LANDS DEVOTED TO commercial livestock, poultry, and swine-raising are classified as industrial and, therefore, excluded from agrarian reform coverage.
     Thus held the Supreme Court in a decision penned by Justice Romeo J. Callejo, Sr. partially granting the petition for certiorari filed by the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR). The SC affirmed the decision of the Court of Appeals (CA) which exempted a 349.9996-hectare land in San Narciso, Quezon owned by respondent Vicente K. Uy from the coverage of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law (CARL) but reversed and set aside a similar exemption given by the CA to a 22.2639-hectare parcel of land also owned by Uy for lack of evidence showing that the property had been investigated by DAR.
     The Court reiterated the unconstitutionality of DAR Administrative Order (AO) No. 9 which sought to “regulate livestock farms by including them in the coverage of agrarian reform and prescribing a maximum retention limit for their ownership.”
     The Court also said that a perusal of the deliberations of the 1986 Constitutional Commission confirms the intent to exclude from agrarian reform all lands used exclusively for livestock, swine, and poultry-raising which are classified as “industrial” activities.(DAR v. Uy, GR No. 169277, February 9, 2007)