Today, June 10, 2024 marks the 36th year of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) which was proved decades ago by farmers as a bogus and fake land reform program that failed to redistribute tens of thousands of hectares of land to farmers and agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBs). In contrary, CARP is regarded as the longest-running, most expensive, and most repressive land reform program enacted by the PH government.

Farmers and genuine land reform advocates trooped to DAR to protest Marcos Jr’s perpetuation of CARP and market-assisted land reform. As far as farmers are concerned, Marcos Jr deserves a failing mark (BAGSAK) for the worsened situation of farmers, the state of local agriculture, and food production.

Farmers from Bulacan today trooped to the DAR to highlight the decades-long failure of CARP. Farmers from San Mateo, Norzagaray were ejected from their awarded lands in 2018 and have since then unable to till their lands. Poor peasants from San Jose Del Monte City are in a perennial land dispute with several landgrabbers and land developers who were able to circumvent CARP and DAR’s policies to undermine the rightful claim of farmers to the land they have been tilling since the 1960s.

The Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) and Malacanang targets to distribute 100,000 Certificates of Land Ownership Awards (CLOAs) for 2024 after claiming that it already distributed 70,000 CLOAs to ARBs in 2023. Despite this preposterous claim is the glaring fact and reality that Spanish-era haciendas remain intact, big landlords and the local elite have control and ownership of vast tract of farmlands and landholdings.

Ang pamamahagi ng CLOA ay pamamahagi lamang ng kapirasong papel habang ang malinaw at totoo — walang tunay na reporma sa lupa sa bansa. Poor and landless farmers, farmhands, and milions of rural poor in far-flung villages remain impoverished and deprived. They remain neglected and more often than not, they do not receive even the basic social services from the government.

In reality, according to KMP, DAR and Marcos Jr’s grandiose CLOA distribution blitzes nationwide are not translating into ensuring food security for Filipinos and even farmers who produce food for the nation.

The protest today is the start of weekly pickets of farmers outside the DAR to press the agency on long-standing agrarian disputes in Bulacan, Hacienda Luisita, Hacienda Murcia, Anunas in Angeles City, Lupang Tartaria and Lupang Ramos in Cavite, Hacienda Roxas in Batangas and many other land cases.

The activities will culminate in July 1 nationally-coordinated protests led by farmers to make accountable the regime for the worsening crisis of agriculture and sky-rocketing food prices. Broader people’s protest will also take place on July 22, the third SONA of Marcos Jr. ###