An Act Reorganizing the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, and Agrarian Reform, Renaming It to Ministry of Agriculture, Adjusting Its Units, Appropriating Funds Therefor, and for Other Purposes

This is the third part of the package and the one that does the subtraction. The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Agrarian Reform is renamed the Ministry of Agriculture and reorganised, structurally and functionally, around the narrower mandate that remains once agrarian reform and fisheries have been lifted out by the companion bills.

The new mandate is production economics: promoting agricultural development by providing the policy framework, public investments and support services needed for domestic and export-oriented business. A Minister and Deputy Minister appointed by the Chief Minister head it, with Provincial and City Agricultural Offices beneath.

Section 10 attaches the Philippine Coconut Authority in the BARMM to the ministry — the companion fisheries bill makes the equivalent move with the Philippine Fisheries Development Authority.

The transition mechanics are identical in all 3 and unusually careful for a reorganisation. The relevant MAFAR units and the corresponding Office of the Bangsamoro Director-General are abolished, with their powers, funds, appropriations, records, equipment, property and personnel transferred across. The whole transfer — including the new internal structure, staffing pattern, operating system and revised budget — must be completed within 6 months, and existing staff hold their posts in holdover capacity until new appointments issue. In filling the new positions, preference goes to personnel of the abolished office, provided they meet Civil Service qualification standards, with seniority breaking ties between equally qualified candidates.

The bill's premise is that a ministry carrying 3 mandates carries none of them well, and that agriculture defined narrowly — inputs, extension, investment, market access — is a coherent portfolio in a way that agriculture plus fisheries plus land adjudication is not.

Attaching the Philippine Coconut Authority points at what the narrower ministry is for. Coconut is among the region's major crops and the national authority's regional operations sit outside regional control; bringing them in is the kind of thing an agriculture ministry with a single subject has the capacity to pursue.

This bill only makes sense alongside the other 2, and that is the package's structural weakness. Bill 15 renames MAFAR the Ministry of Agriculture and reorganises it around a mandate that assumes agrarian reform and fisheries have gone elsewhere — but if Bill 11 and Bill 12 do not pass, this bill strips the ministry's name of 2 functions it still performs. Three bills that must move together, filed as 3 separate measures, is a drafting choice that gives a committee 3 chances to break the design, and all 3 have now sat at Committee Stage since 2022.

The reorganisation is also the only 1 of the 3 that abolishes offices without creating a new institution to receive them, which makes its transition provision the most delicate. Existing personnel hold over at a ministry that has been renamed under them, waiting on a staffing pattern the finance ministry must approve, with preference for the abolished office's staff and seniority as the tiebreaker. Six months is a short window for that, and the bill's own cross-references suggest the drafting was not finished: Section 13 refers to "the abolition of offices as specified in Section 13", which is Section 13 itself, when the abolition is in Section 11.

What the package as a whole would settle, if it moved, is a question the region has not answered: whether agriculture, fisheries and land are 1 subject or three. The Organic Law gives the region the power to organise its own bureaucracy, and 3 bills filed on 1 day in 2022 are the only attempt in this registry to use it on the ministry that touches most people's livelihoods.

These 3 bills are one proposal filed as three. MP Mawallil lodged Bill No. 11, Bill No. 12 and Bill No. 15 together in September 2022, and read in sequence they take the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Agrarian Reform apart: Bill 11 lifts agrarian reform into a ministry of its own, Bill 12 does the same for fisheries and aquatic resources, and Bill 15 renames what is left the Ministry of Agriculture and reorganises it around that narrower mandate. Each bill draws its start-up money from the corresponding line in MAFAR's existing appropriation, so the package is designed to be budget-neutral at the point of separation. All 3 remain at Second Reading, Committee Stage; MAFAR is still 1 ministry.