The Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) appears on track to distribute remaining farm lots to landless tillers by 2027, Agrarian Reform Secretary Conrado Estrella III said on Thursday.
During the House of Representatives’ committee on appropriations hearing on DAR’s 2027 budget, Estrella said about 20,000 hectares remain from the 5.4 million targeted for distribution under the nearly four-decade-old Comprehensive Agrarian Reform law.
‘Around 20,000,’ Estrella said during the DAR’s congressional budget hearing, as he pitched to lawmakers a P14.69 billion total budget for the agency next year.
DAR Undersecretary Kazel Celeste said the agency’s next year funding for land distribution was pegged at P4.1 billion, which could cover around 20,000 hectares of farmland. However, Celeste warned that the amount allotted for land distribution next year may fall short of funding needs.
Despite that, Estrella offered an optimistic outlook.
‘We are not worrying about those things,’ Estrella told the Inquirer, adding that the agency had ‘many ways’ of distributing the land without funding being a constraint.
‘It depends on being innovative and creative,’ he said, without elaborating.
Land reform is a contentious issue in the Philippines, an agricultural country where vestiges of Spanish colonial land ownership have endured for decades, concentrating possession among a few.
About 47 percent of the country’s total land area is agricultural land, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
Achieving next year’s distribution target may hinge on ‘cleansing’ land records to drop parcels with technical or documentary flaws, according to Tim Salomon of advocacy group Task Force Mapalad.
‘One hectare removed from the list is one farmer left landless,’ he said.
Salomon said the land distribution program ‘is severely underfunded,’ casting doubt on whether DAR’s budget next year will be enough for the agency to complete its apportionment of farm lots