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Farmers fear foreign land ownership

Source :By MARVYN N. BENANING

April 24, 2009, 4:21pm

Manila Bulletin Publishing Corporation

Farmers nationwide are aghast at House Resolution 737, which would allow foreign corporations and associations the right to own public and private lands, use them and sell them to other parties.

HR 737 is a proposal that has raised the hackles of militant and moderate farmers alike since it was filed at a time when organizations were staging mass protests against the failure of the Arroyo government to proceed with the purchase and distribution of land under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP).

The militant Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) had been slamming the resolution as a mere adjunct of the larger plan to amend the 1987 Constitution through the constituent assembly method, which the Senate rejects in toto.

KMP argues that HR 737 opens the latchdoor to the liberalization of land ownership in the country, giving parity to foreigners in exploiting land, which they can then turn use for agribusiness enterprises, mining, logging or whatever else.

In short, foreign corporations would be given national treatment, thus ending preference to Filipinos and their corporations. The resolution is a bad deal, militant farmers say, since it does away with the Constitutional limitation on land ownership to only 1,024 hectares.

It is ironic that it comes at a time when poor peasants are pressing for genuine land reform and the excising of the loopholes that had bedeviled CARP. KMP is lobbying for the enactment of House Bill 3059, which provides for the distribution of land to landless peasants for free, with the state bankrolling the acquisition of land.

Government is footdragging on genuine land reform but is plunging headlong into a fire sale of Philippine land to foreign interests, they added. By scrapping the present limitations on land ownership, Speaker Prospero Nograles and other backers of HR 737 would, in effect, junk the basic law.

The resolution also fits squarely with the demand of the American Chamber of Commerce in the Philippines (Amcham) for dismantling the barriers to foreign land ownership in the country. Amcham had been demanding as well the dismantling of tariff and non-tariff barriers, including incentives

for local growers, to pave the way for the liberal entry of US pork and poultry.

The US supplies a significant volume of these meat products, much to the chagrin of local hog and poultry raisers. On the other hand, moderate farmers belonging to the Task Force Mapalad (TFM), and protesting CARP beneficiaries in Banasi, Camarines Sur and Calatagan, Batangas, slammed the lawmakers for playing political games and not tackling the CARP Extension with Reforms (House Bill 4077) and enact the same before its adjournment.

HB 4077 had not been discussed in the House of Representatives since April 13 in spite of the pledge of Nograles that it would be given priority. Nograles and his allies have been deliberating HR 737 with gusto, according to the moderate farmers.