Duterte admin slowest in implementing land reform - Task Force Mapalad claims

The Duterte administration recorded the lowest land acquisition and distribution in its first three years
against comparable periods of other administrations, peasant group Task Force Mapalad said, citing
government data.

“Before and after you won the 2016 elections, you never stopped assuring and inspiring us that you
would implement CARP and complete the program’s land distribution phase,” she said, adding,
however, that "agency’s dismal LAD record made your administration the slowest of all the
administrations that implemented the CARP for the last three decades."

DAR: Record land distribution in 2018

Agrarian Reform Secretary John Castriciones in August urged the department's central and field offices
to resolve all pending cases before 2022.

“[Department of Agrarian Reform] has been hard at work to respond to the needs of our farmer-
beneficiaries and the directives of President Duterte,” Castriciones said in a statement released to the
media then.

A total of 905 cases were resolved by the DAR Adjudication Board, while another 9,896 cases were
resolved by field offices, the department said.

The government's Anti-Red Tape Authority also commended DAR's service to farmers in a letter dated
July.

Among DAR efforts is the launching of a "Zero-Backlog" program this year through its Agrarian Legal
Sector to handle pending cases of previous administrations.

The department also said it set an all-time high record of 60,000 hectares of land distributed with CLOAs
in 2018.

“I was informed by no less than (DAR Field Operations Office Undersecretary Karlo Bello) that this
appears to be the highest CLOA distribution ever made in the history of Agrarian Reform Program since
1972," Castriciones said in a press briefing.

Farmers still hungry after 30 years of agrarian reform

Agrarian reform aims to address the centuries-old problem of landlessness in rural areas In the
Philippines. The government addressed key national goals through the Ambitious Agrarian Reform
Program (CARP) launched in 1987: the promotion of equality and social justice, food security and rural
poverty alleviation. However after more than 14 years of CARP, the program is yet to be completed and
is currently burdened with major problems - from landlord resistance to lack of superstructure.

Land redistribution alone was not enough to liberate the small farmer from poverty and ensure the
success of the CARP.

68-year-old Galbert Jamora restlessly raised all his remaining resources to march around the Quezon
City Memorial Circle with fellow farmers. He held a piece of paper reading, "Ipatupad na ang reporma sa
lupa (now implementing land reform)." Jamora saved up just to get from Negros Occidental to Manila to
join this rally, organized by different farmers and non-governmental organizations on Thursday, June 28,
to mark the 30th year of the implementation of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP)

Jamora, along with his group, trooped the gates of the Department of Agrarian Reform, only to be
denied entry. They resquested for a conversation with DAR Secretary John Castriciones only to be
denied by the guards.

Jamora and some of his fellow farmers who came all the way from Negros Occidental were visibly
disappointed. Some were holding back tears.

Luisita farm workers claim continued harassment

The Unyon ng mga Manggagawa sa Agrikultura, in a separate statement, meanwhile sounded the alarm
on alleged military harassment of organized farm workers at Hacienda Luisita in Tarlac.

"Essentially, the Duterte government is using the military to intimidate AMBALA (Alyansa ng
Manggagawang Bukid sa Asyenda Luisita) and its members from asserting their rights to these lands. It is
not different from the Aquino’s who he said exempted the land from distribution," UMA said.

Around 120 members of AMBALA, including former chairperson Florida “Pong” Sibayan, were forced by
the military's 3rd Mechanized Infantry Battalion to surrender and to withdraw their alleged support for
the Communist Party of the Philipines-New People's Army, UMA Vice-Chairperson Ariel Casilao, former
Anakpawis party-list representative, said.

New Project to Help Provide Individual Land Titles to 750,000 Agrarian Reform Beneficiaries

Through a new project that will promote land titles for over 1.3 million hectares of land granted as part
of the Ambitious Agrarian Reform Program of the Philippines, about 750,000 people are expected to
obtain enhanced land tenure protection and secure property rights (CARP).

There is an extensive history of inequitable land tenure in the Philippines. Huge private estates
dominated the rural landscape beginning with the Spanish colonial era from 1565-1898. Under share-
cropping agreements, farmers cultivated the land, with neither the right to choose the crops they
produced nor the choice to own the land they cultivated.

60 percent of the agricultural population are poor and landless by 1980. In 1988, Congress passed the
agrarian reform law to rectify this entrenched land tenure injustice and introduced the CARP to improve
the lives of small farmers by offering them land tenure protection and support services.

CARP has distributed 4.8 million hectares, which is 16 percent of the nation’s land – to almost three
million beneficiaries, over the past three decades. However, only around 53 percent of lands distributed
were in the form of individual titles.
Unfortunately, this question is not easy to answer. The agrarian reform agenda can easily make or break
these talks due to the radically different agrarian reform approaches of the underground movement and
the Philippine government. Showing of the current agrarian reform programme works falls squarely on
the government. It is precisely the less-than-ideal state of the government’s agrarian reform initiative
that gives legitimacy to the continuing demand of the CNN for genuine agrarian reform. But is it still
possible for the government to strengthen the implementation of CARP/CARPER,14 a programme that
has obviously lost momentum and its former supporters. The future of CARPER itself is unclear.

We must focus to some important details to solve these issues. First, accuracy of data, because it is a
major obstacle to completing land distribution is the absence of accurate data on the current status of
land distribution by the DAR and DENR. It has been proved that the DAR’s monitoring system is
inconsistent and flawed, making the data unreliable. Moreover, the DAR seems to present a better
picture of its achievements than the actual situation. Second, Violence against land-rights claimants.
Violence and strong resistance by landlords continue to accompany the peasants’ struggle for land in the
Philippines. Harassment and intimidation by hired guards, privately paid thugs or paramilitary forces; the
filing of criminal cases; and forcible evictions are common forms of violence used by landlords, real
estate and mining companies, and agribusiness operators against the rural poor (Borras & Franco, 2007:
69ff.). third, Reversals and land conversion. Even reformed lands are not spared from reversals of the
redistribution process. Many landholdings have reverted to former landowner through anti-reform
judicial decisions. Then, Provision of support services. This lack of support services speeds up the
reconsolidation of reformed lands into the hands of a few new landowners. Most of these new
landowners are the traders or loan sharks themselves who take the land as a form of payment for the
loans incurred by farmers.

https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2020/06/26/philippines-new-project-to-help-provide-
individual-land-titles-to-750000-agrarian-reform-beneficiaries

https://business.inquirer.net/187695/agrarian-reform-can-work

https://www.rappler.com/nation/comprehensive-agrarian-reform-program-implementation-30-years

https://businessmirror.com.ph/2019/10/02/group-carp-land-distribution-under-duterte-lowest-in-history/

https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/Carranza_NOREF_Agrarian%20reform%20and
%20the%20difficult%20road%20to%20peace%20in%20the%20Philippine
%20countryside_Dec2015_FINAL.pdf