DA plans to lease out land for agro-forestry

MANILA, Philippines - Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Piñol plans to lease out to private firms government-owned lands suitable for agro-forestry businesses.

Piñol will seek President Duterte’s approval of the Bantay Kagubatan program, a joint project of the Department of Agriculture (DA) and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) for the promotion of agro-forestry as a means of speeding up reforestation.

Piñol was encouraged by the huge contribution of agro-forestry to the economy of Finland, which he visited recently. Agro-forestry activities account for 20 percent of Finland’s economy and provides thousands of families with livelihood, he said.

“It’s time for us to be ambitious in reforesting our lands,” he said in a statement.

DA proposes that private companies — including those that are foreign-owned — be allowed to lease government lands covering around a million hectares for 50 to 100 years.

Firms leasing government lands should be in the business of growing trees species that can be harvested in five to 10 years.

Initially identified for leasing are lands comprising watershed areas such as the Kalayaan watershed area, Sierra Madre mountain ranges, the Pampanga River watershed area, the Panay watershed area and the Mindanao River Basin watershed area.

The program also has a stewardship component for permanent forested areas in which the national government would engage poor families in the targeted lands to plant at least 500 tree seedlings of both harvestable and indigenous tree species.

For every seedling raised, a family would get P2 as incentive or a total of P5,000 a month if a perfect survival rate is attained. In addition, the family would receive livelihood projects like raising native pigs and free-range chicken.

Families would also be taught to plant secondary crops like black pepper, coffee, cacao, abaca and yam. They would also be taught other farming activities like mushroom culture.