DAR Cebu is better than its reputation

LAST week, Agrarian Reform Secretary John Castriciones announced that at least 13 officials of the Department of Agrarian Reform’s (DAR) Cebu provincial office would be facing criminal and administrative charges for failing to distribute hundreds of certificates of land ownership awards (CLOAs) and emancipation patents. The documents — covering 1,637 hectares — had been discovered in two sacks in the Cebu office. The oldest CLOA dates back to 1987 while the most recent bore registration dates from 2020. Some 3,391 undistributed land titles were also recovered.

This was appalling news; not least for those of us who have been involved in agrarian reform advocacy. Though one could hardly be surprised, considering stories from years past about Cebuano politicians asking DAR officials not to touch certain lands, mayors advising landowners to ignore notices of coverage, landowners filing harassment suits against DAR personnel who were doing their jobs and land conversions putting agricultural land beyond the reach of land reform coverage. Land reform was never a priority for Cebu’s political leaders for as long as I can remember.

There have also been accounts by farmers that already distributed CLOAs were recalled due to “errors” and then never to be returned to the farmers. I could only too well imagine these “erroneous” CLOAs being stowed away in a sack and conveniently forgotten until Secretary Brother John (as Secretary Castriciones likes to be called) unearthed the anomaly.

There is, of course, always more than one side to a story. As one source said, indeed there have been lapses on the part of the provincial office. He traced them to an imperfect transition in connection with the grand rationalization that swept the department in 2014. Until then, Cebu had 48 municipal agrarian reform officers covering Cebu province’s 44 municipalities and six cities. In 2014, the 48 became seven. Each of the seven remaining municipal agrarian reform officers handles a cluster of an average of seven towns/cities.

Important documents, particularly land titles, were pulled out from the more than 40 offices before the closure and transferred to the provincial office for safekeeping. But never were these titles and other documents kept in sacks, my source told me. They were stored properly in filing cabinets or boxes. He could only guess as to who transferred the documents to the alleged sacks and what was the motivation.

Around the same time — 2014 — the manner of making the titles reportedly went from manual to electronic and this caused a further delay. Some titles that were issued in 2014 were released only in 2019 or 2020, an unreasonable delay by all measures.

Did DAR Cebu fail to distribute the CLOAs and emancipation patents? Yes and no. The DAR field personnel validates and distributes. As soon as validation is completed we will find a way to distribute, an official told me. It is done without fanfare, though occasionally coordinated with local officials for convenience.

Last January, a sudden reshuffling of the municipal agrarian reform officers meant an interruption in the validation process and distribution schedules. However, new schedules of distribution of CLOAs were proposed only to be put on hold for a “one time, big time” distribution led by Sec. Brother John Castriciones. The date was, says my source, moved several times until the DAR central office broke the story about sacks of undistributed CLOAs last May 4. Meaning, many of the undistributed CLOAs had been set for distribution but it was put on hold by senior officials to give the secretary the opportunity to personally hand over the land titles to the agrarian reform beneficiaries.

Let’s be fair to the Cebu Provincial Agrarian Reform Office and its personnel. While there have been lapses and likely even culpable, deliberate delays done by some officials, I believe that the majority of DAR personnel in Cebu are doing their best to fulfill the constitutional mandate to give land to the tillers and promote social and economic justice.

Some like to blame land reform for the low productivity of Philippine agriculture. The farms are too small to achieve economies of scale, right? Farmers in other countries only survive because they cultivate vast tracts of land or own thousands of hogs, chicken or cows. However, agrarian reform in the Philippines is often cited as a case of failed agrarian reform because it was too late, too slow, exempted too many lands while the government failed to extend badly needed support services. Unlike elsewhere where massive subsidies of the agriculture sector are extended not only to keep farmers afloat but to ensure food security for all at all times.

Farming is not a fad but something that sustains us. It is also the source of livelihood of millions of Filipinos. With more consistent and better quality support from the government, our farmers can improve productivity, uplift the quality of life — for themselves and the rest of us.