While the Department of Agrarian Reform is scrambling to negate and overturn all pro-farmer policies of former agrarian reform secretary Rafael “Ka Paeng” Mariano, about a hundred farmers from Bukidnon will start a two-week protest camp-out outside the DAR central office to press the current DAR leadership for the immediate installation of agrarian reform beneficiaries and the pursuance of free land distribution.
Farmer-beneficiaries from Bukidnon Free Farmers Association and Laborers Organization, Tried Agricultural Movers Association of Rural Active Workers, and the Landless Tillers Inhabitants of Musuan—collectively known as BTL—has brought their decades-long struggle for land outside the doorstep of the DAR.
“We have waited for so long for DAR to take action on our plight. We cannot wait any longer. We demand the current DAR to recognize our rightful claim to the 517-hectares of land that we are tilling inside Central Mindanao University (CMU),” the BTL farmers said in a statement.
BTL farmers petitioned DAR to cover and distribute the CMU lands based on Executive Order No. 448 or “Accelerating the Acquisition and Distribution of Agricultural Lands, Pasture Lands, Fishponds, Agro-Forestry Lands and Other Lands of the Public Domain Suitable for Agriculture.”