Name: Bianca Danica Ugay

IS LAND REFORM A FAILURE IN THE PHILIPPINES?

Yes, land reform is a failure in the Philippines.
The Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program has been the fundamental
strategy for poverty reduction and for increasing productivity in the agriculture sector. It
was envisaged as the main instrument to correct inequities in land distribution and to
provide secure tenure to former agricultural tenants. Unfortunately, however, the
performance of agrarian reform seems to have fallen short of expectation. The impact of
an agrarian reform depends primarily on the intensity of the reform measures on how
much land and how many landowners will be covered by the reform and how many rural
people will benefit from its various components. Instead of having the advantage of the
said reform to have a higher farm income and yield, improved land tenure, access to
market and credit, and reduction of poverty incidence among farmer- beneficiaries,
however it ultimately disempowering farmers who do not have the capital to sustain
production on their own while struggling to pay their obligations so they can get their
land titles. Several weaknesses in land-use policy, administration and management
adversely affect the efficiency of land markets, and thus the country's economic growth
potential and equity: firstly the unclear and inconsistent land policies wherein in this
case is the failure clearly to identify society's preferences regarding land use, secondly
an inefficient land administration infrastructure which the land administration
infrastructure in the Philippines, including the land information system, is poor and
inadequate. Information about landownership, location, boundaries, actual land uses
and land values cannot be provided systematically by many local governments. One
result is fraudulent land titling that causes landownership conflicts, and takes years to
resolve, and lastly a highly politicized land tax system, because the cost of holding idle,
unimproved land in the country is minimal, there are opportunities for land speculation
and concentration of landownership.