Senators Raffy Tulfo and Cynthia Villar traded barbs over the conversion of agricultural lands to residential and commercial lands Thursday.
During the deliberation of the proposed budget of the Department of Agriculture (DA) for 2023, Tulfo said agricultural lands of farm lands are becoming smaller and smaller because big developers are buying and turning them into subdivisions and commercial lands.
Tulfo demanded to know why the DA was allowing this to happen.
But Villar, whose family is one of the biggest land developers in the country, objected to Tulfo’s remarks, denying that they were buying up farm lands.
Instead, they procured lands in the capital towns or cities because houses built in these areas are salable.
Saying this has been a business of their family, Villar also said they comply with all the policies of the local government where they build subdivisions.
Villar acknowledged, however, that other developers buy farm lands.
The owners of these lands sold their property because they could generate more money from the land sale than farming, she said.
But Tulfo said many farmers were forced to sell their farms because they did not earn enough with the Rice Tariffication Law, which allows private companies to import rice.
Villar, the author of the law, said farmers gained from the taxes collected on imported rice, a portion of which would go to them as financial assistance and would be used for mechanization.
Villar also said the law was passed because the Philippines failed to make its rice production competitive 25 years after the country signed the World Trade Organization’s General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.
“If we don’t liberalize the importation of rice, they will bring down our credit rating and we have plenty of loans abroad and we have to pay higher interest for those loans so it will be a loss to the Philippine government,” she added.
Villar said she did not feel guilty about passing the law as the tariffs from the RTL are being given to small rice farmers.
She said under the law, P10 billion of the tariffs go to the Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund, of which P5 billion will be used for mechanization, P3 billion will be used for seeds, P1 billion will be made available for loans, and P1 billion will be used for training.
Anything above the P10 billion will be given to the rice farmers owning two hectares and below.
About 1.6 million small rice farmers will get P5,000 each from the excess tariff collection, she added.
While Tulfo sought a national land use law, Villar said this was unnecessary on the national level since every local government unit has its own land use policies.
As the discussion grew more heated, Senate President Juan Miguel Zubiri suspended the hearing.