The Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) is set to distribute the Certificate of Land Ownership Award (CLOA) for close to two thousand hectares of land to farmers in the Davao Region.
Hundreds of farmer-beneficiaries are expected to get their CLOA after years of waiting for their proof of land ownership.
DAR Region XI Director Joseph Orilla said that they are now on the small-scale land holdings that is up for distribution to farmers.
“So far today for DAR Region Eleven, if we talk about our universal target, we are really doing well. We are now in our small land distribution, especially in Davao de Oro. We have free land we can distribute and other land holdings in different provinces. We have problematic land holdings that we are trying to distribute through the support of our legal office,” Orilla said.
Most of the land holdings are under landlords who rent vast land from the government through various schemes such as the Forest Land Graze Management Agreement (FLGMA), Community-based Forest Management (CBFM), and Agro-Forestry Management Agreement.
Under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program, and the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program-Extension with Reforms (CARPer), landowners cannot hold more than five hectares of land.
“We need to distribute 1,900 hectares of land to farmers,” Orilla said.
This land distribution is not met without resistance from landlords who use legal tactics to delay the inclusion of their lands to the CARPer law. A land estate will be given a Notice of Coverage (NOC) to inform landholders that their land is now under the process of agrarian reform.
“We are left with 1900 hectares which we are focusing on for distribution. most of them are problematic land holdings. Problematic land holdings are those who have problems with this title with defects and these land owners who resisted the case. some of them are now with the office of the President, so we are waiting for them to have a resolution with finality,” Orilla said.
Orilla said that they also focus on support services for the land beneficiaries.
“We have distributed land, now, how we can sustain them in keeping their land, that’s why DAR enters through lending, provided training, provided equipment and other ways so they can make their land productive,” Orilla said.
Through land reforms, the government addressed important national goals with the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP), which started in 1987. This aims at promoting fairness and social justice, ensuring food security, and reducing rural poverty. It is also a counter-insurgency program aimed at addressing root causes of rebellion. By expropriating the least productive areas of the vast estates and redistributing them to landless peasants as small holdings, the agrarian reform attempted to modernize the feudal system of agriculture.
