Press Release
January 21, 2009

Farmers need support, not just land - Loren

If authentic land reform is to be achieved, farmers must get more than just the land they till.

Senator Loren Legarda said the farmers who are in direct contact with the land and who make the land productive with his labor and capital "must be provided support, budget capital, real farm market roads, real fertilizers and seed."

"We should put teeth in our support," Loren told a select group of Bacolod media men during a press conference that followed her speech at the annual meeting of the Negros del Norte Planters Association in Victorias City, Negros Occidental.

The chair of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Loren said she favors a complete assessment of the Comprehensive Agrerian Reform Program, adding that CARP "will ineffective if we continue to give land to farmers without support."

Loren, who was guest of honor and speaker during the meeting attended by some 3,500 sugarcane planters, sugar millers and workers belonging to the NNPA, also said that "distributed land should be ensured they reached the target beneficiaries."

She also urged that an audit of agricultural expenditures and monitoring of the agricultural fisheries modernization program should be done.

The Senator also revealed the urgent need for a stringent measures to help the ailing sugar industry, which used to account a good portion of the country's exports in the 1970s.

One option she said she would work for would be the review of the country's tariff liberalization program for agricultural products, including sugar, in the face of stiff competition spawned by low tariff production.

Sugar planters and farmers should be provided subsidies and that sugar workers should be provided livelihood in the off season, she said.

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