Banas in his introductory remarks on the opening last week of the Trainer’s Training on Advocacy against GMO, which NOAM co-hosted as part of its Earth Month celebration, said that “all the efforts at promoting organic and sustainable agriculture will become useless if our farmers do not have lands or do not own the lands they till.”

He said there have been numerous efforts at promoting small scale sustainable farming in Negros but in cases where the farmers have no control over the lands or farms they use, they eventually ejected from the lot.

“In other cases, agrarian reform beneficiaries who do not have adequate support services to manage and develop their lots, end up selling or leasing their lands to previous landowners or ‘leaseholders,’ and in effect, all their agricultural initiatives become useless,” Banas added.

He said “there is no substitute to land reform because it gives the farmers power and dignity to redirect the course of their lives from present enslavement and poverty.”

Banas also lauded the recent approval of the congressional committee on agrarian reform for a five-year extension of CARP.

He however expressed apprehensions that unless the congress strengthens the provisions that will give adequate support services to the farmer beneficiaries, the extension would be nothing than nominal and would only continue and even exacerbate the past problems of the CARP. (Bulatlat.com)

 Save as PDF