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PIA BUILDING, Quezon City, August 27, 2026 (SDN) — Addressing the needs of over half a million agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBs) would surely require a huge sum of money.
For the ARBs, the farmers at the mercy of climate change and onerous lenders, they need for the agency taking care of them to have a much bigger congressional allocation.
And the agency, it’s the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) currently headed by Secretary Conrado M. Estrella since June 2022 under the administration of President Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr.
But obviously, “much bigger” allocation was not what the DAR got — “only” Php16.8 billion — from the 2026 General Appropriations Act (GAA). DAR had proposed Php17.4 billion, which both committees of of the House of Representatives and the Senate had approved.
The final DAR budget was Php16.8 billion out of the Department of Agriculture’s (DA) 2026 allocation — Php185.8 billion — from the GAA. The Office of the DA Secretary got the bulk at Php165.54 billion. (SDN -SciTech & Digital News at present has not verified if these figures were what the President signed in the GAA.)
On Tuesday, August 26, the DAR led by Undersecretary Rowena Niña O. Taduran, along with at least seven other officials of the department, conducted a press conference here at the Philippine Information Agency (PIA) Building along Visayas Avenue.
With Taduran, herself a member of the media industry as co-host of Sen. Raffy Tulfo in his radio program, included DAR officials Atty. Rael Cruz, Eng’r Manuel A. Nebreja, Sol Peralta, Atty. Eugene P. Follanti, Eng’r Randy D. Frogosa, Nereo Tierra, and Atty. Valerie Silva.
In a brief conversation with Taduran after the media event, she told SDN that DAR has “only a small budget” this year for the implementation of its various programs, projects, and services for the hundreds of thousands of ARB farmers nationwide.
“We need a bigger amount,” she emphasizes to address and respond adequately to DAR’s “three pillars of commitment to ARBs”. Taduran is DAR’s undersecretary for Special Concerns Office and External Affairs and Communications Office.
She pointed out that implementing the government’s agrarian reform program is not only about land distribution, but “about transforming land ownership into meaninggful opportunity, justice, productivity, and sustainable future for Filipino farmers,” at the same time pointing out where DAR’s funding goes.
“At the heart of our work,” Taduran says in her three-page remarks at the media conference, “are three interconnected pillars that define the Department’s continuing commitment to our agrarian reform beneficiaries.”
She said the three linked pillars are:
- First, the Land Tenure Security Program;
- Second, the Agrarian Justice Development Program; and
- Third, the Agrarian Reform Beneficiaries Sustainability Program
Pointing out that having one’s own piece of land is the true foundation of security for farmers, which DAR’s Land Tenure Security Program ensures that qualified agrarian reform beneficiaries’ ownership of the land they farm receive security and recognition.
She added that it is not just titles being talked about, but dignity, stability, and comes with the assurance every farmer can look at the land he or she cultivates and say with confidence, “This is mind, and that my family has future in this.”
Taduran emphasized before the media that ownership of land must have built-in justice as DAR recognizes that agrarian reform refers also to shielding farmers’ rights as well make sure that disputes that have to do with a farmer’s land are taken care of with fairness, efficiency, without violating the law.
The third pillar, she explained further, on sustaining ARBs, recognizes that giving land to farmers is just the beginning to make land titles a spark for opportunity, that the opportunity must transform into productivity, and the productivity leading to a sustainable livelihood.
“Ito and dahilan kung bakit mahalaga ang (This is the reason for the importance of) support services, capacity-building, access to markets, enterprise development, value chain interventions, and partnerships that enable our ARBs and their organizations to become productive and competitive,” she says, perhaps alluding to DAR’s need for a bigger budget in 2027 the address these various items on a sustainable basis.
The Department, Taduran, pointed out, also wants the ARBs to rise from just surviving “to become successful farmers, entrepreneurs, producers, and partners in national development.”
Moreover, she assured that DAR’s three pillars addressing ARBs “are not separate programs working independently,” but “parts of one continuing journey. From landownership to justice, to sustainability.”
Palay, corn, and coconut categorized as “poverty crops”
Sometime in the past, SDN heard twice former agriculture secretary William Dar during an Israeli business organization’s press conference about agriculture before the start of Israel’s still ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, part of the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT).
In his talk during the event held at Dusit Thani Manila in Makati City, he mentioned, among others, that “palay, corn, and coconut are poverty crops”.
A search on the internet via Google’s AI Overview shows that “palay (rice paddy), corn, and coconut are not universally considered poverty crops everywhere in the world.”
But it seems that Dar’s observation applies mostly in developing nations like the Philippines where the smallholder farmers — often under 2 hectares — are often trap in poverty as because of limited harvest quantity, reliance on rain-fed agriculture, and value-chain bottlenecks (farmers sell raw commodities as opposed to processed goods, thus the real profits go to middlemen and huge industrial processors.
Peralta, DAR’s chief agrarian reform program officer, agreed with with the former agriculture chief’s observation regarding the three as poverty crops.
“Totoo po na ‘yang (It’s thru that) palay, coconut and corn are categorized as poverty crops dahil karamihan diyan ay (because many are) smallholder farmers na kung saan ang (where) agrarian reform beneficiaries karamihan ay nandirito sa tatlong crops po na ito (many of them are in this three crops),” she points out.
On the other hand, she emphasized the Department’s programs on support services are really aligned with initiatives for the three crops.
Some of these are in partnership with the DBP (Development Bank of the Philippines, DA, Cooperative Development Authority (CDA), while noting that DAR’s programs on palay also cover corn.
“When it comes to coconut, we have an ongoing program with PCA (Philippine Coconut Authority) already approved in a MOA (Memorandum of Agreement) as our counterpart on coconut,” Peralta says.
“Corn is also part of palay, so our programs are aligned with that, in terms of farm machinery…and on credit program,” she said, while stressing DAR’s program with PCA separate from the latter’s in-house programs. She added that DAR also has programs on high-value crops, among others.
Gov’t’s condonation of farmers liabilities wiped out over Php57 billion loan
DAR’s chief agrarian reform officer assured that the Department has extending a lot of support the ARBs, including support services from production to marketing being extended to farmers’ organizations. She said DAR is encouraging ARBs to join organizations.
While conceding that there are challenges in the process, DAR, Peralta said, is addressing them, along with the DA for farm inputs and the National Irrigation Authority (NIA) for farm infrastructure.
In a separate press statement, it was pointed out how DAR is strengthening its agrarian reform delivery this year that places “farmers at the center of land, justice, and development.”
“Agrarian reform does not end when a farmer receives a land title. it begins there. Our responsibility is to ensure that the farmer has secure tenure, access to justice, and the opportunity to make that land productive and sustainable,” said Estrella, the DAR chief.
From January to June 2026, DAR already distributed 19,967 land titles for 19,006 hectares that benefited 10,522 ARBs from the Support to Parcelization of Lands for Individual Titling (Project SPLIT) that covers a total of 1.38 million hectares of collective landholdings.
Include in the DAR’s big-ticket programs the continued implementation of Republic Act No. 11953, also known as the Agrarian Emancipation Act. The Act provides debt relief mechanisms — or condonation of farmers’ loans — to qualified ARBs.
R.A. No. 11953 has already erased ARBs’ loans — including interests and penalties — totaling Php57.87 billion, a huge, huge relief for farmers trapped in what maybe described as their forever debts because their income from low harvest can hardly tide them over. Not the least loan payments.
DAR has 7 continuing interventions for farmers’ greater opportunities
In relation with the condonation, a mercy act from the government, Peralta described the Act as a “very good law” that wiped out interest and penalties. “So, ARBs now owns their land 100 percent, a big benefit given by the government.”
ARBs who were cut off by the deadline and unable to enjoy the condonation are given a moratorium on their payments, she pointed out, thus, their income from their farms remains with them.
Attorney Silva from DAR’s Agrarian Law Implementation and Agrarian Legal Assistance (ALI-ALA) unit, noted the significance of passing a National Land Use Act for the prevention of agricultural lands from being compromised.
The DAR officials at the press conference also fielded questions about lands being converted to subdivisions or housing projects.
Director Follanti of DAR’s Bureau of Agrarian Legal Assistance (BALA) assured that the Department is mindful of this case, while admitting that landowners have the right to allow their land to be used for creating subdivisions.
The DAR-BALA official, however, assured that any violation of the law on this particular matter would be dealt with following legal process.
Meanwhile, among DAR’s continuing interventions for its constituents include capacity-building, farm productivity support, enterprise development, access to credit and financing, market linkage, infrastructure support, and strategic partnerships aimed at creating greater opportunities for organizations of farmers. — EDD K. USMAN (/)