MANILA, Philippines?The Philippines has a total land area of 30 million hectares, of which 13 million are devoted to agriculture (food grains like corn and rice; food crops like coconut and sugarcane; and nonfood crops like livestock production and cutflower).

Rice, the staple food to 80 percent of Filipinos, generally use 3.31 million hectares.

It will be recalled that a few months back, President Macapagal-Arroyo and later, the Department of Agrarian Reform suspended for two years the processing and approval of all land conversion applications for rice lands in the face of feared shortages in rice supply, purportedly because of declining farm lands due to conversion into residential subdivisions, golf courses, tourism and other uses.

So used to seeing

?Perhaps people have been so used to seeing agricultural lands located around the main urban and high population density areas being converted into subdivisions that a lot of people thought a huge portion of the country?s agricultural land is being lost to housing developments,? said Subdivision and Housing Developers Association national president Eduardo Alunan.

This is not true according to Alunan who explained that records would show that since 1975, only about 40,000 hectares were converted to housing, commercial and industrial use.

?This is equivalent to just one-third of one percent of the 13 million hectares of agricultural lands of the country,? he reported. ?This fact, alone indicates that lands converted for housing, or even for commercial and industrial uses hardly had any bearing on the overall rice production standing of our country.?

Surpass

PA Alvarez Properties and Development Corp. Chair Romarico Alvarez agreed adding that while the country?s land conversion applications is put on hold, the number of families with no decent shelter will increase in number from between 200,000 and 600,000 a year, surpassing the 3 million mark.

?It?s sad because right now, we still have a backlog of 3.8 million housing units, and is expected to further grow to 4.5 million within 20 years,? Alvarez said.

He believes a review of the moratorium is needed and that the developer?s input should also be considered.

Capacity to address

?Developers in the small- and medium-scale category provides the most number of housing units per project. Since the price is within the reach of most Filipino families, we have the capacity to address the housing backlog at a much shorter time,? said Alvarez citing examples two of his projects, Laguna Buenavista Executive Homes in Calamba, which offers 1,300 units and St. Joseph Village 10 in San Pedro, whose three phases total 2,700 units.

He added that in Laguna, where a huge portion of its projects are located, a huge part of the land is still devoted to agriculture and developers like PA Alvarez are careful in selecting areas for development.

?We only need to strike a balance between ample food supply and addressing the housing needs. Besides the national housing agencies and offices, including the local authorities have more than enough laws and regulation to properly govern the land conversion,? Alvarez said.