Farmers have an alternative to the bogus CARP, Deputy Minority Leader, and Bayan Muna Rep. Satur C. Ocampo said in a press release.

Ocampo yesterday called on Speaker Jose De Venecia to give Filipino farmers a fair deal urging the House of Representatives to give due consideration to House Bill 3059 or the proposed "Genuine Agrarian Reform Act" along with bills seeking to extend the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program.

HB 3059 seeks to place all agricultural lands under agrarian reform and distribute lands for free to farmer beneficiaries. Ocampo was reacting to de Venecia's statement that he would lead the House in extending the CARP.

He said that the Speaker's statement ignores farmers' miserable experiences under CARP and their demand for a genuine and truly distributive land reform.

"Since Day One, the CARP is being challenged by Filipino farmers in all fronts. In their farmlands, in the parliament of the streets, in the halls of Congress, and even before the courts," Ocampo said. "So why extend the bogus CARP when after two decades of implementation it was proven a failure?" he asked.

Ocampo also praised the farmers struggling for their rights to the land for "bringing the land question in the country back on center stage."

"All these cases arise from CARP and ranges from the cancellation and confiscation of so-called certificates of land ownership, land-use conversions, crops conversion, non-land distribution schemes like the stock distribution option, up to forcible and barefaced land-grabbing. Big landowners made use of the CARP to evade land distribution," Ocampo stressed in a press release.*

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