AGRARIAN REFORM ISSUES

Symposium March 12, 2012 Aelimianum College, Inc.

In an agrarian country such as the Philippines where majority of the people are peasants, land reform is a must if the government seeks to respond to the needs of the people, and achieve peace and development for the nation.

 The most recent of these programs is the Aquino regimes Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP). Enacted on June 10, 1988, Republic Act 6657 or the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law was supposed to be implemented for 10 years.

 Falling short of its targets, the Agrarian Reform Law was extended by the Ramos administration for another 10 years. It expired for the second time in June 2008.

 In June 2099, the House of Representatives adopted House Resolution 4077, or the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program Extension with Reforms (CARPER). Only 13 voted no and two abstained. Shorty thereafter, the bicameral conference committee voted for the extension of the CARP for another five years.

 In August, Arroyo signed the CARPER, a consolidation of House Bill No. 4077 and Senate Bill No. 2666, effectively extending the CARP from July 1, 2009 to June 30, 2014.

 Will the CARPER finally resolve the centuries-old problem of landlessness afflicting the peasantry?

 A genuine agrarian-reform program should result in the free distribution of land to the tillers. After all, land, which should be universally available to all, was merely grabbed and titled by landlords who were close to the Spanish and then the American colonial authorities.

 Second, these landlords have already profited immensely through the labor of generations of peasants. Herein lies the basic flaw of CARP and CARPER, which provided compensation to the landlords, thereby negating the aforementioned historical truths.

 Compensation limited the capacity of the government to distribute land and gave the landlords the power to dictate the price of compensation and eventually take back the land from peasants who are unable to pay the amortization because of the backwardness of agricultural production in the country.

 The task is to cover one million hectares in the next five years. By 2010, the department should be able to distribute 200,000 hectares of land.
The CARPER also mandates that private agricultural lands the type that the Arroyos and the Cojuangcos own can only be distributed if the original CARP managed to distribute 90 percent of its target. But CARP, despite the two decades of its implementation, only distributed less than half of its target.

 Lands covered by CARPER will be acquired and distributed in three phases.

Phase One will cover rice and corn lands, all idle lands or abandoned lands, all private lands voluntarily offered by the owners for agrarian reform, all lands foreclosed by government financial institutions, all lands acquired by the Presidential Commission on Good Government, and all other lands owned by government devoted to or suitable for agriculture.

 Phase Two will cover all alienable and disposable public agricultural lands; all arable public agricultural lands under agro-forest, pasture and agricultural leases already cultivated and planted to crops in accordance with Section 6 Article XIII of the Constitution; all public agricultural lands that are to be opened for new development and resettlement; all private agricultural lands in excess of 50 hectares.

 Phase Three will cover all other private agricultural lands starting with large landholdings and then medium and small landholdings.

 Based on its past performance, however, the government seems not only unable to do what it preaches but more alarmingly has shown itself incapable of freeing the peasant masses from centuries-old feudal bondage or even improve the tenantbeneficiaries productivity.

 Amid what critics said are the flaws and the emasculation of CARP, government may claim that land may have been given to many farmers. But the vast majority of land toilers remain poor forcing even many of what government had identified as tenantbeneficiaries to sell, mortgage or abandon their lands.

 In an ironic twist of fate, studies show that CARP lands have been gradually turned over back to the landlords.

 The departments latest CARP impact assessment study compared poverty incidence in rural areas between 1990 and 2000 and, in the same period, between agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBs) and non-ARBs. Poverty incidence among ARBs went down from 47.6 percent in 1990 to 45.2 percent in 2000, showing positive impact of CARP on farmerbeneficiaries.

 It looks like however that whatever improvements had been made on the living standards of ARBs compared to non-ARBs, have not influenced the general economic condition in the countryside as the incidence of poverty nationwide seemed to have even risen.

 In Tarlac province, about 100 kms north of Manila, Hacienda Luisita was once touted as a showcase of the land reform program. Here, however, CARP has failed to win the hearts and minds of farmers: In recent random interviews, they told Bulatlat.com that their lives have been ruined further because of CARP. Luisita is owned by the family of former President Corazon Cojuangco Aquino.

 One of the workers, Francisco Nakpil, is an agricultural worker in the sugarcane plantation of Hacienda Luisita, Inc. (HLI) for 45 years. When the stock distribution options (SDO) scheme under CARP was introduced in the hacienda in 1989, Nakpil became one of the 7,000 workers who became instant stockholders of the agrocorporation.

 Within 30 years under this scheme, hacienda owners were to transfer 32 percent of the total stocks of the company to the farm workers. Yet, has Nakpil become richer through the land reform program?

Today at 62, Nakpil says he has only a home lot souvenir from the HLI, a P20,000 separation pay, and some P2,600 monthly pension from the Social Security System. His retirement ended his profit share from the HLI. He does not have land to pass on to his children. His monthly pension gave him just P86 a day that can hardly meet his familys needs. And so his answer in Filipino: I am poor, past and present.

 Danilo Ramos, secretary general of the militant Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP Peasant Movement in the Philippines), offered his own assessment of CARP. He said: Pagkatapos ng CARP extension period, naibenta na ulit ng mga benepisyaryo ang lupa sa mayayaman dahil wala namang pag-asang umunlad ang kabuhayan ng magsasaka sa taas naman ng gastos sa produksyon. Wala namang suportang pautang at iba pang serbisyo ang gobyerno kaya magigipit uli ang benepisyaryo, mababaon sa utang, mapipilitang ibenta ang lupa

 Ramos argues that the root of this flawed land reform program is in the very concept of compensating the landlords and making the farmers pay for the lands. Nasaan naman doon ang katarungan? Ang naging papel lang ng gobyerno sa programang ito ay ang pagiging middleman sa bentahan ng lupa sa pagitan ng may-ari at ng magsasaka. Reporma ba yun?

 If I were to ask you, do you think CARP will already attain its objective/purpose of distributing land to landless farmers and farm workers now that it has been extended up to 2014?