13, 256 HECTARES OF AGRI-LAND VALIDATED UNDER SPLIT NEGROS NORTH

The Support to Parcelization of Lands for Individual Titling (SPLIT) is a foreignassisted project of the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) that involves the subdivision of collective land titles (CCLOAs) issued under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) into individual land titles. This project aims to parcelize CCLOAs to stabilize ownership, tenureship, and control of lands awarded to the concerned farmer-beneficiaries.

Since the inception of the project implementation on August 18, 2021, up to the present, thirteen thousand two hundred and fifty-six (13,256) hectares of agricultural lands involving various CARPcovered landholdings have undergone the validation process of the DAR Negros Occidental-North through Project SPLIT. The said lands are subject to individual titling and are intended to be awarded to 10,113 agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBs) of Negros Occidental-North. A magnitude of 1,155.17 hectares makes up for the 1,916 counts of e-titles in favor of 1,033 qualified co-owners of the land, updated as of March 3, 2023.

OIC-PARPO II Teresita R. Mabunay, Provincial Project Manager and Municipal Agrarian Reform Program Officer (MARPO) and SPLIT Component Coordinator, Engr. Joji D. Flores led this endeavor with the support and cooperation of the Provincial Project Management Officers (PPMOs), MARPOs, and Field Validation Teams. DAR through Project SPLIT works hand in hand to accomplish its target promptly to hasten the process of the re-issuance of individual titles for the farmer-beneficiaries and co- owners of the land under a collective land title.

The continuous implementation of Project SPLIT in Negros North leaves 8,700 hectaresof the land target for validation, 5,800 hectares for a series of surveys, and 4,000 hectares for redocumentation this Calendar Year 2023 with corresponding numbers of 12,384, 7,344, and 9,313 ARBs who will stand to benefit through this project as they will be awarded their individual CLOAs, in the areas of focus this year.

DAR Negros Occidental-North heeds the demands of the project as stipulated in Administrative Order 1, Series of 2021, that Project SPLIT shall facilitate the parcelization of CCLOAs and the subsequent generation, registration, and issuance of Electronic-Titles to the ARBs.

*Ellaine Mae Macainan

400 Negros occidental 1 farmers received CLOAs

After several years of waiting, 400 Agrarian Reform Beneficiaries (ARBs) from Negros Occidental 1 finally received their Certificates of Land Ownership Award (CLOAs) and electronic land titles (E-Titles) from the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) in Passi City, Iloilo on February 17, 2023.

Secretary Conrado M. Estrella III led the distribution of CLOAs and e-Titles to 400 ARBs of Negros Occidental 1 comprising a total of 917.4062 hectares of agricultural lands.

Liberato Cosio was one of 400 farmers in Negros Occidental 1 to finally get his hard-earned CLOA. Notwithstanding the distance, Cosio journeyed from Barangay Guimbala-on, Silay City to Passi

City, Iloilo. Cosio received his CLOA, which covers a 1.4-hectare plot of property in Barangay Guimbala-on, Silay City, Negros Occidental, from the landholding that had previously to help you improve your economic lives,” he promised. belonged to Ramiro Golez. “We would like to thank the DAR for helping us own the land we have been tilling for a long time. At last, we are now holding the CLOA we have been dreaming of,’’ Cosio said.

Estrella also stressed that the DAR is collaborating with other organizations such as the Department of Health (DOH) to provide medical assistance to the ARBs and to the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) and Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) to provide scholarships to the children of ARBs so they can attend school for free while making extra money.

Estrella emphasized that the event is in compliance with the directive of President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. to hasten land distribution and intensify support services to the ARBs.

“We will provide you with more lands and necessary support services

In addition to distributing land titles, the DAR also turned over farmto-market roads (FMRs) worth P100-million, farm machineries and equipment (FME) worth P14million as part of the Sustainable and Resilient Agrarian Reform Communities (SuRe ARCs) project.

*Kim Ramos

“No Man is An Island” may be a cliché but this is continually proving true in a community such as ours which is reason enough for DAR to keep strengthening the partnership with Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) in the implementation of the Agrarian Reform program, a relationship that has been in existence for decades now. With the understanding that one arm is less likely to work as efficiently without the other, dialogues with these CSOs are held in a regular manner.

In attendance are their officers and members, and from our end, our OIC-PARPO II Teresita R. Mabunay, Municipal Agrarian Reform Program Officers (MARPOs) and the DAR Provincial Office personnel, where all existing and probable issues and concerns in the coverage of the different landholdings they have engaged are the theme of discussion.

The importance of these dialogues is never debatable. Conducting the same is an inevitable part in the function of the whole system of CARP implementation. Rigorous checking and updating on the status of coverage and processing of the landholdings under the program and problems arising from the same, are constantly conducted. Resolutions and action plans are mutually generated – a product of how well we are able to work hand-in-hand, for the best interest of the farmer beneficiaries and landowners, just the same, with due consideration of fairness and equality.

Currently, DAR Negros Occidental 1 works closely with the following

CSOs: Task Force Mapalad (TFM), Task Force Kasanag (TFK), Negros Federation of Sugar Workers (NFSW), Damayan ng mga Magsasaka, Mangingisda at Mangagawa sa Banse (DAMMMBA), Katarungan and TARBAFA to name a few.

The strength of any community lies not only in the proper function of every member but also their proactivity. With that, DAR continues to commit with these CSOs by holding regular dialogues and additionally coursed the same through the DARMOs. Going down the grassroots enable our farmers who are living in the far-flung areas to actively participate in the process of effective agrarian reform implementation.

*Macky Jay Fernandez and Christy Joy Mangalus

How amazing it is to note that there is indeed money in chicken egg-layering – as if hens indeed lay golden eggs.

From the single module for chicken egg-layering given on October 16, 2020 as part of the Livelihood Assistance of the DAR Negros Occidental 1, channeled through the Program Beneficiaries’ Development Division, Hacienda Lilia II Agrarian Reform Cooperative rose to become one of the promising and progressive ARC-members to date. To think that they started with merely 48 hens to raise. Today, they are proud caretakers and owners of 6 modules of egg-layering hens totaling 288 heads.

Mr. Joel Arante, chairman of Hda. Lilia II-ARC and father to 74 members, is full of enthusiasm while he recounts how far they have reached and even more aglow as he anticipates how farther they could keep going in the years to come. If history is to tell the story, the landowner has strongly resisted the coverage of the land under CARP. It’s been quite a journey for these beneficiaries, rousing many emotions as they battle against the then landowners’ defiance of the mandate with hopes of keeping the land intact under their family’s name. Because of the lengthy process that this particular landholding has gone through, victory came extremely sweet as they gained ownership and were awarded with their CLOAs covering 46.1922 hectares of land to live in and to till in 2019 and 2020.

How in the period of two years, Hda. Lilia II-ARC have progressed from being just farmer beneficiaries into income-generating entrepreneurs with an average of eight trays of eggs daily, owners of a self-bought Truck worth Php 852,000.00, an electric water pump, a concrete office equipped with the essentials for administrative operations such as a laptop, printer, furniture and fixtures, and maintaining an account of Php 7M, is utterly amazing. Their concerted effort and due diligence have even afforded them to be eligible for a loan of Php 5M from the Land Bank of the Philippines (LBP), however chose to avail of Php 1.5M only and was able to become debt-free in less than a year.

Other support services received were a Farm Tractor in 2020 and a trailer which they kept in good condition, despite the fact that said trailer was acquired as secondhand farm equipment from another ARBO for the modest amount of Php 220,000.00. This, of course does not discredit the trainings and workshops extended by the PBDD of DAR Negros Occidental 1, earning them more knowledge and skills related to their agricultural undertakings and even introducing to them new and more updated means or techniques.

As theirs is a story of hard-work, cooperation and a show of true responsibility as guardians of the land which in time pleased the benefactors, an additional 2.4 hectares of land to be utilized as the member-beneficiaries’ home lots have been duly donated by Mrs. Claire Lacson from her uncovered privately owned land. This testifies that indeed good things come to those who also do good. The positive actions that the members have taken after they have been granted ownership over the CARP-covered portion of the landholding has reinforced within the landowners that indeed they are worthy of the land awarded to them, thus their change of heart.

It’s a battle worth defeating – like “your lives depended on your victory” in a kind of way. And with Hda. Lilia II-ARC members, their weapons have been no less than bags filled with good intentions, hands that are unafraid of all the callouses from tilling the land, hearts that never grow weary from waiting for their good karma to come and minds that know how to ingeniously make profits out of humble start-ups.

Everything about Hda. Lilia IIARC screams contradiction to what we metaphorically refer to as chickens – being timid or afraid to do something. Because they are far from that. And with their progressing chicken egg-layering business, they are in for a good “chicken run” which yields to more than a futile attempt at escaping impoverishment. Roosters may crow, but Hda. Lilia II-ARC has hens that deliver the goods!