• GILBERT P. BAYORAN
To optimize arable lands for higher agricultural production and total food security and help in laying the grounds for large scale farming, Senator Juan Miguel Zubiri has filed the Corporate Farming Act in the Senate.
“High input, high yield, high value – that is what we can expect once we seriously get into large-scale farming,” he said.
“But our push for land consolidation is premised upon the fulfilment of social justice,” Zubiri said in his speech at the Philippine Sugar Technologists Association Convention held in Cebu City on Wednesday (Aug. 13).
“While we respect and recognize our people’s right to land, which is inalienable, give them the support that they need as small farmers or as farming cooperatives,” he added.
Zubiri, however, noted that many of the agrarian reform beneficiaries are growing old now and their children are now choosing to pursue careers of their own, away from the world of agriculture.
“So what happens to their lands? They sit there untilled and unused, bringing no food nor money to the owners, nor to the economy. And they cannot sell the land, either, as they are constrained by the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law from doing so. They can only pass it on to their heirs – who are, again, largely uninterested in staying in the agricultural sector,” the senator said.
Zubiri added: “If we truly cognize our people’s right to their land, then we must also allow them to sell their land when they and their families no longer wish to tend to it. There is no social justice in binding our beneficiaries from doing what they wish with the land that they own”.
The senator said the whole point of the Corporate Farming Act that allows land consolidation is to drive up agricultural production and food security, after all.
Once the law is passed, it allows for the acquisition of up to 50 hectares of contiguous lands for individuals or one-person corporations and 200 hectares of contiguous lands for corporations.
“This would be a win-win situation for everyone. Our beneficiaries, should they want to, will be able to retire from the hard labor of farming, and they would be compensated well enough to comfortably support their families,” Zubiri said. | GB
