Bill aiming to strengthen farmers’ land ownership filed at House

Albay Representative Joey Salceda has filed a bill seeking to strengthen farmers' land ownership in the country.

Salceda's House Bill 9955 also aims to boost investments in the agriculture sector.

The proposed Agrarian Lands Easing Act seeks to promote investments in the agriculture sector by condoning the loans of agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBs), which will "allow more productive use of agrarian reform land to sale, lease, or joint venture with farmers, and open a low-interest loan facility to help farmers repurchase mortgaged agrarian reform land."

Salceda noted that if this would be enacted, it would be the first overhaul of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law in more than three decades.

"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 in a statement.

"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 added.

Salceda cited a 2019 study by economists Tasso Adamopoulos and Diego Restuccia, saying that the government’s agrarian reform program has resulted in land fragmentation, reducing average farm size by 34%, agricultural productivity by 17%, and the share of landless individuals by 20%.

He said the present restriction on farmlands under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law "has effectively discouraged efficient rural land market operations, eroded the value and collateral value of awarded lands, reduced the farmers' incentive to invest in land improvements, and limited the choice of more efficient contractual arrangements."

According to the lawmaker, the bill also increases the landholding limit to 24 hectares, helps farmer-beneficiaries upgrade titles to electronic titles for free, and allows 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," he said.

"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 added. — Anna Felica Bajo/RSJ, GMA News