DAR turns over to farmers

414 titles of 252-ha farms

TAGBILARAN CITY, Bohol May 20 (PIA)—The promise of a land to till that they can call their own stretched so long that 61 years-old Primitivo Dusaban, of Camalian, Ubay thought he may not live to see it happen.

“My father Esteban, held on to the promise which he heard during the Marcos years,” Primitivo shared, while holding on to a clear folder, containing his final proof of ownership to the 9,412 square meters of prime irrigated rice lands as indicated in the Certificate of Land Ownership Award (CLOA) that he and 10 other agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBs) in Ubay received from the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR).

Married to Rafaela, Primitivo has to keep the dream alive, to sustain his three children through school, while holding on to the full resolution of the issue on splitting the communal titles the government initially issued to ARBs, as these have discouraged farmers who could not determine their exact boundaries in the communal titles.

A member of the Board of Trustees of the 300-strong membership of the Bayongan end point Irrigation Association, Dusaban said, this is the best time to get awarded with the titles with the full range of government assistance for production.

Despite the long dry spell that has already rendered several crops wilting, Dusaban said the government’s irrigation authorities have made sure that their farms, which are downstream from Bayongan, gets enough water to complete the whole cropping cycle.

“We are the priority when they release the water by May 27,” Dusaban said adding that Bayongan irrigators have agreed on a ladderized farming system to fully allocate the available water and reduce wastage.

He is also confident now of lesser cost of cropping with the irrigation, mechanized land preparation, free seeds, transplanters, weeders, combine harvesters and even rice threshers, along with efficient rice mills provided nearby.

While many farmers worry about the continuity of farming in the community, Primitivo has less to worry. His youngest son, a TESDA scholar is now the association’s equipment operator.

Primitivo is just among the 210 ARBs awarded with total of 275 regular land titles of farm property totaling 252.1787 hectares of Bohol’s 20 towns with sizable rice fields placed under the government’s flagship land reform program.

Another 107 ARBs received 139 electronic-titles for a total of 83.4915 hectares from the DAR Officials led by Boholano Assistant Secretary for Legal Affairs Office lawyer Virgilio Mendez, and Policy Planning and Research Undersecretary Luis Meinrado Pangulayan, and Provincial Agrarian reform Officer Ronald Pumatong.

Done in Support to the Parcelization of Lands for Individual Titling (SPLIT) Project, which replaced the traditional paper titles with a more secure and convenient digital format, the hand-over also coincides with the Central Visayas wide simultaneous distribution of titles, witnessed by no less than President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., DAR Secretary Conrado Estrella III and local government officials.

In an interview, PARO Bohol Ronald Pumatong said they are also processing for their last distribution target of about 2,000 more hectares in Bohol.

For the whole of Bohol, on that day, some 252.1787 hectares of agricultural lands were awarded to a total of 317 agrarian reform beneficiaries holding 414 titles: regular or e-titles.

Land reform under the Code of Agrarian Reforms in 1971 and the issuance of Presidential Decree No. 27, sought to establish owner-cultivatorship or cooperative-cultivatorship among those who lived and worked on the land as tillers, and started awarding lands to landless tenants.

First implemented under the administration of former president Ferdinand E. Marcos and DAR secretary Conrado Estrella, the Land reform has mutated itself into the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program and made into law.

Now, with the same tandem in President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., and Conrado Estrella III, the grandson of the first DAR secretary, Primitivo has seen the realization of the program.

Unfortunately, he may not yet fully see the full realization of the dream in his lifetime, fortunately, his son would be there to work and make it real. (PIABohol)

DAR TO DARE. In one clean sweep, DAR handed out 414 electronic and regular titles to 317 agrarian reform beneficiaries in Bohol as an effect of the Support to Parcelization of Lands to Individual Titles (SPLIT) as the government now issues individual titles to farmers, titles partitioned from the mother titles earlier issued to organizations. All over the Central Visayas, 4000 hectares of titled lands were distributed to farmers in one day. In Bohol, DAR is still processing for some more lands for distribution to farmers. (PIABohol)

TWO OF THE 136 ARBS. Two female ARBs show their copies of the CLOA which DAR handed simultaneously in Central Visayas May 20. No less than President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. attended the distribution in Dumaguete, where DAR Secretary Conrado Estrella III officiated. (PIABohol)