Transformation after two decades of agrarian reform ... - RCSD

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of tenurial arrangement, to include the totality of factors andsupport services designed to lift the economic status of thebeneficiaries and all other arrangements alternative to the physicalredistribution of lands, such as production or profit-sharing, laboradministration, and the distribution of shares of stock, which willallow beneficiaries to receive a just share of the fruits of the landsthey work.” (RA 6657, Section 3a)This was reiterated by DAR, the main body tasked to implement the CARP:“Agrarian reform is the redistribution of agricultural lands tofarmers and regular farmworkers who are landless, irrespective oftenurial arrangement. It includes the provision of support servicessuch as: credit extension, irrigation, roads and bridges, marketingfacilities, human resource and institutional development.”Agrarian reform, therefore, does not only mean redistribution of lands but providing thebeneficiaries with extension services and incentives to the beneficiaries.However, despite the delay in meeting the deadline for the CARP, the government is positivethat it is producing concrete results as evidenced in DAR’s 2006 Annual AccomplishmentReport. DAR reported that it was able to distribute 96% of its targeted 130,000 hectares for thatparticular year. The government’s optimism was bolstered by positive praises from internationalobservers, as reflected in a news article published in DAR’s website citing the country as amodel for agrarian reform implementation (“Int’l. rural dev’t planners: laud RP agrarianprogram”, May 31, 2007, http://www.dar.gov.ph). Ironically, at the same page, another headlinereads, “Police, soldiers key to CARP’s success” (May 31, 2007, http://www.dar.gov.ph). Thismentions the violence associated with the implementation of the CARP in areas that arecontrolled by prominent figures, usually politicians and businessmen. This same conflict echoesthe same resistance from many of the lawmakers, staged at the time when CARL was still a bill.Many congressmen objected to the provisions of the bill because it threatens their own large6
landholdings back in their provinces. These legislators were not only political elites, but were,firstly, agrarian elites.Fragmentation of Land, Redistribution of Power?In the Philippine countryside, land remains in the core of resource conflicts, and parallel to these,of the rural development agenda. The dichotomy between the landed and the landless continuesto define the political, economic, and socio-cultural landscapes of the rural areas. In a countrywhere most people still depend on agriculture, land remains one of the most important “factor ofproduction” or capital. However, it is also true that land is more than an economic factor. It haspolitical and social functions such that in many rural areas in the Philippines, control of the landmeans control of the people within this land. Land-owning entities occupy the upper tier ofsociety – they are the wealthy, the force that can dictate the development trajectory (or lackthereof) of barangays, towns, even provinces, they are the ones whereupon the landless aredepending on for socioeconomic and political security. Land means power.The series of agrarian reform programs in the Philippines aimed to rectify the problem ofinequality based on land ownership through the redistribution scheme. The ComprehensiveAgrarian Law of 1988 mandated the abolishment of the tenancy system in the country to makeway for a society where first, no one is excluded from access to land and other capitals, and two,access to these resources is equal for everyone.More than the fragmentation of lands, land redistribution projects have more profound effects.Going back to the premise of the CARP, it aims to upset the existing power relations between thetenants, farm workers and other beneficiaries and the landlords by providing a “level” playingfield. For the past decades, a number of studies conducted particularly by the Popular Institutefor Democratic Studies (PIDS) (see Llanto & Dingcong, 1991; Sanchez, 1991; Geron, 1994;Reyes, 2002; Llantos & Ballesteros, 2003; Ballesteros & de la Cruz, 2006; Adriano, 2008;Ballesteros & Cortes, 2008; Leonen, 2008) assessed the socioeconomic impacts and policyimplications of the CARP. Most of these studies reflect the failure of the program in achievingits goals, thereby, presenting only pictures of a “stagnant” rural, i.e., low-density in terms ofsettlements; agricultural, i.e., land use is still predominated by crops production, countryside,7
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Page 13 and 14: Bachrach, P. and Baratz, M.S. (1962
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