CARP: Does reality support social justice?

Inquirer’s June 11 editorial best summed up what many people really think about the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP). Without credit facilities made readily available to farmers, the turning over of small parcels of land to them is nothing more than a laughable charade. In the face of the bare-knuckled reality that the rural or agricultural areas are “truly under-banked… it is no wonder that many farmers and fisher folk have remained on the margins. With no bank to go to, these agricultural workers are forced to borrow from unscrupulous middlemen and loan sharks.” Thus, unable to get out of the debt rut, they end up still dirt-poor as ever, disposing of their lands one way or the other just to bring food on their tables.

And here’s why: The government’s Land Bank is primarily mandated to provide credit facilities under the most farmer-friendly terms. We wrote before: Where do you find its branches? They are nestled right smack in urban centers where they mostly cater to and cosset rich corporations and businessmen (Inquirer, 8/24/07). In answer to that letter, Land Bank dissembled that, contrary to what we “carped about CARP,” farmers and fisher folk are really its “top clients” (Inquirer, 9/10/07).

The undisputed fact is, Land Bank’s branches are concentrated in the urban centers where big-ticket investments are in abundance. They are there to fund private commercial banks’ ventures. The land-tillers in the boondocks are deemed hopeless deadbeats, and lending money to them is just plain lunacy.

But be that as it may, in this day and age, economies of scale require gigantic machines, heavy-duty equipment and infrastructure which are only possible through corporate farming. For sustainable maximum efficiency and productivity, vast tracts of land need to be kept intact. In a report run in the Inquirer’s June 29 issue, it was said that the “farmers are reluctant to mechanize because they fear losing their work”; besides, they can afford to pay only for power equivalent to what can turn on a “small electric fan.”

Under such grave handicap, they are forced to plant by bending over or break their backs trying. That is why the Philippines has remained so backward and flat on its back in terms of producing rice or whatever crop under CARP.

In the case of Hacienda Luisita, what can a farmer and his family alone do with less than a hectare? Borrow money to buy a carabao or cow to plow the arid soil and then sow by hand from sunup to sunset? Seriously?

The romanticization of “agrarian reform” has gone on preposterously far enough! The June 27 issue of the Inquirer featured a photo depicting graduate students from the National University of Singapore bending over to plant rice by hand in Albay.

In the name of whatever is left of this country’s sense of dignity, let us mechanize all agricultural farms already and scrap CARP!

—STEPHEN L. MONSANTO,

Monsanto Law Office,

Loyola Heights, Quezon City,

[email protected]