An Act to Provide for a Five-Year Soil Survey and Conservation Program

REPUBLIC ACT No. 3082

An Act to Provide for a Five-Year Soil Survey and Conservation Program

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the Philippine Congress Assembled:

Section 1. This Act shall be known as the "Five-year Soil Survey and Conservation Act."

Section 2. Statement of Policy. -It is the policy of the State to survey, protect and conserve soil and promote the wise utilization of soil and water at the earliest possible time in order to safeguard the usefulness of those two vital resources and thereby insure stable farm production which is basic to our economy and the general well-being of our people.

Section 3. Objectives. -The program contemplated in this Act shall accomplish the following objectives in five years:

Section 4. Implementing Agencies. -The program shall be planned and executed by the Bureau of Soils. The Secretary of Agriculture and Natural Resources shall, if necessary, require the assistance of any agency under him to help in implementing are provisions of this Act.

Section 5. Target areas of the project. -The extent of operation under the provisions of this Act shall include agricultural lands actually under cultivation and all other agricultural lands intended to be under cultivation throughout the Philippines.

Section 6. Operations. -The implementation aspects of this program shall fall under three specific activities, to wit:

Section 7. There shall be created, under the supervision and control of the Director of Soils, teams to implement the soil survey program envisioned in this Act, for Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao. The composition of each team shall be determined by the Director of Soils, the personnel to be composed of persons who can best accomplish the objective of the soil survey program indicated herein and to include laboratory technicians competent to analyze soil samples.

The Director of Soils may, in his discretion, create a special section in the main office of the Bureau to coordinate the work in the field.

Field teams to promote conservation and soil erosion control shall likewise be created by the Director of Soils whenever a need therefor arises.

Section 8. Fund. -Out any funds in the National Treasury not otherwise appropriated, the sum of one million pesos is hereby appropriated annually for a period of five years, beginning the fiscal year nineteen hundred and sixty-two, to carry out the provisions of this Act.

Section 9. Budget. -The Director of Soils shall submit a budget each year for the five-year program, which shall be subject to the approval of the Secretary of Agriculture and Natural Resources, for the financing of the five-year program and shall make adjustments on the budget for each year following the first year of its implementation on the basis of problems encountered in its operations subject to the approval of the said Secretary.

Section 10. This Act shall take effect on January 1, 1962.

Approved: June 17, 1961.