Reflection

During the early times before 16th century, in the Philippines, there was a community known as
the barangay that consists of 30-100 families. Everyone within the barangay had access on the
land and mutually shares resources and the results of their hardwork or labor. In times of the
Spanish era, the colonial government introduced a pueblo agriculture which is a system wherein
native rural communities were organized into pueblo and each Christianized native family is
given a four to five hectares of land to cultivate. The native families were merely landholders
and not landowners and by law, the land assigned to them was the property of the Spanish King
where they pay their colonial tributes to the Spanish authorities in the form of agricultural
products they produced. In American era, there are laws and programs to widen the base of small
landholding and distribute land ownership among the greater number of Filipino tenants and
farmers, such law and program includes the Philippine Bill of 1902 and Homestead program of
1903. In the years of Commonwealth, President Quezon realized that land reform programs
should be implemented immediately. In Japanese Era, Filipinos created an anti-japanese group
named HUKBALAHAP or Hukbong Bayan Laban sa mga Hapon on March 29, 1942 to took
over vast tracts of land and gave the land and harvest to the people. Land Reform is the transfer
of ownership from the powerful to less powerful from the elite to individual ownership. It is
usually applicable to the ownership of plantations, large ranches, and agribusiness plots.
Agrarian reform on the other hand, includes land reform and other supportive measures to make
beneficiaries economically viable and self-reliant. Agrarian reform is much preferred than land
reform since it has more positive concepts and much acceptable strategy to end poverty.