Module 5: UNDERSTANDING

ISSUES IN PHILIPPINE HISTORY:

AGRARIAN REFOR

INTRODUCTION:
Understanding and analyzing our past requires a

comprehensive study of the political, economic, cultural, social,

scientific and religious history of our country. Deeper

understanding and analysis of Philippine History will lead to

effective communication using various techniques and genres

which will eventually capacitate you to propose

recommendations or solutions to the issues in the present times.

This session will guide you to trace and understand the root

causes of present-day problems and predict or visualize future

scenarios based on credible and reliable sources.

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“Policies on Agrarian Reform”

A. Introduction
• Agriculture is important in the
Philippines because nearly
half of the population is
employed in the agricultural
sector, and most citizens live
in rural areas.
• Agrarian reform is essentially
the removal of problems in the
whole system of agriculture.
o Through an effective
agrarian reform, the Philippines would be able to gain more from its
agricultural potential and uplift the lives of Filipinos in the agricultural
sector, who have been, for the longest time, suffering in poverty and
discontent.
• In our attempt to understand the development of agrarian reform in the
Philippines, we turn our attention to our country's history.

B. Landownership in the Philippines under Spain

• When the Spaniards colonized the country, they brought with them the system
of pueblo agriculture, where rural communities, often scattered in nature,
were organized into a pueblo and given land to cultivate.
o Families were not allowed to own their
land – the King of Spain owned the land,
and Filipinos were “assigned” to these
lands to cultivate them, and they paid
their colonial tributes to the Spanish
authorities in the form of agricultural
products.
o Later on, through the Law of the Indies, the Spanish crown awarded
parcels of land to:
1. religious orders (i.e. churches);
2. members of the Spanish military as reward for their service; and
3. Spanish encomienderos (persons mandated to manage the
encomienda or the lands given to them, where Filipinos worked
and paid their tributes to the encomiendero.)
o Filipinos were not given the right to own land, and only worked in them
so that they might have a share of the crops and pay tribute.
o The encomienda system was an unfair and abusive system and the
Filipino farmers were made to sell their products at a very low price or

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surrender their products to the encomienderos, who resold this for a

huge profit.
• From this encomienda system, the hacienda system developed.
o In the 1860s, Spain passed a law ordering
the landholders to register their
landholdings, and only those who knew
about this law benefitted.
o Lands were registered in other people's
names, and many farmer families who
were assigned to the land in the earlier
days of colonization were driven out or
forced to come under the power of these
people who claimed rights to the land
because they held a title. In short, many
Filipinos were robbed of their lands.
• This is the primary reason why revolts in the
Philippines were often agrarian in nature.
o Before the colonization, Filipinos had communal ownership of land.
o The system introduced by the Spaniards became a bitter source of
hatred and discontent for the Filipinos.
• Filipinos fought the Philippine Revolution in a combination of motivations, but
the greatest desire for freedom would be the necessity of owning land.
o Upon the end of the Philippine Revolution, the revolutionary government
would declare all large landed estates, especially the confiscated friar
lands, as government property.
o However, the first Philippine republic was short-lived. The entrance of
the Americans would signal a new era of colonialism in the Philippines.

C. Landownership in the Philippines under the Americans

• The Americans were aware that the
main cause of social unrest in the
Philippines was landlessness, and
they attempted to put an end to the
bad conditions of the landless
farmers by passing several land
policies to distribute land ownership
to a bigger number of Filipino farmers.
• However, landownership did not
improve during the American period; in fact, it even worsened, because there
was no limit to the size of landholdings people could possess and the
accessibility of possession was limited to those who could afford to buy,
register, and acquire land titles.
• Not all friar lands acquired by the Americans were given to landless farmers.

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• Some lands were sold or leased to American and Filipino businesses. This early
land reform program was also implemented without support mechanisms – if a
landless farmer received land, he only received land, nothing more, there was
no additional government support.
• Wealthy Filipino hacienderos purchased or forcefully took over lands from
farmers who could not afford to pay their debts.
• World War Il put a halt to all interventions to solve these problems as the
Japanese occupied the country.

D. Post-War Interventions toward Agrarian Reform

• Despite the efforts toward agrarian reform during these years, the situation for
the farmers remained bad since the government lacked funds and provided
inadequate support services for the programs.
• The landed elite did not fully cooperate, and they criticized the programs.
• A major development in land reform arrived during the term of President
Diosdado Macapagal through the Agricultural Land Reform Code.
o This Code prescribed a program to
convert tenant-farmers to owner-
farmers.
o Despite being one of the most
comprehensive pieces of land reform
law ever passed in the Philippines,
Congress did not make any effort to
come up with a separate law to fund
its implementation, despite the fact
that it proved beneficial in the
provinces where it was pilot tested.

E. Agrarian Reform Efforts under Marcos

• President Marcos declared Martial Law in 1972, enabling him to essentially
wipe out the landlord-dominated Congress.
• Presidential Decree No. 27 or the Code of Agrarian Reform of the
Philippines became the core of agrarian reform during Marcos regime.
• Under the rice self-sufficiency program "Masagana '99," farmers were able to
borrow money from banks and buy three-
hectare lands and agricultural inputs.
• However, the landlord class still found
ways to evade the law.
• Because only rice lands were the focus
of agrarian reform, some landlords only
needed to change crops to be exempted
from the program, such as coconut and
sugar lands.

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F. Post-1986 Agrarian Reform

• President Corazon Aquino envisioned agrarian reform to be the centerpiece of
her administration, which proved difficult because her background betrayed her
– she came from a family of a wealthy and landed clan that owned the Hacienda
Luisita.
• In 1988, the Congress passed Republic Act No. 6657 or the Comprehensive
Agrarian Reform Law (CARL), which introduced the program with the same
name (Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program or CARP).
o It enabled the redistribution of
agricultural lands to tenant-
farmers from landowners, who
were paid in exchange by the
government through just
compensation and allowed
them to retain not more than
five hectares.
o Corporate landowners were, however, allowed under the law to
voluntarily give a portion of their capital stock to their farmer-workers
instead of turning over their land to the government.
• CARP accomplished very little during the administration of Aquino.
o It only accomplished 22% of land distribution in six years because
Congress, dominated by the landed elite, was unwilling to fund the high
compensation costs of the program.
o It was also filled with controversy,
since Aquino seemingly bowed down
to the pressure of her relatives by
allowing the stock redistribution
option. Hacienda Luisita reorganized
itself into a corporation and
distributed stocks to farmers, instead
of distributing the land to the farmers.
• Under the term of President Ramos, CARP implementation was speeded in
order to meet the ten-year time frame.
o By 1996, the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) distributed only 58%
of the total area target to be covered by the program.
o To address the lack of funding and the limited time for the
implementation of CARP, Ramos signed a law to extend the program to
another ten years.

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G. Conclusion: CARPER and the Future of Agrarian Reform in the Philippines

• The new deadline of CARP expired in 2008, leaving 1.6 million hectares of
agricultural land still not distributed to farmers.
• In 2009, President Arroyo signed Republic Act No. 9700 or the
Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program Extension with Reforms
(CARPER) that extended the deadline to five more years.
• From 2009 to 2014, CARPER has
distributed a total of 1 million
hectares of land to 900,000
farmer beneficiaries.
• After 27 years of land reform and
two Aquino administrations,
500,000 hectares of lands remain
undistributed.
• The same problems have stopped the success of the implementation of
agrarian reform:
1. the powerful landed elite; and
2. the ineffective politicians of the Philippine government.
• Until these two problems are solved, an effective agrarian reform in the
Philippines remains but a dream to Filipino farmers who have been fighting for
their right to landownership for many years.

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