MARAMAG, Bukidnon (MindaNews/04 December) – The Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) of South Bukidnon believes it can meet its target to distribute the lands covered by the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) before the year ends. But Task Force Mapalad
MARAMAG, Bukidnon (MindaNews/03 December) – Gonzalo Pinuti held his hammer tight as he detached the barbed wire from a fence of a former cattle ranch amid the blistering heat of the sun. With help from a fellow farmer, it took him about five minutes to detach the barbed wires and put down three wooden posts and let his colleagues enter the ranch with carpentry tools, round timber and tents for their temporary shelter.
MALAYBALAY CITY (MindaNews/29 May) — It’s planting season but these farmers are in the picketlines, not in the ricefields. [] Farmers belonging to the Buffalo Tamaraw Limus (BTL) Association staged a week-long rally against Central Mindanao University in Musuan, Maramag,
DAVAO CITY (MindaNews/25 May) – As the farmers’ protest at the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR)-XI entered its second day, regional director Yusoph Mama was a no show in the scheduled dialogue that would have discussed what the farmers claim are illegal exemption of large real estates in Davao Oriental from coverage of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP).
DAVAO CITY (MindaNews/4 Aug) — “The armed men formed a line, pointed their guns at us and fired.” This was how Erlinda Bacandon described how around 10 gunmen fired at a group of farmers who occupied a ranch owned by
DAVAO CITY (MindaNews/31 July) — Unidentified armed men fired at a group of farmers occupying a land covered by the extended Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program in Maramag, Bukidnon Friday night, reports said. Oscar Maniego, leader of the Danggawan Landless Farmers
MANOLO FORTICH, Bukidnon (MindaNews/31 July) — The management of Del Monte Philippines, Inc. said they immediately stopped operations in a land previously controlled by the family of a former Bukidnon governor in Kuya, Maramag town, according to a DMPI statement
DAVAO CITY (MindaNews/26 July) – Some one hundred farmers have pitched tents and occupied portions of the Ocaya Ranch in Barangay Kuya, Maramag town in Bukidnon to protest its being leased to a giant agribusiness firm instead of distributed to
DAVAO CITY (MindaNews/15 February) — The Sumilao farmers’ struggle for land is now on film.
The farmers’ story is featured in “Lupang Hinarang,” a documentary film in two parts by multi-awarded independent filmmaker, Ditsi Carolino.
BUTUAN CITY (MindaNews/14 February) – If Nanay Gilda San-ajan had not joined the team from Sumilao, Bukidnon, everyone would have understood.
After all, this mother of six and grandma to 24, a veteran of two major protest actions – the 28-day hunger strike outside the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) in Quezon City in 1997 and the long march (1,700 kilometers in 60 days) from Sumilao, Bukidnon to Malacanang and DAR from October to December 2007 – deserves to take it easy and let the others, the younger ones take over.
MALAYBALAY CITY (MindaNews/19 May) – Land conversion in Bukidnon in favor of plantations for banana, pineapple and other products has become “alarming” but local governments have to yet to enforce their local crop zoning plans six years after the Provincial Development Council approved such policy, an agriculture official said.
MALAYBALAY CITY (MindaNews/17 May) – Farmers' groups have called on the Department of Environment and Natural Resources to cancel its lease agreements with big landed families in Bukidnon for alleged violations.
COTABATO CITY (MindaNews / April 11) – Unidentified armed men burned down Thursday the provincial office of the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) in Datu Odin Sinsuat town in Shariff Kabungsuan.
GENERAL SANTOS CITY (MindaNews / April 4) – Development planners in South Cotabato have endorsed a proposed P241-million project of the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) for the development of high-value crops and corn-based industries in the province.
TAMPILISAN, Zamboanga del Norte (MindaNews/03 April) – Farmer Isidro Catulong was only 14 when he first set foot in the forest reservation that belongs to Zamboanga del Norte Agricultural College (ZNAC), now Dr. Jose Rizal Memorial State College-Tampilisan Campus (JRMSC-TC).
SAN VICENTE, Sumilao, Bukidnon (MindaNews/30 March) – Jubilant farmers returned here a day after striking a deal with San Miguel Foods, Inc. (SMFI), ending a decade old struggle to win their land and eyeing to plant rice and corn as "soon as possible.”
MALAYBALAY CITY (MindaNews/29 March) – Bukidnon Bishop Honesto Pacana will lead a Sunday thanksgiving mass in Sumilao a day after the Sumilao farmers signed an agreement with San Miguel Corporation over the contested 144-hectare property.
DAVAO CITY (MindaNews/29 March) – Eleven years after going on hunger strike in Cagayan de Oro and the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) national office in Quezon City and three months after doing a 1,700, two-month “walk for justice, walk for land” from Sumilao in Bukidnon to Malacanang, the Sumilao farmers are signing today a Memorandum of Agreement with San Miguel Corporation that would give them a total of 144 hectares of land in Sumilao.
MALAYBALAY CITY (MindaNews / 28 March) – Negotiators haven't signed any agreement yet over the 144-hectare contested property in San Vicente, Sumilao town as heated debates marred their recent meetings, a counsel for the farmers said.
MALAYBALAY CITY (MindaNews/March 2) — Farmers from Sumilao, Bukidnon will stage another march in Manila starting March 3, this time around Malacañang, in a bid to force President Arroyo to finally grant their demand for the distribution of a 144-hectare land in their hometown which is now being developed by San Miguel Foods Inc. into an agro-industrial estate.
DAVAO CITY (MindaNews/14 January) — Agrarian Reform Secretary Nasser Pangandaman hopes for a win-win formula for both the Sumilao farmers and San Miguel Foods, Inc. (SMFI), claiming the case over the 144-hectare land could drag on for years.
Pangandaman said he foresees Malacanang denying the motion for reconsideration SMFI is filing on the President’s order revoking the conversion of the land from agro-industrial to agricultural.
SUMILAO, Bukidnon (MindaNews / January 11) – An irate woman farmer who joined the long walk from here to Malacanang in Manila dared President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to visit the controversial farm here.
"Maybe its time for the President to be the one to come to us?" Linda Ligmon, one of the Sumilao farmers who walked to Manila, told the general assembly of the group here Friday.
“It's always the farmers who go to Manila to appeal their case,” she said.
CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY (MindaNews/10 January) — President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo told two Catholic bishops here that she can’t issue a cease and desist order against San Miguel Foods, Inc. (SMFI) because she still has to refer the case of the Sumilao farmers to Presidential Legal Adviser Sergio Apostol.
SUMILAO, Bukidnon- Tears and colorful ribbons greeted the Sumilao farmers as they reunited with their families here Sunday night after more than two months of hiking across the country to the gates of Malacanang to reclaim their land.
DAVAO CITY (MindaNews/21 December) – Bukidnon Bishop Honesto Pacana is apprehensive about the “tenor and implications” of President Arroyo’s December 18 order on the contested 144-hectare land in Sumilao, Bukidnon, claiming the “unabated construction” of buildings by San Miguel Foods, Inc. in the area makes the President’s order “practically useless, to say the least.”
DAVAO CITY (MindaNews/18 Dec) — Malacañang today ordered that the controversial 144-hectare land in Sumilao be restored for agricultural use, thus cancelling the earlier conversion order exempting it from the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program.
But Sumilao farmers are not celebrating, and vowed to continue their struggle until they finally occupy the land.
MALAYBALAY CITY (MindaNews/16 December) – A day before marching to Malacañang for their second attempt for a dialogue with President Arroyo, farmers from Sumilao, Bukidnon joined this country's Catholic community in welcoming Christmas by celebrating the traditional simbang gabi (dawn mass) at the campout in front of the central office of the Department of Agrarian Reform
DAVAO CITY (MindaNews/15 December) — Farmers from Sumilao, Bukidnon who walked all the way from their hometown to Manila will march on Monday to Malacanang to dialogue with President Arroyo.
DAVAO CITY (Mindanews/12 Dec) — Three former agrarian reform secretaries have thrown in their support to the Sumilao farmers, urging the current leadership of the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) for an “immediate revocation” of the land conversion order issued by former Executive Secretary Ruben Torres over a decade ago.
DAVAO CITY (MindaNews/22 November) — Despite claims it is cash-strapped in as far as the distribution of more lands under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program is concerned, the Department of Agrarian Reform said it has funds for the planned relocation of its central office from Quezon City to Davao City.
DAVAO CITY (MindaNews/13 Nov) – Militant party-list groups have filed a “genuine agrarian reform bill” that would replace the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program of 1988 whose land distribution ends next year.
