The Existing Land Use and Land Use Trends Present Land Use and Land Use Shifts
The present General Land Use Plan of Katipunan covers the entire uses of the land within the municipality. For the last ten years, the municipality’s land use covers has four (4) major uses namely: built-up area, agricultural lands, forest lands and agri-industrial. The total area of the municipality is 24,412 hectares which is roughly four (4) percent of the Zamboanga del Norte’s land area (Table 3). The vegetative cover had changed to a little extent in particular the lowlands for some of the irrigated lands and agricultural lands are converted to residential and other land uses especially along the national highways and major roads. In the uplands the predominant vegetative cover are shrubs and grasses with some patches of mangoes, coconuts and corn. Vacant lands are also noticeable in almost all barangays except in the coastal barangays.
Agricultural Areas
Basically an agricultural municipality, Katipunan devoted 14,525.93 hectares of the 24,412 hectares of alienable and disposable lands to agricultural use. This represents more than 50% or 59.50% of the total land area of the municipality. More than three fourth (82%) are planted to coconut crops and 18 percent are planted to temporary crops. The rest are planted with permanent and annual crops. coffee, cacao and other fruit tress such as mango, lanzones, jackfruit, etc. Others permanent meadows and pastures, lands covered with forest growth and lands lying idle.Being the dominant land use of the municipality, food security shall continue to be a primary consideration in the utilization of prime agricultural lands within sustainable limits so as not to adversely affect agricultural productivity, but the challenge remains on the updating of SAFDZs as basis for identifying investment areas as well as the promotion of environment-friendly and sustainable production systems, such as organic agriculture and farming systems approach, good agriculture/aquaculture practices and community-based farm resource management.
Forestland Areas
About 9,458.07 hectares or 39% of the total land area of Katipunan are forestlands. These include the timberland areas logged-over or non-commercial forest and the of the municipality adjacent to the municipality of Pres. Manuel A. Roxas and Sergio Osmeña, Sr. Approximately 973 hectares of this forest are classified as alienable and disposable lands. These are either kaingin or cultivated with agricultural crops.
Built-up Areas
Built-up areas in the municipality have total of three hundred six hectares (306 has.) more or less comprising only 1.25% of the total land area of the municipality. This includes the built-up areas within the two urban barangays of Uno and Dos and the settlement clusters in the rural barangays.
Agri-Industrial Areas
The municipality’s agri-industrial area occupies 122 hectares or less than 1% of the total land uses. Most of these local agri-industriesare dominated by rice mills which are non-pollutive/hazardous.
Table 3
Existing General Land Use Distribution of Katipunan, Zamboanga del Norte
| Land Use Category | Land Area Has) | Percent (%) to Total) |
| General Land Use | 24,412 | 100 |
| Built-up | 306 | 1.25 |
| a. Urban | 137.70 | – |
| b. Rural | 168.30 | – |
| Agriculture | 14,525.93 | 59.50 |
| Forest | 9,458.07 | 38.74 |
| Agro-Industrial | 122 | 0.50 |
Source: Municipal Planning and Development Office