Task: Video Reflection

After watching the video, kindly answer the questions below using the suggested video.

1. Why farmers are poor in the Philippines?

o Farming in the Philippines are considered to be the job that has the greatest
number of poor people/farmers managing it. It is due to the fact that the
agricultural sector in our country is being neglected in ways that it still gradually
affects our farmers in negative ways up until today. Farmers continue to be poor
because the price of their products are just enough to pay back their cost
expenses and sustain their families’ daily lives, without the ability to save up for
other things that they and their families need. And sometimes, when affected
with such calamities, the price of their products would just be enough to pay their
cost expenses and sometimes less, not earning anything at all. Furthermore, the
middle men gets the best out of the rice product of farmers as they are the ones
that add value to the price of it, leaving the farmers with pay according to the
original price. Aside from this, agricultural lands in the Philippines are gradually
decreasing with no increase in the productivity of the remaining farm parcels
because the remaining farmers cannot afford the different machinations that can
make their productivity boost up like in other countries. Due to this, the still-no-
improvement productivity of farmers in producing rice here in the Philippines
gave rise into the importing of less expensive rice from other countries, and this
affected the market of rice made from our country as more people tend to buy
the less expensive imported rice than our own rice, which is also a reason why
the price of rice produced here in the Philippines doesn’t get any better. Aside
from this, the number of farmers is also decreasing due to the fact that the job
itself doesn’t have the capacity to improve the life of a family anymore. Farmers
do not encourage their children to go on the same path as them, and instead
choose different path instead of agriculture. With the decreasing number of
farmers, decreasing land for farming, decreasing incentives from farming, and
issues of lacking of irrigation from some areas because not all agricultural areas
have generated irrigation system, the agricultural sector in the Philippines aren’t
going well. And our farmers still continue to be poor even if they are the ones
feeding the whole country.

2. What is the main reason why the Philippines' agrarian reform program failed despite its
extension and reforms? (The answer must be worth 50 points).
o The main reason why the Philippines’ agrarian reform program failed despite its
extension and reforms was that it didn’t fulfill its mandate to equally distribute
land to the farmers. Many farmers are still fighting to have their own land. Many
activists protested that the government used various ways to displace farmers
from their lands to accommodate the interests of the government and private
businesses. The agrarian reform law, which was signed by the late President
Corazon Aquino in 1988, was supposed to be completed after ten years with the
distribution of about eight million hectares of land for farmers. A total of 898.420
landless tenants and farmers are the ones who became recipients of land titles
and support services during the ten-year period, however, became a failure as it
was only able to accomplish 22.5% of the target land that should have been
distributed in six years’ time. In 1998, the administration of former president Fidel
Ramos was able to distribute 4.7 million hectares of land, or 60 percent of the
target, more than double the output of the Aquino administration. In December
2008, the budget for the program expired with about 1.2 million hectares of
agricultural land waiting to be distributed to farmers. To continue the distribution
of lands to farmers, the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program Extension with
Reforms was passed into law on August 7, 2009, by former president Gloria
Macapagal Arroyo and was set to expire on June 30, 2014. The program,
however, continued even after June 2014 because that law states that it can be
allowed “to proceed to its finality and be executed even beyond such date.” In
2021, the administration of President Rodrigo Duterte claimed that it was able to
distribute a total of 516,000 hectares to 405,800 farmers nationwide. The
Department of Agrarian Reform claimed that as of last year, there were already
2.486 million agrarian reform beneficiaries since 1972, of which 166,127 were
from 2016, while 1.3 million, or 53 percent, are now living in 2,234 agrarian
reform communities. There are, however, more than 50,000 agrarian reform
cases pending before the Adjudication Board of the Department of Agrarian
Reform.

The accomplishments reported by the government were just half of the

story of why it really failed. The truth is that the government weren’t able to
monitor if the beneficiaries are really the ones who control the land. It’s not just
about the land distribution, but also the condition of the farmers whether they are
tilling their own land or not ever since it was given to them. Some farmer
beneficiaries even had it worst even if they were agrarian beneficiaries. It became
expensive and cumbersome throughout the years and weren’t able to address
the structural problems of rural inequality. Farmers experienced that the land
given to them weren’t free at all. Only 1.2-hectare land was entitled to each
beneficiary of the agrarian reform and it is too small to be productive in the job
for the farmers to get their money and pay the amortization. The government
should have looked into the structural problems of the law and look into it at a
different perspective. As it is said in the video, the very start of the law only has a
dismal accomplishment rate of 50%, meaning that it really wasn’t a success. And
it is just wrong for the government to continue it since it clearly displays that
there are a lot of loopholes into it and should be terminated and looked up so
that they can create a better agrarian reform instead of continually creating
extensions of it. However, with the help of the beneficiaries’ persistence, the
CARP became better as years passed.

In the case of Mrs. Dorita Vargas, like any other tenant farmers, the
conflict arose from the conflict between the tenant farmers and the landlords
themselves which created the lack of land to be distributed to the farmers. The
landlords’ reasons may be due to their personal agendas such as plans for
urbanization for their own lands instead of cooperating with the government to
provide enough lands for the farmers to till. Like Mrs. Dorita Vargas, some other
tenant farmers also experienced being robbed of their lands entitled to them. It is
said in the video that around 126 hectares are allocated to the tenant farmers,
which is enough for them to even have 1 hectare each. However, they were only
able to receive an overall of 5 hectares for all of them, due to some tactics of
landlords called “chop-chop” or parceling of land titles to evade the CARP
coverage. This resulted in the shortage of land that the government are able to
distribute to the farmers, and some didn’t even receive anything as they didn’t
receive Notice of Coverage.