Agrarian reform hopefully will raise up the seven million families below the poverty line. The President intimates her ambition to increase agricultural productivity, improve rural incomes and make agriculture the spearhead of economic development. Today marks the passage of one year since I promulgated the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program setting the aim of liberating the tremendous potential wealth of Philippine agriculture by giving the vast body of our people a real and rightful stake in the land.
But it must seem an eternity to those who have waited for decades, to a class that has suffered for centuries, for the promise of the soil to come true.
The process of change in a democracy is not an easy one. The move has been slow and difficult from aspiration to articulation in the Constitution, to the enabling act in my executive order and in a law in Congress. After that comes the even more grinding process of implementation in the context of a country strapped for resources, short of efficiency in the various departments of government, and riven still by competing interests on the land.
The reform laws now on the books were a significant and essential step, but the journey is only the beginning. The multiplier effect of agricultural development through agrarian reform helps radiate economic activity from the farm to other sectors of our economy.
The initial impulse of an increase in the incomes of agrarian reform beneficiaries gets communicated throughout the economy. Emancipation from poverty. Economic self-sufficiency. Enhancement and nourishment of self-esteem. These are the blessings that 22 years ago President Aquino projected the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program to give to agrarian reform beneficiaries.
To a respectable degree, these have happened. Other features of the program include tenancy regulation and voluntary land sharing and corporate stock sharing as alternative schemes to land reform. It may have contrasting features compared to past land reforms; however it still had flaws in it. Hence, the Aquino government drafted Executive Order No. It detailed the mechanics of land registration, private land acquisition and the compensation procedures to land owners.
It also specified the composition and functions of the governing entities, which will coordinate and supervise the implementation of the program.
The land reform issues such as the retention limit and priority areas were left for the Congress to define. Both Houses produced their own agrarian bills. These two bills later on mirrored the contrasting interests of both Houses. While the landlord-dominated Lower House reflected the interests of landowners, the urban-based Senators emphasized the need for a land reform to attain economic development. These disputes and debates and the fact that there is diversity among the landowners themselves when it comes to land reform measures have paved the way for them to compromise.
It is within this context that the CARL was put into law. As mentioned earlier, the CARP is so far the most comprehensive agrarian reform program ever formulated.
Unlike that of PD 27, which include only rice and corn lands, CARP covers all private and public agricultural lands regardless of commodity produced and tenurial status of the tiller including other lands of the public domain suitable for agriculture.
CARP recognizes as beneficiaries of the agrarian reform not only farmers but all workers in the land given that they are landless and willing to cultivate the land.
The program used variable retention limits: seven hectares for rice and corn lands, five hectares for non-rice and non-corn lands, and three hectares for each of the heirs, 15 years old and above, of the landowner given they are actually cultivating or managing the land. Aside from land acquisition and distribution, which is the very essence of CARP, it also provides for the delivery of support services such as rural development projects, human resources development activities and infrastructure facilities.
It also ensures the tenurial security of farmers and farm workers by giving options like leasehold arrangement, stock distribution option, and production and profit sharing scheme.
It also provides legal assistance to beneficiaries to help resolve agrarian disputes. The CARP has been generally able to attain its land distribution target for the year For that same period, a total of , landless tenants and farm workers became legitimate recipients of either land titles or free patents and support services.
CARP under the administration of Aquino was not successful; in fact it only accomplished It was said that President Aquino was the first landlord to evade CARP on such a grand scale and created a higly negative atmosphere for agrarian reform. Other negative factors during her administration were; political instability, corruption scandals related to land reform, and the decision of autonomous peasant organizations and NGOs to campaign against CARP.
Land Reform under the Ramos Administration. The agrarian reform policies of the Ramos administration focused on accelerating the direct land transfer and non-land transfer programs through adopting more rational and simpler operating procedures and a fair, expeditious and inexpensive settlement of agrarian disputes.
It focused in the adoption of a fair land valuation formula and prompt payment of just compensation to encourage landowners to cooperate and support agrarian reform. The administration also encouraged the development of alternative schemes of landowner compensation to motivate them to invest in rural-based industries that have strong linkages with agriculture.
It also adopted a progressive agricultural land tax to encourage smaller landholdings among large landowners, a land conversion tax to discourage land conversion and idle land tax to encourage landowners to cultivate the land. These taxes were also needed to augment the Agrarian Reform Fund aside from mobilizing both local and foreign resources.
The budget of DAR therefore had to be increased to cover reorganization costs. Also, the CARP bureaucracy had to be motivated further for more successful results and its partnership at the provincial level with various government and non-government organizations, local government units, farmer beneficiaries, landowners, legislature, media and the academe has to be enhanced.
Lastly, the Ramos administration emphasized that the various activities of CARP should be attuned to the modernization of agriculture and the promotion of industrialization in the country.
The Ramos Administration has set a target of 3. It has brought the total accomplishment for land acquisition and distribution at the end of brought the total accomplishment for land acquisition and distribution at the end of June to 4. The Ramos administration witnessed a surge in CARP implementation, achieving more than double the output of the previous Aquino Administration.
This period accounts for more than of the total DAR output for the period The Ramos period from was also the most stable politically and this enabled the government to focus economic development. Under his administration got the biggest accomplishment in land distribution under CARP, 52 percent over a period of 6 years. However, just like the previous administrations, controversies rose in his administration.
Landlords openly harass peasants, driving them off their farms at gunpoint, fencing them out with barbed wire, bulldozing crops. Certificates of titles are worthless; in some areas they are confiscated. In , DAR approved of 1, applications for land-use conversion, removing 12, hectares from land reform coverage. Land Reform under Estrada Administration.
The Estrada administration focused on fast tracking land acquisition and distribution LAD. Another major step was the intensification of the delivery of support services and social infrastructure to boost incomes of ARBs. It also prioritized the improvement and protection of the tenure status of stakeholders and the promotion of agri-industrialization in CARP areas through joint ventures, corporative, contact farming and other types of production and marketing arrangements.
The Estrada administration also focused on the strengthening of the databases of the implementing agencies, i. It also promoted the use of market-based instruments in land distribution such as progressive agricultural land tax and direct land transfer. Lastly, the Estrada administration pursued to accelerate the resolutions of agrarian-related cases. From July to September , the. Estrada Administration level of accomplishment was only 10 percent although President Estrada lasted only two-and-a-half years.
Brief Summary. Vast agricultural lands are distributed to the farmers tilling the land, whereas only a maximum of five hectares can be retained by the landlords and three hectares for each of their heir at least 15 years old and above. However, a common CARP loophole was that landlords escaped relinquishing their lands through land reclassifications. Lands classified by local zoning ordinances as residential, commercial and industrial lands are excluded from CARP scope.
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