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News Top Stories Govt bans conversion of RP rice areas
News Top Stories Govt bans conversion of RP rice areas
| Govt bans conversion of RP rice areas |
| Saturday, 31 May 2008 03:26 | ||||||
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The ban is expected to impact on corporate farms that are looking for more areas to plant higher-value crops like bananas and pineapples to take advantage of rising global demand, as well as real estate developers. The proclamation includes all irrigated farm land, all alluvial plains suited to agriculture, farms now planted to industrial crops, and all areas above 500 meters (1,640 feet) with the potential for growing semi-temperate and high-value crops, a palace statement said. The Philippines, one of the world's largest rice importers, imposed the ban amid government efforts to boost its grains reserves in an environment of rising prices and dwindling stocks. Some four million hectares (9.9 million acres) of Philippine farms are planted with rice, but produce only about 92 percent of the total domestic requirement, according to agriculture department data. The militant Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP), meanwhile, said the two-year land conversion ban is useless if the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program is extended. KMP chairman Rafael “Ka Paeng” Mariano said the ban is "useless because it is done in the context of the dubious act of extending a fake land reform program that will be inimical not just on the welfare of farmers but the whole Filipino people. It should be noted that it was under CARP that massive land use conversions and crop conversions occurred, with its extension then more of the same can be expected." Mariano said that in Southern Tagalog alone, about 1,302, 375.37 hectares are already under land use conversion and 172,967.30 hectares have already been converted. He said land lords and big real estate companies used the CARP to evict peasants and convert the land. He said big agro-transnational corporations like Dole and Del Monte also control at least 220,000 hectares of land in Mindanao. He said the two corporations are planning to expand this area by another 300,000 hectares while leasing 1.2 million hectares of land for jatropha plantations through the RP-China agricultural deals. “For land use conversions to stop and for the rice crisis to be abated CARP must be junked and replaced by the Genuine Agrarian Reform Bill (GARB) or House Bill 3059. CARP extension is equivalent to the extension of the rise crisis; there is no way around it. If CARP is not junked then definitely the rice crisis will continue to worsen,” he said.
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