Lapanday sees land dispute dampening exports
A LAND dispute involving farmland planted with bananas in Davao is expected to disrupt the country’s export performance, as agrarian reform beneficiaries claiming the land undermine international trading agreements.
Lapanday Food Corp. ( LFC) chief financial officer Manolito B. Dagatan said that with farmers continuing to destroy crops in some occupied parts of the farm, the company may not fulfill its export contracts.
“When you are an exporter, you are expected to deliver a certain quantity because that is the supply agreement. Surely ( the dispute) affects our credibility in the export market,” said Mr. Dagatan in a news conference yesterday in Quezon City.
LFC spokesperson Hernani P. Geronimo said the quality of the company’s bananas could be compromised by an improper growing environment.
“These are prized trees. There are not ordinary trees. They are supposed to be sustained, maintained, and nurtured because there’s a certain standard of fruit that must come out of this. If you do not do anything clear in the first week, second week, or third week, then at the end of nine months, the fruit is no longer perfect or saleable. It will need to be disposed of. When it is discarded, what about the inputs, the investment, what about the effort and resources (put into the planting)” said Mr. Geronimo.
He added that to date, about P55 million has been lost after the farmers started occupying and destroying some parts of the farm.
Mr. Geronimo said that due to this, LFC has declined to fifthlargest cavendish banana exporter in the country, from second previously.
Data from the Philippine Statistics Authority show that from P51 billion worth of exports in 2014, the banana sector dropped to P30.4 billion in 2015, falling further to P29.6 billion in 2016.
A breakaway group from the Hijo Employees Agrarian Reform Beneficiaries Cooperative-1 ( HEARBCO-1) called Madaum Agrarian Reform Beneficiaries Association, Inc. (MARBAI) has contested control of the banana farm by occupying the land and destroying crops after claiming to be disadvantaged by the debt taken on as a result of the contract entered into by the cooperative with LFC.
Lapanday also downplayed claims that they were “land-grabbers,” saying that they never owned the land as they only managed it.
LFC has a contract with HEARBCO-1 — which owns the 145-hectare farm — under which it purchases all bananas grown there.
Meanwhile, Agrarian Reform Secretary Rafael V. Mariano claimed that his department holds sole authority to resolve agrarian disputes, making his writ to install the farmers on the disputed Davao land valid despite a lower court’s final and executory decision to uphold a compromise settlement.
In 2011, HEARBCO- 1 and LFC agreed to a debt settlement worth P800 million from P1 billion previously. The Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) ordered in 2016 that the minority faction MARBAI workers be reinstated.
“The Regional Trial Court, or the Court of Appeals cannot dispute those that are agrarian in nature. Only DAR has jurisdiction on these cases,” said Mr. Mariano in a separate press conference yesterday at the DAR headquarters in Quezon City.