PSAU, An Outstanding Public University In Pampanga, To Lose 310 Hectares?

310 hectares of public land in Pampanga currently under the jurisdiction of the Pampanga State Agricultural University (PSAU) are in an intellectual managerial deadlock, having to choose between 2 agrarian schemes:

ü Agrarian Ownership? The Department of Agrarian Reform (the DAR) distributes the lands to new individual farmers. 

ü Agrarian Stewardship? PSAU retains formal stewardship with profit sharing with countless landless farmers in such projects as: agroforestry, bamboo, coconut, coffee, genebank forestry, goat, mixed orchard, mulberry, silvipasture, and tamarind production.

I think like that with the news story by William L Beltran, “PSAU Appeals Retention Of CARP-Able Landholding, Offers Stewardship[1]” (26 March 2021, PIA.gov.ph). I can feel the anguish of PSAU’s President Honorio Soriano Jr. The 376 hectares of land owned and titled to PSAU have been, according to Mr Beltran, “validated by (the DAR) as coverable under the Land Reform Program of the government.”

If the DAR implements the agrarian law, in this case it will be against Education, Science, and Agrarian Development!

Education & Science, because PSAU is using those 376 ha for agricultural education, and field-based and earth science researches.

Agrarian Development, because PSAU has stewardship arrangements with the farmers; e.g., there is an ongoing stewardship agreement with 30 informal settler families within PSAU property. Mr Soriano says:

We organized them as coffee farmers under stewardship agreement. We succeeded in making them as our partners and they are happy. 70 percent of the income goes to the farmers, 30 percent goes to the university. We also gave scholarships to their children taking up agriculture, with the condition of them not returning to their old practice of producing charcoal that inflicts harm on our environment.

You provide people the opportunity to earn honest money, and at the same time prevent the destruction of the University’s forest – what more do you want?!

Not only that. Mr Beltran says:

This particular project earned for PSAU an award as one of the 10 best government practices in 2020 because of the social implication of the program.

Mr Soriano says:

This is what we are trying to replicate in other areas occupied by informal settlers, because we are partnering with the Department of Agriculture [DA] for the establishment of an agro-industrial hub, putting up nurseries and greenhouses, and we will engage the informal settlers as our partners.

From what I know of the awareness, aims, assistances and accomplishments of the DA under Secretary of Agriculture William Dar, that agro-industrial hub will benefit thousands of farmer families in Pampanga and surrounding provinces. The good earth multiplies.

Meanwhile, Mr Soriano says, there is PSAU’s Land Use Development and Infrastructure Plan, a 25-year masterplan. This has been duly approved by PSAU’s Board of Regents, crafted in consonance with the Magalang Comprehensive Land Use Plan, Megalopolis Plan of Pampanga, and the Regional Development Plan. (Magalang is the town where PSAU is centrally located.)

So, it’s a choice between Agrarian Ownership and Agrarian Stewardship – I hope PRRD will intervene and choose Stewardship. For the sake of state universities and landless families!@517


[1]https://pia.gov.ph/news/articles/1070749?fbclid=IwAR0NB-F43FMaildUA6-EstCuHIbULkyqUkwYsJ26-gZ5geqTGrdJYy4ItG4

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