Health Economic with TAR

X. Agrarian Reform

Prepared by:

Kieth C. Seresula, RM, BSM

 History

• Land reform in the Philippines has long been a

contentious issue rooted in the Philippines’s Spanish
Colonial Period. Some efforts began during the
American Colonial Period with renewed efforts during
the Commonwealth, following independence, during
Martial Law and especially following the People Power
Revolution in 1986. The current law, the
Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program, was passed
following the revolution and recently extended until
2014
• Much like Mexico and other Spanish colonies in the Americas,
the Spanish settlement in the Philippines revolved around the
encomienda system of plantations, known as haciendas. As
the 19th Century progressed, industrialization and
liberalization of trade allowed these encomiendas to expand
their cash crops, establishing a strong sugar industry in the
Philippines on such islands and Panay and Negros.
 American Period
• In 1901 93% of the islands’ land area was held by the
government and William Howard Taft, Governor-General of
the Philippines, argued for a liberal policy so that a good
portion could be sold off to American investors.

• In the 1902 Land Act, set a limit of 16 hectares of land to be

sold or leased to American individuals and 1,024 hectares to
American corporations.[1] This and a downturn in the
investment environment discouraged the foreign-owned
plantations common in British Malaya, the Dutch East Indies,
and French Indochina.
• In 1904 the administration bought for $7.2 million the major
part of the friars’ holdings, amounting to some 166,000
hectares (410,000 acres), of which one-half was in the vicinity
of Manila. The land was eventually resold to Filipinos, some of
them tenants but the majority of them estate owners.
 Commonwealth Period
• During the American Colonial Period, tenant farmers
complained about the sharecropping system, as well as by the
dramatic increase in population which added economic
pressure to the tenant farmers’ families.As a result, an agrarian
reform program was initiated by the Commonwealth. However,
success of the program was hampered by ongoing clashes
between tenants and landowners.

– E.g., Sakdalista movement- which advocated tax reduction, land reforms,

the breakup of the large haciendas

The uprising, which occurred in Central Luzon in May, 1935, claimed about
hundred lives
 Rice Share Tenancy Act of 1933
• President Manuel L. Quezon implemented the Rice Share
Tenancy Act of 1933.
• Purpose: -To regulate the share-tenancy contracts by
establishing minimum standards.
-Primarily, the Act provided for better tenant-landlord
relationship,
-a 50–50 sharing of the crop,
-regulation of interest to 10% per agricultural year, and
-a safeguard against arbitrary dismissal by the landlord.

• The major flaw of this law was that it could be used only when
the majority of municipal councils in a province petitioned for it.
• Quezón ordered that the act be mandatory in all Central Luzon
provinces.However, contracts were good only for one year.

• In 1936, this Act was amended to get rid of its loophole, but the
landlords made its application relative and not absolute.
Consequently, it was never carried out in spite of its good
intentions. In fact, by 1939, thousands of peasants in Central
Luzon were being threatened with wholesale eviction.

• By the early 1940s, thousands of tenants in Central Luzon were

ejected from their farmlands and the rural conflict was more
acute than ever.
 Independence
• In 1946, much of the land was held by a small group of wealthy
landowners. There was much pressure on the democratically elected
government to redistribute the land. At the same time, many of the
democratically elected office holders were landowners themselves
or came from land-owning families.

• In 1946, shortly after his induction to Presidency, Manuel Roxas

proclaimed the Rice Share Tenancy Act of 1933 effective throughout
the country.

• Republic Act No. 1946 likewise known as the Tenant Act which
provided for a 70–30 sharing arrangements and regulated share-
tenancy contracts. It was passed to resolve the ongoing peasant
unrest in Central Luzon.
• As part of his Agrarian Reform agenda, President Elpidio Quirino
issued on October 23, 1950 Executive Order No. 355 which
replaced the National Land Settlement Administration with Land
Settlement Development Corporation (LASEDECO) which takes
over the responsibilities of the Agricultural Machinery Equipment
Corporation and the Rice and Corn Production Administration.

• President Ramon Magsaysay enacted the following laws as part

of his Agrarian Reform Program:

-Republic Act No. 1160 of 1954 – Abolished the LASEDECO and

established the National Resettlement and Rehabilitation
Administration (NARRA) to resettle dissidents and landless farmers.
• Republic Act No. 1199 (Agricultural Tenancy Act of 1954) –
Governed the relationship between landowners and tenant farmers
by organizing share tenancy and leasehold system. The law provided
the security of tenure of tenants. It also created the Court of
Agrarian Relations.

• Republic Act No. 1400 (Land Reform Act of 1955) – Created the Land
Tenure Administration (LTA) which was responsible for the
acquisition and distribution of large tenanted rice and corn lands
over 200 hectares for individuals and 600 hectares for corporations.

• Republic Act No. 821 (Creation of Agricultural Credit Cooperative

Financing Administration) – Provided small farmers and share
tenants loans with low interest rates of six to eight percent.
 Macapagal Administration
The Agricultural Land Reform Code (RA 3844) was a major
Philippine land reform law enacted in 1963 under President
Diosdado Macapagal.

The code declared that it was State policy

1. To establish owner-cultivatorship and the economic family-size
farm as the basis of Philippine agriculture and, as a
consequence, divert landlord capital in agriculture to industrial
development;

2. To achieve a dignified existence for the small farmers free from

pernicious institutional restraints and practices;
3. To create a truly viable social and economic structure in agriculture
conducive to greater productivity and higher farm incomes;

4. To apply all labor laws equally and without discrimination to both

industrial and agricultural wage earners;

5. To provide a more vigorous and systematic land resettlement

program and public land distribution; and

6. To make the small farmers more independent, self reliant and

responsible citizens, and a source of genuine strength in our
democratic society.
In pursuance of those policies, established the following:

1. An agricultural leasehold system to replace all existing share

tenancy systems in agriculture;
2. A declaration of rights for agricultural labor;
3. An authority for the acquisition and equitable distribution of
agricultural land;
4. An institution to finance the acquisition and distribution of
agricultural land;
5. A machinery to extend credit and similar assistance to agriculture;
6. A machinery to provide marketing, management, and other
technical services to agriculture;
7. A unified administration for formulating and implementing
projects of land reform;

8. An expanded program of land capability survey, classification,

and registration; and

9. A judicial system to decide issues arising under this Code and

other related laws and regulations.
 Marcos Administration

• On September 10, 1971, President Ferdinand E. Marcos signed the Code

of Agrarian Reform of the Philippines into law which established the
Department of Agrarian Reform, effectively replacing the Land Authority.

• In 1978, the DAR was renamed the Ministry of Agrarian Reform.

• On July 26, 1987, following the People Power Revolution, the

department was re-organized through Executive Order (EO) No. 129-A.

• In 1988, the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law created the

Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program which is also known as CARP.
 Corazon Aquino Administration
• On January 22, 1987, less than a month before the ratification
of the 1987 Constitution, agrarian workers and farmers
marched to the historic Mendiola Street near the Malacañan
Palace to demand genuine land reform from Aquino’s
administration. However, the march turned violent when
Marine forces fired at farmers who tried to go beyond the
designated demarcation line set by the police. As a result, 12
farmers were killed and 19 were injured in this incident now
known as the Mendiola Massacre.

• President Aquino issued Presidential Proclamation 131 and

Executive Order 229 on July 22, 1987, which outlined her land
reform program, which included sugar lands.
• In 1988, with the backing of Aquino, the new Congress of the
Philippines passed Republic Act No. 6657, more popularly known
as the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law.”

• The law paved the way for the redistribution of agricultural lands
to tenant-farmers from landowners, who were paid in exchange
by the government through just compensation but were also
allowed to retain not more than five hectares of land.

• Despite the flaws in the law, the Supreme Court upheld its
constitutionality in 1989, declaring that the implementation of
the comprehensive agrarian reform program (CARP) provided by
the said law, was “a revolutionary kind of expropriation.”[
• Despite the implementation of CARP, Aquino was not spared
from the controversies that eventually centered on Hacienda
Luisita, a 6,453-hectare estate located in the Province of Tarlac,
which she, together with her siblings inherited from her father
Jose Cojuangco (Don Pepe).

• The arrangement remained in force until 2006, when the

Department of Agrarian Reform revoked the stock distribution
scheme adopted in Hacienda Luisita, and ordered instead the
redistribution of a large portion of the property to the tenant-
farmers. The Department stepped into the controversy when in
2004, violence erupted over the retrenchment of workers in the
Hacienda, eventually leaving seven people dead.
 Ramos administration
• President Fidel V. Ramos speeded the implementation of the
Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) of former
President Corazon Aquino in order to meet the ten-year time
frame.
• In 1992, the government acquired and distributed 382 hectares of
land with nearly a quarter of a million farmer-beneficiaries. This
constituted 41% of all land titles distributed by the Department of
Agrarian Reform (DAR) during the last thirty years. But by the end
of 1996, the DAR had distributed only 58.25% of the total area it
was supposed to cover.
• From January to December 1997, the DAR distributed 206,612
hectares. That year, since 1987, the DAR had distributed a total of
2.66 million hectares which benefited almost 1.8 million tenant-
farmers
• One major problem that the Ramos administration faced was
the lack of funds to support and implement the program.

• The Php50 million, allotted by R.A. No. 6657 to finance the

CARP from 1988 to 1998, was no longer sufficient to support
the program.

• To address this problem, Ramos signed R.A. No. 8532 to

amend the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law (CARL) which
further strengthened the CARP by extending the program to
another ten years.[5] Ramos signed this law on February 23,
1998 - a few months before the end of Ramos’ term.
 Arroyo administration

• On September 27, 2004, President Gloria Macapagal- Arroyo,

signed Executive Order No. 364, and the Department of
Agrarian Reform was renamed to Department of Land Reform.

• This EO also broadened the scope of the department, making

it responsible for all land reform in the country.

• It also placed the Philippine Commission on Urban Poor

(PCUP) under its supervision and control. Recognition of the
ownership of ancestral domain by indigenous peoples also
became the responsibility of this new department, under the
National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP).
• On August 23, 2005, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo signed
Executive Order No. 456 and renamed the Department of Land
Reform back to Department of Agrarian Reform, since “the
Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law goes beyond just land
reform but includes the totality of all factors and support services
designed to lift the economic status of the beneficiaries.

• When President Noynoy Aquino took office, there was a renewed

push to compete the agrarian reform. The Department of
Agrarian Reform adopted a goal of distributed all CARP-eligible
land by the end of Pres. Aquino’s term in 2016.[15] As of June
2013, 694,181 hectares remained to be distributed, according to
DAR.
 Comprehensive Agrarian
ReformProgram
• The Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program is the current
law under which land reform is conducted. Large land-
holdings are broken up and distributed to farmers and
workers on that particular hacienda.

• Each farmer is giving a “certificates of land ownership award”

or CLOA for their new property.[15] Under the law, a
landowner can only retain 5 hectares, regardless of the size of
the hacienda.[15] Conflict can arise between previous
landowners and “beneficiaries” and between competing
farmers’ groups that have conflicting claims
• In December 2008, CARP expired and the following
year CARPer was passed. CARPer stands for
“Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program Extension
with Reforms”.

• CARPer expires in 2014.