Arroyo backs Nograles’ ‘corporate farm’ proposal

MANILA, Philippines - House Speaker Prospero C. Nograles on Friday said that President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has already expressed full support to the proposal of adopting a "corporate farming" scheme as a government policy to promote food security. Mr. Nograles said that the approval was personally conveyed to him by the President along with the assurance that reports of a rice shortage are completely "baseless and exaggerated." The Speaker said that Mrs. Arroyo already ordered Agricultural Secretary Arthur Yap to conduct a study on how the scheme can be put into action. Mr. Nograles earlier recommended that the government can adopt corporate farming as one possible scheme to increase food production and tap Mindanao which still has vast tracks of arable but underutilized lands as the country’s primary food basket. The same concept of promoting food security is also being espoused by Rep. Abraham "Baham" Mitra, chairman of House Committee on Agriculture and Food, who proposed requiring the country’s top 100 corporations to engage in agricultural production to feed their own employees. Members of the Mindanao bloc in the House of Representatives are also backing the proposal. While the details of the proposal have yet to be fleshed out as the proposal is still in its conceptual stage, Mr. Nograles said that corporations and other business entities with at least 2,000 employees should be required to engage in corporate farming with rice as their primary crop. "Vast tracks of unused public lands, particularly those in Mindanao can be tapped for such corporate farms. Corporations can also enter into joint venture agreements with farmer beneficiaries of agrarian reform," he said. "Employers will be able to feed their own employees and ensure food security for the entire country. "Also, we will be providing employment to a lot of people and ensure that farmer beneficiaries of agrarian reform are properly assisted to ensure higher productivity in their farm lands," he pointed out. At the same time, Mr. Nograles said he is prepared to support proposals for the extension of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) provided there will be no more conversions of agricultural lands and alloted areas for corporate farming. Mr. Nograles said the House leadership is currently reviewing several proposals to extend the program as well as its funding requirements. The CARP (Republic Act 6657) is set to expire on June 2008. Mr. Nograles said extending the CARP should be used as an opportunity to ensure food security instead of giving rise to more subdivisions and golf courses. "The defect of the CARP is that it shrunk our farmlands because even arable lands were converted into residential areas, golf courses and industrial areas. "We can extend CARP only if conversions will no longer be allowed [but] the promotion of corporate farming [will be allowed]," Mr. Nograles said. He added that there have been many failures in the implementation of the CARP because there was no mechanism that should have ensured the productivity for farmer beneficiaries. "From what I’ve gathered, many farmer beneficiaries of agrarian reform used their seed capital to buy new TVs and refrigerators instead of modernizing their farms. "On the other hand, owners of vast tracks of lands found a way out to exempt themselves from CARP by converting their lands into industrial and residential lands. This practice should be stopped or we will again fail in achieving the real purpose of the CARP," he said. According to the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR), there are currently two million hectares of land which are yet to be placed under the agrarian reform program. It will take another 10 years before these lands can be fully distributed to farmer beneficiaries. On the other hand, seven million hectares have already been placed under CARP benefiting about four million farmers. So far, there are at least two House Bills (328 and 3369) filed in the House of Representatives seeking to extend the CARP law for a period of five years from 2008 up to 2013. — Elizabeth T. Marcelo, BusinessWorld