Farmers’ group questions DAR, World Bank’s SPLIT program

MANILA, Philippines — Another farmers’ group yesterday questioned the implementation of the Support to Parcelization of Land for Individual Titling (SPLIT) of the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR), saying it encourages farmer beneficiaries of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program to sell their land to developers.

In an interview with The STAR, Philippine Chamber of Agriculture and Food Inc. president Danilo Fausto noted that while the Department of Agriculture (DA) encourages farmers to consolidate to avail themselves of the support services of government, the DAR on the other hand is trying to divide the lands of farmers through the World Bank-funded SPLIT.

“I talked to (DAR) Undersecretary (for field operations office, Kazel) Celeste, and I told her the support services are in contiguous areas, these are consolidated areas. You are splitting the lands, while the DA promotes consolidation. The left hand does something different from the right hand,” Fausto said.

Earlier, former agrarian reform secretary and Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) chairman emeritus Rafael Mariano urged Congress to investigate the implementation of the DA and World Bank’s SPLIT project, saying lawmakers should determine if it contributes to the distribution of land to farmer-beneficiaries.

The SPLIT project which launched in January 2020 is financed through a $370-million (P20.4 billion) loan from the World Bank to subdivide Collective Certificates of Land Ownership Award covering over 1.3 million hectares of property earlier turned over to about 750,000 agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBs).

“If you allow the split of the lands, it will accelerate the sale of those lands to developers. Like, if you have five hectares and you split that to six or seven farmers, how can a farmer earn if he only owns one hectare. I will just sell it,” Fausto added.

Fausto said that while the SPLIT is a major project of the DAR, it should properly explain the program.

“I don’t want to preempt them, but you have to tell us that it will not be the result. If not, what you are doing is wrong,” he added.

Mariano has said that the lawmakers should exercise their oversight function and probe the SPLIT project.

For his part, KMP chairperson Danilo Ramos noted that for this year, DAR has allocated P6.1 billion or 42 percent of its P14.3 billion total budget for SPLIT implementation.

“SPLIT is now the cornerstone of every program and project under the DAR. While the agency is busy splitting collective land titles for the individual proprietorship of ARBs, we also want to know the status of big landholdings and estates under dispute that are pending for distribution to farmer-beneficiaries. Case in point is Hacienda Tinang in Tarlac and Haciendas Murcia and Balingcanaway, also in the said province,” Ramos said.

According to Ramos, vast landholdings across the country still need to be distributed as these are locked under private ownership with decades-long unresolved land cases pending at the DAR.

DAR has recently created the Project SPLIT composite team to conduct the World Bank Gap Analysis Study to determine appropriate interventions.

Agrarian Reform Secretary Conrado Estrella III said DAR wants to avoid seeing even one farmer being forced to pawn or sell their farm lot as it will defeat the purpose of SPLIT.

Ramos maintained that free land distribution and a comprehensive support services program – not SPLIT – will be effective in uplifting the status of ARBs.