We have not made any major changes to the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law. It has been 33 years. We have seen enough to know that many of its provisions have failed both its beneficiaries and the whole agricultural sector. It did not produce more food for our people, and it failed to lift the farm sector out of poverty. Let’s reform agrarian reform,” he said.
Source: Philippines News Agency