About 229,000 hectares of land have been distributed to farmers under the government's agrarian reform program, Department of Agrarian Reform Secretary Brother John Castriciones said.
These include newly-acquired lands, re-documented lands or collective Certificates of Land Ownership Awards (CLOAs), and lands turned over to the Land Bank, Castriciones said during a televised briefing Saturday, July 31.
Castriciones also bared that 1.3 million hectares of land of collective CLOAS are in the process of parcelization under the Support to Parcelization of Lands for Individual Titling (SPLIT). Some 220,000 ha of idle government-owned land are also up for distribution to farmer beneficiaries.
Meanwhile, the DAR chief also belied claims that there is no genuine agrarian reform program under the current administration, saying records of the agency show otherwise.
"The KMP’s (Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas) statement that landlords and capitalists continue to hold sway over vast tracts of agricultural lands is not supported by evidence based on the records of the DAR," Castriciones said.
According to Undersecretary for Field Operations Elmer Distor, those agricultural lands, which have been issued the requisite Notices of Coverage (NOCs) by the DAR, are already covered with CLOAs and have been turned over to qualified agrarian reform beneficiaries.
"The landholdings in the KMP list have already been covered by the DAR as early as the 1990s," Distor said.