400,000 hectares of irrigated land vanished due to neglect

MANILA, Philippines – At least 400,000 hectares of palay-producing farmlands all over the country have vanished because of mismanagement and neglect, a congressman from the Bicol region said yesterday.

Sorsogon Rep. Salvador Escudero told reporters during the weekly Kapihan sa Sulo Hotel in Quezon City that the missing palay-producing farmlands are part of the 1.2 million hectares of fully irrigated lands that have provided the country sufficient rice supply in 1986.

Escudero, a former minister and secretary of agriculture, said fully irrigated farms yield harvests at least twice a year as compared to upland farming wherein farmers are dependent on rains.

“When we conducted an audit in 1996, we found out that out of the 1.2 million hectares, only 800,000 hectares of irrigated land were accounted for all over the country,” Escudero said.

He blamed the neglect and mismanagement of irrigation projects as the main cause of the gradual decrease of palay-producing farmlands.

Aside from mismanagement, Escudero said rapid urban development has also contributed to the conversion of agricultural lands into housing projects to provide shelter to the increasing number of Filipinos.

The address the problem on land conversion, Escudero proposed that land developers who build structures on agricultural lands may help in the rice sufficiency program by irrigating other areas as replacement.

“We may call it an exchange deal where big developers will set irrigation canals in other areas in exchange for the areas that they develop into a commercial complex,” Escudero said.

Meanwhile, farmers reiterated their call for genuine land reform in the country, preferring to have economically viable lands rather than the administration’s “FIELDS” in order to avert a rice crisis and achieve rice self-sufficiency.

The Kilusan Para sa Tunay na Repormang Agraryo (Kilusang TRA), a coalition of peasant organizations, non-government organizations, and land reform advocates, said President Arroyo’s P43-billion agriculture package dubbed FIELDS will not solve the reported rice crisis or lead the country to rice self-sufficiency as it is useless without a genuine land distribution program.

The multibillion-peso, six-package FIELDS stands for fertilizer, irrigation and infrastructure, education and extension, loans and insurance, dryers and other post-harvest facilities, and seeds. – With Katherine Adraneda