House passes bill mandating full insurance coverage for ARBS

TO help farmers bounce back from natural disasters, the House of Representatives has endorsed for Senate approval a measure that mandates full insurance coverage for farmer-beneficiaries of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP).

Lawmakers late Tuesday approved on third and final reading House Bill (HB) 6680 to provide immediate financial assistance to agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBS) in the event of natural disasters to make their losses “more bearable.”

“This measure, if enacted into law, is envisioned to help farmers recover from the adverse effects of circumstances that are beyond their control, such as natural calamities, the infestation of plant diseases and pests, or even death and injury of the beneficiary,” House Speaker Martin G. Romualdez said.

“This is part of our legislative commitment to ensure food security by helping the hands that feed the nation—our farmers—and make sure they bounce back from any event that may affect their ability to produce the food we have on our tables.”

HB 6680 amends Republic Act (RA) 6657, as Amended by RA 9700, otherwise known as the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law of 1988.

Under the approved bill, full insurance coverage is granted to all qualified agrarian reform beneficiaries who are actually tilling the land for compensable losses that are also defined under the measure.

HB 6680 also defined who the qualified agrarian reform beneficiaries are, and they are those mentioned in Section 3(b) of RA 10000, otherwise known as the “Agri-agra Reform Credit Act of 2009.”

Compensable losses, meanwhile, include those resulting from:

■ Natural calamities such as typhoon, flood, drought, earthquake, volcanic eruption, frost, and other destructive natural phenomena such as heat and hot wind;

■ Plant diseases caused by pathogens, bacteria, fungi, viruses, viruslike pathogens, and other similar foreign bodies;

■ Pest infestations caused by nematodes, insects, mites and spiders, millipedes and centipedes, symphylans, slugs and snails, sow bugs and pillbugs, parasitic higher plants, and other parasites; and

■ Loss of life or injury to the qualified agrarian reform beneficiary due to accident or any of the aforementioned causes.

For purposes of insurance coverage, these crops and other farming and fishery produce are covered under the measure: palay, corn, sugarcane, high-value crops as defined in Section 4(b) of RA 7900 or the High-value Crops Development Act of 1995, coconut, tobacco; crops or stocks in fisheries farms; livestock; and non-crop agricultural assets used in actual farming and reported to and certified by the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR).

The measure also provides penalties for farmer-beneficiaries who may misuse or divert the financial aid granted under the measure, including forfeiture of the land transferred to him or her, without prejudice to criminal prosecution.

Upon enactment into law, the measure mandates the Secretaries of the Department of Agriculture and DAR to include the operationalization of the insurance coverage in their respective programs.

The bill creates a Congressional Oversight Committee for the Full Insurance Coverage of Agrarian Reform Beneficiaries (COCFICARB). It will be composed of the Chairperson of the Committee on Agrarian Reform of the House of Representatives and the Chairperson of the Committee on Agriculture, Food and Agrarian Reform of the Senate of the Philippines

AGRI Party-list Rep. Wilbert T. Lee lauded the impending passage of HB 6680, which aims to ease the impact of natural calamities on affected agrarian reform beneficiaries providing them with full insurance coverage.

“This is a big win for agrarian reform beneficiaries, especially those who live in areas that are becoming more and more vulnerable to the effects of climate change,” Lee said.

“This measure is crucial for our food security efforts because we give farmers the chance to recover from the calamities that now occur more frequently.”