FOOD-SECURITY advocates on Tuesday appealed to President Aquino to distribute land to landless farmers in Kidapawan, North Cotabato.

The Task Force Food Sovereignty (TFFS) issued the appeal on behalf of an indigenous people’s group claiming rights over a vast track of land in Kidapawan.

The group said the Department of Agriculture in Central Mindanao Agricultural Research Center (DA-CEMIARC) started razing some 20 hectares of farmland in barangay Padaton last week without prior consultation with an indigenous group that is claiming it as part of their ancestral domain.

Arze Glipo, TFFS lead convener, said they received reports from their partners in Mindanao that while most of the farmers were praying at a nearby mosque, three tractors entered the area and ploughed the land, uprooting the farmers’ crops – rice, corn, banana and vegetables.

The affected Maguindanaon farmers are members of the Association of Farmers for Peace and Development (AFPD), together with Manobos, Ilonggos and Sebuanos.

Members of the AFPD are claiming the 500-hectare land as their ancestral domain. They have been tilling the land since 1937.

The group expressed fear that the actions of the DA-CEMIARC may have serious repercussions that may eventually lead to violent confrontation.

“We were informed that officials of DA-CEMIARC, together with two squads of armed men, destroyed the farmers’ crops,” Glipo said.

“These armed men, some of whom were in police uniform, pointed their guns at the farmers who were prevented from stopping the tractors. The farmers knelt down and begged the DA officials and police to stop the destruction of the crops, but were answered only with gun barrels in their faces,” Glipo added.

“President Aquino, the DA national office and the Department of Agrarian Reform should intervene in this case. Punish those abusive regional officials and members of the police. Distribute the 500-hectare Lower Amas land to the farmers now,” she said.

Abby Pato, TFFS Mindanao coordinator, recalled that when the DA officials and armed men returned last Thursday, around 100 farmers barricaded the road. Local media practitioners were also there to cover the event.

“The DA regional officials as well as their paid warmongers retreated when they learned that some media practitioners were there. The farmers are ready to defend their rights,” he said.

Of the 500-hectare contested land, 186 hectares are being claimed by Maguindanaons. The 20-hectare land that was ploughed by the DA, led by its consultant Eduardo Solomon, is part of the land being claimed by Maguindanaons.

Pato alleged that in 1938, the late President Manuel L. Quezon declared the area as a reservation land through Presidential Decree 297.

The farmers continued their simple and peaceful life in the area.

However, he said when former dictator Ferdinand Marcos came into power and allowed militias to proliferate in Mindanao, violence erupted in the area from 1970 to 1976 resulting in a bloody massacre of 45 persons.