November 6, 2008 -NEGROS ORIENTAL --Farmer-beneficiaries and their families entered at around 5 a.m. the disputed 61-hectare former property of the Teves family in Barangay Caranoche, Sta. Catalina and Barangay Villareal, Bayawan City. They started putting up tents and cultivating a vacant portion of the lot. Villareal-Caranoche Farmers' Association (VillaCarFA) president  Rolando Flores said the entry of the FBs was an act of self-installation in view of repeated failure by the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) to install them in the property which he said they already owned since ten years ago by virtue of their certificates of landownership award (CLOAs) issued in 1997 and 1999. [photos from AKP-images/Buck Pago]   --TFM handout

  Bukidnon tribal group occupies expired ranch, calls on DENR to block former ranch lessee’s new application

Taking advantage of the planting season, indigenous peoples from Brgy. Panalsalan and Dagumbaan in the municipality of  Maramag, Bukidnon started to build their huts and plant food in the 520-hectare fertile land that used to be a cattle ranch of former Kibawe Municipal Mayor Ernesto Villalon.

To arrest the food shortage that hit their barangays,  a hundred members of the Panalsalan Dagumbaan Tribal Association (PADATA) planted fruit trees and corn inside Villalon ranch pending the approval of their Community-based Forest Management (CBFM) application for this 520-hectare area.