In a joint position paper, the United Broiler Raisers Association and the National Egg Board said concerns on lack of security in farm tenure slowed down the flow of investments into the sector.

“At present, there is no definitive land use plan, whether national or local,” the position paper said.

It cited a case in which poultry farms were damaged or destroyed by typhoon “Milenyo” late last year. “The farms were no longer granted permits by local governments to rebuild their structures,” it said. “They were told that their locations were not agricultural anymore.”

The poultry groups also said in the paper that a trend toward reclassifying agricultural lands was the reason most poultry and livestock farmers were wary of programs to build farm-to-market roads, “because they just become subdivision-to-highway roads.”