Around 17,000 hectares of agricultural land in Davao City are already reclassified into non-agricultural use, an executive of the Davao City Planning and Development Office (CPDO) said.
Under the Local Government Code of 1991, the reclassification for highly urbanized city “limits to a maximum of the percentage of the total agricultural land of a city to fifteen percent (15%).”
“We have already reclassified around seven percent as a result of the 2013 Zoning Ordinance. We still have around eight percent room for reclassification. That is still big,” Ivan Cortez told TIMES on Friday.
In his calculation, there are still approximately 19,000 hectares of agricultural land available for reclassification.
In highly urbanized areas like Davao City, agricultural reclassification limit can be expanded beyond 15 percent, said Cortez. However, there will more parameters to consider and it will be a long process.
In fact, Davao City has 46% of agricultural land in its total land area of 244,000 hectares.
According to Cortez, reclassified areas were mostly used for subdivision projects owned by private land developers. “The reclassification or the zoning process as a whole is really about finding the right balance between the demand and contrasting interest of the land,” Cortez said.
As of now, the CPDO has not yet recorded any approved reclassification request since they started receiving applications last year. The office only began receiving applications in 2018 after they stopped in 2013 because of the amendments in the zoning ordinance.
