Philippine
Agrarian
Reform
LANDOWNERSHIP IN
THE PHILIPPINES
UNDER SPAIN
The implementation of the Philippine Bill
of 1902 provided regulations on the
disposal of public lands and standards
for land ownership: 16 hectares for
private individuals and 1024 hectares
for corporate landholders.
It was supplemented by the Land
Registration Act, which introduced the
Torrens system to address the absence
of earlier records of issued titles and
conduct accurate land surveys.
Manuel Quezon proposed a social
justice program focused on purchasing
haciendas from landlords and then
dividing and selling to tenants. He
created the National Rice and Corn
Corporation (NARIC) to assign public
defenders to assist peasants in court
battles for land rights.
POST-WAR
INTERVENTION
TOWARD
AGRARIAN
PROGRAM
Pres. Marcos wiped out the landlord-
dominated Congress because of
Martial Law in 1972. He expanded his
executive power and implemented
Presidential Decree 27 of the Code of
Agrarian Reform of the Philippines.
The code applies to tenant farmers of
private agricultural lands primarily
focused on rice and corn under a
sharecropping system or lease-
tenancy, classified as landed estate
or not.
This “Operation Land Transfer” on
lands occupied by tenants of more
than 7 hectares of rice and corn
commenced has seen agrarian
reform finally achievable. Farmers
could borrow from banks to purchase
plots of land and agricultural inputs.
POST-1986
AGRARIAN REFORM
The Spaniards brought a pueblo system
of agriculture which organized scattered
and dispersed rural communities into
pueblos and gave land to cultivate.
Families couldn't own their land since the
King of Spain owned everything, they
were only assigned to cultivate grounds
they didn't own, and they paid colonial
tributes to Spanish authorities in the
form of agricultural products.
Filipino farmers were made to sell their
products at a meager price or surrender
their products to the encomenderos, who
resold them at a profit.
LANDOWNERSHIP IN
THE PHILIPPINES
UNDER THE
AMERICANS
President Elpidio Quirino established Land
Settlement Development Corporation
(LASEDECO) for acceleration and
expansion of the resettlement programs
for the Filipino farmers.
R.A. 1199 or Agricultural Tenancy Act
was passed to govern relationship
between landholders and tenant farmers
alongside the Court of Agricultural
Relations, aiming to improve tenancy
security, fix land rentals, and resolve land
disputes.
Diosdado Macapagal passed the R.A.
3844 or Agricultural Land Reform Code
which abolished share tenancy in the
Philippines and suggested a program to
convert tenant farmers to lessees and,
later, owner-cultivators.
AGRARIAN REFORM
UNDER MARCOS
In 1988, Congress passed the Comprehensive
Agrarian Reform Law (CARL) or the R.A. 6657,
which introduced the program with the same
name: Comprehensive Agrarian Reform
Program (CARP). The CARP allowed the
redistribution of agricultural lands to the
tenant farmers from their landowners, paid in
exchange by the government through just
compensation, and let the landowners retain
not more than 5 hectares.
Under Pres. Fidel Ramos, CARP was
implemented faster to meet 10-year frame
despite limited funding. In 1996, Department
of Agrarian Reform distributed 58.25% total
area target to be covered by the program.
Because of this, Ramos signed the R.A. 8532
to amend CARL and extend program's time
frame to ten more years.
When the new deadline of the CARP expired in
2008, Pres Gloria Arroyo signed R.A. 9700 or
Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program
Extension with Reforms (CARPER) which
amended that deadline to five more years.