Activity No. 01: Find Me!

I. Instruction: Answer the following question with the correct answer.

Legal Case Monitoring System  (LCMS)1. A web-based legal system for
recording and monitoring various kinds of agrarian cases at the
provincial, regional and central offices of the DAR to ensure faster
resolution and close monitoring of agrarian-related cases.
JOSEPH ESTRADA/Executive Order (EO) 151, also known
as  Farmer's  Trust Fund 2. Allowed the voluntary consolidation of small
farm operation into medium and large scale integrated enterprise that
can access long-term capital.
JOSEPH ESTRADA 3. Strengthened the implementation of the CARP.
Republic Act 8532, 1998/FERDINAND MARCOS 4. Provided an
additional Php50 billion for CARP and extended its implementation for
another 10 years.
Manuel Roxas enacted RA. 34 of 1946 5. Established the 70-30
sharing arrangements and regulating share-tenancy contracts.
REPUBLIC ACT NO. 6657- Comprehensive Agrarian Reform
Law/CORAZON C. AQUINO 6. Restricted land reform scope to tenanted
rice and corn lands and set the retention limit at 7 hectares.
Tenancy  Act of 19337. Regulated relationships between landowners
and tenants of rice (50-50 sharing) and sugar cane lands.
RICE 8. Served as the medium of exchange during the Pre-spanish
period.
Executive Order No. 26, Series of 2011 9. Series of 2011, to mandate
the Department of Agriculture-Department of Environment and Natural
Resources-Department of Agrarian Reform Convergence Initiative to
develop a National Greening Program in cooperation with other
government agencies.
Land Registration  Act of 1902 (Act No. 496) 10. Provided for a
comprehensive registration of land titles under the Torrens system.
 II. At present administration (Duterte Administration), cite at least two
agrarian issue and recommend a solution on how to manage or solve that
issue.
Issue #1: Weak implementation of agrarian programs
Solution: Farmers have observed that DAR officials do not have the
political will to implement their programs. These were observed to happen
when a threat of a lawsuit towards DAR officials come from the old landlord.
The farmers asked for security and protection to the officials of DAR who are
involved in CARP. In fact, under the Aquino administration, the DAR failed to
meet its target of 198,000 hectares of farmland to CARP beneficiaries, hitting
only 18% of the target, showing a lack of implementation, despite reforms
made in the current administration. It has also been observed by the UN Food
and Agriculture Organization that “true reform can only come from pressure
groups such as members of NGOs, political organizations, and sympathetic
reform officials.”

Government should create another law that support the strict

implementation of Agrarian Programs to the farmers. A law that will provide
punishments and penalties to whoever will not abide the said law. A law that
will give funds to the poor farmers and when calamities strikes them. A law
that will give equal rights and set a agricultural products price.

Issue #2: Human rights violations

Solution: The farmers believed that violation of their land rights, is also a
violation of their human rights. With threats and even killing of their fellow
farmers, in order to evict them from their own land, they believe that this form of
abuse should be stopped. During a protest by farmers from Negros and
Batangas provinces in June 2014, Task Force Mapalad President Jose Rodito
Angeles asserted that these have become the cost of fighting for agrarian
reform. “If there were victories under the Aquino version of the CARP, these were
mostly won not through the government’s political will but by the efforts of
peasants who fought with their lives and limbs to reclaim the land they have
been tilling for decades," Angeles said.

The Government should really review all the Agrarian reform program and
Laws and look to all the violations experience by the farmers.
Activity No. 02: Essay
Instruction: Answer the following exhaustively.
1. What are the issues concerning agrarian reform/policies in the
Philippines? Cite at least five.
 The Homestead Program that was not implemented nationwide
and was introduced only in some parts of Mindanao and Luzon
 The Torren System which was aggravated by the absence of
records of issued titles and accurate land surveys.
 Land holdings were once again concentrated in the hands of
fewer individuals who can afford to buy, register and acquire
fix titles of their properties
 Landlords became richer and powerful while tenants deprive of
rights
 Landlords did not comply with the Rice Tenancy Act
2. What were the early issues on land ownership?
 Christianized Native Family is given out four to five hectares to
cultivate
 Many peasant families were driven out from lands they have
been cultivating for centuries
 With the encomienda system still being used despite the
different laws passed by the Spanish crown more and more
tillers were abused, exploited and deprived of their rights.
3. Which of the early agrarian laws are really beneficial to tenant
farmers?

[REPUBLIC ACT NO. 1199]

AN ACT TO GOVERN THE RELATIONS BETWEEN LANDHOLDERS AND

TENANTS OF AGRICULTURAL LANDS (LEASEHOLD AND SHARE TENANCY).
It is the purpose of this Act to establish agricultural tenancy relations
between landholders tenants upon the principle of social justice; to afford
adequate protection to the rights of both tenants and landholders; to insure
an equitable division of the produce and income derived from the land; to
provide tenant-farmers with incentives to greater and more efficient
agricultural production; to bolster their economic position and to encourage
their participation in the development of peaceful, vigorous and democratic
rural communities.

4. What do you think is the most significant agrarian law? Explain

why.
 It is the policy of the State to pursue a Comprehensive Agrarian Reform
Program (CARP). The welfare of the landless farmers and farmworkers will
receive the highest consideration to promote social justice and to move the nation
toward sound rural development and industrialization, and the establishment of
owner cultivatorship of economic-size farms as the basis of Philippine
agriculture.

To this end, a more equitable distribution and ownership of land, with due
regard to the rights of landowners to just compensation and to the ecological
needs of the nation, shall be undertaken to provide farmers and farmworkers
with the opportunity to enhance their dignity and improve the quality of their
lives through greater productivity of agricultural lands.

The agrarian reform program is founded on the right of farmers and regular
farmworkers, who are landless, to own directly or collectively the lands they till
or, in the case of other farm workers, to receive a just share of the fruits thereof.
To this end, the State shall encourage and undertake the just distribution of all
agricultural lands, subject to the priorities and retention limits set forth in this
Act, having taken into account ecological, developmental, and equity
considerations, and subject to the payment of just compensation. The State shall
respect the right of small landowners, and shall provide incentives for voluntary
land-sharing.

The State shall recognize the right of farmers, farmworkers and landowners, as
well as cooperatives and other independent farmers' organizations, to participate
in the planning, organization, and management of the program, and shall
provide support to agriculture through appropriate technology and research, and
adequate financial production, marketing and other support services.

The State shall apply the principles of agrarian reform, or stewardship,

whenever applicable, in accordance with law, in the disposition or utilization of
other natural resources, including lands of the public domain, under lease or
concession, suitable to agriculture, subject to prior rights, homestead rights of
small settlers and the rights of indigenous communities to their ancestral lands.

5. Is agrarian reform in the Philippines a failure? Why?

No, the agrarian reform in the Philippines is not a failure. The Agrarian
Reform was successful in making an equal right to the tenants and to the
landowners. It made the tenant and the owner to share equal rights. It also
gave rise to the agricultural products in the Philippines, hence The
Department of Agriculture is became the backbone economy of the
Philippines.