LAND TITLES
for most dispute litigation, avoids the consequences
MODES OF ACQUIRING TITLES (PREPA2ID)
Title by:
1. Public grant – conveyance of public land by
government to a private individual
2. Title by acquisitive prescription – open,
continuous, exclusive, notorious possession of a
property
3. Title by accretion – alluvium
4. Title by reclamation – filling of submerged land
by deliberate act and reclaiming title thereto;
government
5. Title by voluntary transfer – private grant;
voluntary execution of deed of conveyance
6. Title by involuntary alienation – no consent
from owner of land; forcible acquisition by state
7. Title by descent or devise – hereditary
succession to the estate of deceased owner
8. Title by emancipation patent or grant – for
purpose of ameliorating sad plight of tenant-
farmers; not transferable except by hereditary
succession
What is all about Torrens System. Know its
advantages and Purpose
The purpose of the Torrens system is to provide
certainty of title to land.
Torrens Title is a South Australian invention that
revolutionised the method of recording and
registering land ownership. It is a system where land
ownership occurs when the document that transfers
ownership of the property is filed at the local Land
Titles Office. The purpose of the Torrens system is
to provide certainty of title to land.
The Torrens Title System was first introduced in SA
in 1858 and subsequently used in other Australian
states and around the world. Torrens Title is named
after its inventor, Sir Robert Richard Torrens, who
was instrumental in the implementation of this
unique and efficient system of dealing with land. The
system resulted from Sir Torrens' desire to improve
on the old English land law system which was very
complex, time consuming and expensive.
The main object of the Torrens Title System is to
make the register conclusive. Once your name is
registered on the Torrens Title register, you become
the owner of the property to the exclusion of all
others. You therefore obtain ‘title by registration',
which is a pivotal concept of Torrens Title.
Under the system, a Certificate of Title exists for
every separate piece of land. The certificate contains
a reference that includes a volume and folio number,
ownership details, easements and/or rights of way
affecting the land and any encumbrances including
mortgages, leases and other interests in the land.
Torrens Title is useful because it eliminates grounds
of lost certificates and greatly reduces the costs of
land sale and transfer. People can change the Torrens
Register through lodging and registering a ‘dealing'.
Normally, the person who is recorded as the owner
of a parcel of land cannot have their title challenged
or overturned. This concept is known as
'indefeasibility' of title. There are, however, a few
exceptions to this general rule such as if the land was
registered fraudulently.
What are the basic laws to bring lands under the
operation of the system
http://www.chanrobles.com/presidentialdecrees/pres
identialdecreeno1529.html#.WzQ7FtIzaF4
AGRARIAN
Be able to know what is an agrarian conflict
Introduction
It was a warm and sunny Sunday afternoon in
April 1994 when Pablito Dante, a farmer leader
of the Pecuaria Development Cooperative Inc.
(PDCI), decided to go home after attending a
short meeting of the cooperative's board of
directors. That afternoon they had discussed the
merits of the solution proposed by the
Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) on how
the 800-ha land could be divided between their
cooperative and another group, the Federation of
Free Farmers (FFF), who were also making
claims on the land. Pablito argued that they had
prior right to the land; after all, the FFF were
really just settlers who came from another part
of the province.
While walking back to his farm, Pablito was
stabbed to death by some members of the FFF.
This incident almost ignited a violent
confrontation between the two groups that
would have cost more lives. The government
stepped in immediately and handed down its
decision. The PDCI was awarded 700 ha, while
FFF was given 100 ha. Today the two groups
live in peaceful coexistence, but it has been at
the expense of Pablito Dante's life.
This incident is an example of numerous
agrarian-related land conflict problems in the
Philippines. It demonstrates how the absence of
conflict resolution mechanisms leads to violent
and undesirable consequences. The main
premise of this article is that land conflict is
influenced by the prevailing agrarian situation.
In the Philippines, land conflict stems from a
condition where land reform is being
implemented, albeit slowly and with much
difficulty. The second major premise is that civil
society groups play an important role in
facilitating the resolution of land conflicts. The
next few sections will attempt to examine the
relationship of land conflict with the agrarian
reform situation.
Agrarian reform and land conflict
The core of agrarian reform is change. It is
change resulting from the transfer of ownership
from landowner to landless farmer, change from
being formerly landless to being an owner
cultivator, and change from being powerless to
being empowered. Its very nature, therefore,
easily becomes a source of resistance, dispute,
controversy and conflict.
In the case of the Philippines, agrarian reform is
being implemented by the state as a social
justice measure to change the prevailing
situation of unjust and inequitable ownership of
land and resources by a few individuals in
society. For hundreds of years, from the Spanish
occupation of the Philippines in the 1500s to the
present, agricultural lands have been in the
possession of a few powerful landlords and
corporations. The majority of people have
remained as tenants, farm workers and landless
agricultural labourers, a factor that has
contributed to the poverty in the countryside.
Land conflict stems mainly from agrarian
disputes brought about by the prevailing
agrarian situation.
Hayami, Quisumbing and Adriano
(1990)1 relate three major sources of agrarian
unrest in the Philippines to the social
transformations that occurred in the evolution of
the Philippine agrarian structures. First, the
emergence of agrarian institutions in the Central
Luzon and Southern Tagalog regions in the
Philippines represent disputes between tenants
and landlords. Second, the development of the
sugar industry in Luzon, based on tenanted
haciendas, and then Negros Islands, based on
centrally managed haciendas employing hired
labour, represent confrontations between wage
labourers and hacendero planters in traditional
plantations. Third, the emergence of modern
plantations and commercial farms in the
southern island of Mindanao represents
confrontation between wage labourers and
corporate management in modern agribusiness
plantations.
Agrarian conflict in tenanted lands
Landownership was communal in pre-Hispanic
Philippine society. Land was owned by
the barangay (village) and individuals had
rights to use the land and make it productive.
The Spaniards introduced private ownership
through the granting of legal titles. Thus began
the accumulation of land by indigenous elite
groups in connivance with the Spanish
authorities. Landlordism proliferated in the
Central Luzon and Southern Tagalog regions,
where the main crops planted were rice and
coconut.
The transformation of smallholders to tenants
was aided by the usurious and oppressive
practices of landlords. Hans Bobek (1962)2 calls
"rent capitalism" what arises from the
commercialization of a feudal economy in such
a way that the original claims of the aristocracy
upon peasant services are transferred into more
explicitly profit-seeking obligations. According
to Bobek, "it is an absolute ideal of the rent
capitalist to get as many peasants as possible
into debt so permanently that with all their
yearly payments they can never liquidate the
initial debt, which soon becomes legendary."
Being deeply mired in debt, therefore, has
become a condition of tenancy and has added
stress to the already strenuous landlord-tenant
relationship.
It is not surprising that the early government
land reform programmes from 1933 to 1972
were designed to address tenancy regulations
and redistribute lands in the tenanted rice and
maize areas. Yet, after almost 30 years of
Marcos' Operation Land Transfer (OLT, in
1972), which sought to emancipate the tenant
from the bondage of the soil, there still remain a
sizeable number of tenanted farms that have not
been placed under land reform. Approximately
50 000 ha, half of which are considered
problematic, are still targeted for distribution
from an original scope of more than 600 000 ha
(DAR, Land Acquisition and Distribution Status
as of 31 July 2001).
A more recent source of tension and conflict in
OLT areas is the growing number of
cancellations of emancipation patents or land
reform titles under the OLT programme.
Organized peasant groups have criticized the
DAR for what it calls "land reversion" because
the DAR bodies adjudicating the petitions made
by the former landlords were cancelling land
titles already given to farmers. The farmer who
has been given the title has legal recourse to
object to the cancellation. In most cases, farmers
who have access to legal or paralegal support
have better chances of winning their cases.
Otherwise, the landlords are able to use their
money and power to get their lands back.
Agrarian conflict in sugar haciendas
The Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program
(CARP), ratified by President Corazon Aquino
in 1988, was hailed as an important piece of
legislation because it went beyond the scope of
previous land reform programmes by including
in its coverage the acquisition and distribution
of all private agricultural land regardless of the
crop produced. Finally, there was hope that the
thousands of hectares of land planted to sugar
under the hacienda system that had been in
existence since the time of Spanish occupation
would be given to thousands of poor landless
workers. But more than ten years after the
implementation of CARP, the sugar haciendas,
especially in the Negros Islands, have barely
been touched. These haciendas continue to be
the last bastion of feudalism in the Philippines.
The sugar industry in the Philippines employs
more than half a million workers. The Spanish
introduced sugar in the 1500s through
the encomienda system, whereby lands were
awarded by the colonial government to the
church (friar lands) and to the local elite. The
industry developed further when the Americans
came and opened up trade with the United
States. Sugar was booming until 1985, when a
crisis hit the industry, the price of sugar went
down and the Americans cancelled the sugar
quota. Most hacienda owners were forced to sell
or mortgage their properties or convert their
farms to other commercial uses. However, for
several years these planters had enjoyed
accumulating profits that were then channelled
to other investments. The hardest hit by the
crisis were the farm workers, who belong,
together with agricultural labourers in the sugar
haciendas, to the poorest of the poor in the
Philippines.
To illustrate the gravity of the slow-paced
implementation of agrarian reform in the sugar
haciendas in the Negros Islands, a report3 from
the Regional Director of the Department of
Agrarian Reform to the Under-secretary for
Operations shows that, as of September 1999, in
Negros Occidental alone, more than 90 000 ha
of lands measuring 50 ha and larger had still not
been distributed to farm workers.
Furthermore, in the same report, a section
entitled "Problematics" refers to properties
undergoing difficulties in terms of proceeding
with the land reform process. These
"problematic" lands constitute about 10 000 of
the 90 000 ha. Hence, these problems are the
causes of various forms of land conflict. For
instance, problems relating to land that is subject
to applications for exclusion and exemption
from land reform, or applications for the
conversion of land from agricultural to
commercial and industrial uses, or where the
landlord has protested against the coverage of
his or her farm under the agrarian reform
programme often lead to conflict between the
landlord and the farm workers. The farm
workers react to attempts by the landlord to
evade the land reform programme. They counter
these attempts by filing legal opposition with the
DAR. The landlord retaliates by dismissing
from the farm those workers who have signed
up under the agrarian reform programme or filed
opposition to his or her application for
exemption and conversion. The dismissed farm
workers then file complaints with the
Department of Labour for illegal dismissal.
Organized farm workers have the advantage of
providing safety nets for fellow workers who
have been illegally dismissed. They also have
the advantage of extralegal action to force the
government to act in their favour. However,
farm workers who do not have access to
organized action can become easy prey to
recruitment by communist insurgents
advocating armed struggle against the
government.
The conflict in the sugar areas is such that the
DAR has hundreds of cases docketed in its
adjudication bodies. The case study on Task
Force Mapalad, presented below, demonstrates
how organized farm workers have used
extralegal methods to achieve social justice
through agrarian reform.
Agrarian conflict in commercial farms and
plantations
Mindanao, the southernmost part of the
Philippines, is home to thousands of hectares of
commercial farms and modern plantations.
These farms are planted mainly to bananas,
pineapples and rubber. Corporations such as Del
Monte, Dole and B.F. Goodrich operate in the
area. Although Philippine law prohibits
landownership by foreign companies, these
corporations have gained control over lands
through lease arrangements or through local
Philippine companies. A more recent
phenomenon is a leaseback arrangement in
which farmer beneficiaries of the agrarian
reform programme surrender to the
multinational corporation the use of their farm
for a period of 10-15 years. In exchange, they
are given cash advances equivalent to five years
of the annual lease rate. This offer is especially
attractive to farmers in need of cash.
The majority of conflict cases in commercial
farms emanate from labour relations. Farm wage
labourers are usually organized into labour
unions that deal with the agribusiness
corporations. Thus the most common issues
include, among others, the provision of
mandated wages and benefits, observance of fair
labour practices and ensuring occupational
safety.
Agrarian conflict and the legal system
Agrarian reform in the Philippines has a
fundamental legal mandate. It is embodied in the
1986 Constitution of the Republic of the
Philippines, which also emphasizes the
importance of agrarian reform as a social justice
 programme that must be given priority by the http://www.dar.gov.ph/about-us/agrarian-reform-
government. history

On 10 June 1988, President Corazon Aquino Be able to read the leading cases on this: Elements
ratified Republic Act 6657, otherwise known as of tenancy and the leading cases
the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program
(CARP). This law is considered to be an G.R. No. 169589
improvement over the earlier agrarian laws http://sc.judiciary.gov.ph/jurisprudence/2009/june20
primarily because it covers all agricultural lands 09/169589.htm
regardless of the crops produced.
G.R. No. 185669
The plight of farmers within the legal system http://sc.judiciary.gov.ph/jurisprudence/2012/februa
was tackled in the first alternative law ry2012/185669.htm
conference organized by the Alternative Law
Group Network and the University of the Republic Act No. 1199
Philippines College of Law.4 The conference https://www.lawphil.net/statutes/repacts/ra1954/ra_
identified three major problems obstructing the 1199_1954.html
administration of justice through agrarian
reform. These are: acute ignorance of the
agrarian reform law by the legal system's key
institutions; a muddled agrarian reform policy
climate; and a bureaucracy that seems ill-
prepared to carry out its mandated task.

An article in the conference proceedings,

"Stalled: the legal struggles of farmers for
agrarian reform", cites several cases where
judges or justices have made comments and
voiced opinions that show ignorance of the law.
One example cited is that of a justice of the
Second Division of the Court of Appeals who
expressed surprise that a cooperative was
eligible to become a beneficiary of the agrarian
reform programme.

Even though Section 50 of RA 6657 clearly

confirms that agrarian cases fall under the
jurisdiction of the DAR, this has also proved to
be as a contentious issue. Conflicts emanate
from the filing of agrarian cases in the regular
courts by landlords who naturally feel that they
have better chances in the municipal or regional
trial courts than with the adjudication bodies of
the DAR, which are perceived, correctly or
mistakenly, as biased towards farmers. The
conflicts escalate when the regular courts
entertain the cases, sometimes even issuing
injunction orders against the DAR, instead of
dismissing the cases at the onset.

The following sections focus on the response of

civil society groups, in particular non-
governmental organizations (NGOs) and
farmers' organizations, to the situation of land
conflict.

How do you know whether there is an agricultural

activity

What are lots covered by the agrarian Reform

Program