The House of Representatives’
Appropriations Committee has approved the provision for funding of a full
insurance coverage for all qualified Agrarian Reform Beneficiaries (ARBs) of
the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP). Under the Bill, the Department
of Agrarian Reform (DAR) and the Department of Agriculture (DA) are required to
include in their agencies’ programs the operational requirements for the
implementation of the ARB insurance program. The House Committee on Agrarian Reform has already endorsed the Bill for plenary approval.
The ARB insurance intends to
provide crop insurance protection covering about 224,000 ARBs or members of their farming households involving
some 330,000 hectares of agricultural land
and raising some 30,700 farm animals. The bill would provide ARBs with
the insurance protection against compensable losses arising from natural
calamities, plant diseases, and pest infestations of their crops and those
affecting their livestock and farm machineries.
Specifically, compensable
losses from which ARBs are insured include natural calamities such as typhoon,
flood, drought, earthquake, volcanic eruption, frost, and other destructive
natural phenomena such as heat and hot wind. These also include plant diseases
caused by pathogens, bacteria, fungi, viruses, virus-like pathogens and other
similar foreign bodies, pest infestations caused by nematodes, insects, mites
and spiders, millipedes and centipedes, symphylans, slugs and snails, among
others, and loss of life and/or injury to the qualified ARB from accident or
any other causes.
The insurance shall cover
crops such as: palay; corn; sugarcane; high-value crops as defined in Section 4
(b) of RA No. 9700, otherwise known as the “High-Value Crops Development Act of
1995.” Also covered are coconut; tobacco; aquaculture; livestock; and non-crop
agricultural assets.
The Bill would complement
the already existing agricultural insurance for ARBs presently participating in
the agrarian reform production credit program (APCP) and the credit assistance
programs for program beneficiaries development in the financing programs
implemented by the DA, DAR, Land Bank which cover all the regular insurance as
implemented by the PCIC.
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| Insured ARB in Solana, Cagayan receives indemnification from typhoon damage in Solana, Cagayan. |
