results of carp (2)

8/3/2019 Results of CARP (2)

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Results ofCARP


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Positive Results

Nearly 2.4 million marginalized peoplenationwide gained full ownership

overland distributed by theDepartment of Agrarian Reform (DAR) asof December 31, 2008 throughgovernments Comprehensive Agrarian

Reform Program (CARP) which aims toimprove lives of its beneficiaries.

Latest available official data show theseagrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBs)

received from DAR either emancipationpatents or certificates of land ownership


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Negative results

CARP Deceives Peasants, BenefitsLandlords

Government repeatedly declaresachievements by successive land and

agrarian reform programs including theComprehensive Agrarian Reform Program(CARP). However, an analysis of relevantdata would show that CARP cannot addresspeasant poverty and landlessness because

it was never meant to.


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Major land reform legislation in thecountry started with the Agricultural

Tenancy Act of 1954, the Land ReformAct of 1955 and the Agricultural LandReform Code of 1963. Following theAgrarian Reform Code of 1971 and

Presidential Decree No. 27 (PD 27) in1972 under the regime of the latePresident Ferdinand Marcos, agrarianreform took organizational form with thecreation of a Department of Agrarian

Reform (DAR). Most recently, Republic


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Yet, according to various Censuses ofAgriculture, full land ownership has

actually been on the decline since PD 27was enacted. In 1971, 58% of all farmswere fully owned but this fell to 47.5% in2002; in terms of land area, fully owned

farms accounted for 62.9% of total farmarea in 1971 but fell to 50.6% in 2002.


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Although there was a decrease in theshare of completely tenanted and leased

lands, this did not translate into fullownership but only part ownership thatimplies a continuation of tenancy andlease arrangements. In fact, the Annual

Poverty Indicators Survey (APIS) of 2002reported that only 11% of all familiesowning land other than their residencehad obtained land through CARP.


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Yet the government repeatedly declaresachievements by successive land and

agrarian reform programs including,most recently, the CARP. How does thisreconcile with decreasing land ownershipaccording to agriculture census data?


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CARP is Pro-landlord

The DAR and the Department ofEnvironment and Natural Resources

(DENR) reported a cumulativeaccomplishment of a seeminglyimpressive 6.4 million hectares or79.4% of the target CARP scope of 8.1

million hectares with 3.8 million farmerbeneficiaries from 1972 to June 2005.These figures seem to indicate that

agrarian reform in the Philippines is wellunderway, albeit slowly.


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However, the current target scoperepresents a severe downward

adjustment from CARP's original scope in1988. Back then, the target fordistribution was 10.3 million hectares, orsome 85% of total agricultural land

planted to crops and a third of thecountry's total land area. This wasadjusted downwards by 21.7% in 1996 tothe current scope of 8.1 million hectaresfollowing drastic cuts in coverage of both

private and public lands.


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The reason behind these cuts may berooted in CARPs pro-landlord orientation.

CARP is not about free land distributionto the tiller which is the core of a genuineland reform program. Instead, CARPseeks to provide landlord compensation

and require peasant beneficiaries to payfor land that they have been tilling forgenerations. Land reform under CARP isessentially a land transaction betweenlandlords and peasants with the

government acting as the middleman.


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The revised CARP scope represents aconcession to big private landed

interests. The target was adjusteddownwards to accommodate CARPexemptions. CARP allows landlords toretain five hectares of land and an

additional three hectares for each of theheirs. PD No. 27 had a retention limit ofseven hectares each. Landlords usedthese as a loophole, hurriedlysubdividing their landholdings and

coming out with multiple titles within the


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At least 60,000 hectares of land incommercial farms and plantations were

exempted from 1988 to 1998 and theseremain undistributed even as thedeferment period has already expired.

The Supreme Court handed down a

decision in 1990 sparing commerciallivestock, poultry and swine operationsfrom CARP coverage. Belated land useconversion is also another way out whereagricultural lands that have already been

distributed are suddenly found to be,


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Further, landlords also had the option toforego land distribution altogether

through non-land transfer schemes, suchas the infamous stock distribution option(SDO). The SDO adopted corporate stocksharing instead of land distribution to

peasants. Aside from other productionand profit-sharing arrangements, theSDOs leasehold arrangementssupposedly guaranteed that, in farmsunder five hectares, the split of net

produce between landlord-tenant would-


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In the end, the revised CARP scope in1996 only covered 3.0 million hectares of

private land. This implies that 43.7% oftotal potential private land fordistribution around 5.3 million hectares was exempted outright from CARP. The

reductions in the scope of public land inturn accommodated vast tracts ofgovernment land leased or otherwisecontrolled by big landlords as cattleranches, export crop plantations and

logging concessions.


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On top of all this, landlords have alsoprofited immensely from CARP apart

from what they had already accumulatedthrough generations of land ownership.From 1972 to June 2005, total approvedLand Bank of the Philippines (LBP)

compensation to 83,203 landowners for1.3 million hectares has already reachedP41.6 billion ($783.2 million, based on anexchange rate of P53.115 per US dollar)in cash and bonds, or an average of

P500,463 ($9422.25) per landlord. An


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DeceptiveaccomplishmentsThe CARP's reported accomplishments

are also dubious since various forms of

bogus land distribution bloat the figures.The "accomplishments" include lands

with registered certificates of landownership award (CLOAs) but these havenot been turned over to tenants who arestill paying for their amortization. Thereis double counting where "mother" orcollective CLOAs and the "individual"CLOAs under these are both tallied. In

the most brazen cases, there are CLOA


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The numbers also include "encumbered"CLOAs prematurely released to

beneficiaries for the sole purpose ofpadding reports. These CLOAs arestamped or otherwise annotated as"encumbered" because of unsettledpayments and documentaryrequirements and do not yet give holdersthe same rights of ownership as regularCLOAs. Land has also been reported asdistributed but in reality is inalienable or

otherwise not suited for agricultural


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Apart from reporting dubiousaccomplishments, these reports also do

not reflect cases of land being awardedbut later taken away from beneficiaries.Landlords and rural elites exploit a legaldefect of CLOAs and EPs that limits thesecurity of beneficiaries' claim to theland covered. Torrens Titles have a one-year prescriptive period for bringing upcases against them as opposed to CLOAsand EPs that have no such limit.


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This gives landlords the legal opening toreclaim land by disputing the

redistribution of land. CARP exemptionsare used, albeit belatedly, as the basisfor cancellations. They also maneuverdecisions favorable to them throughtechnicalities including supposed errorsin data entries, in the change ofdocuments from EPs to CLOAs and in theidentification of legitimate farmerbeneficiaries.


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These defects, loopholes, and outright

corruption have resulted in thousands ofcancellations through the years. Over2,000 CLOAs and EPs covering over380,000 hectares of land and thousandsof peasant families had been cancelledby mid-2004, including EPs distributedover two decades ago. This is likely to bea gross underestimation though becauseDAR officials themselves admit that there

is no nationwide mechanism in place tomonitor reversals happening on theground. Land conversion has also causedtotal farm area to fall to 9.7 millionhectares in 2002, or 304,078 hectaresless in 1991. This figure does not include


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In addition, there are also land

distribution reversals resulting from theeconomic pressures on peasantbeneficiaries. Beneficiaries are hard-pressed to make the lands distributed tothem productive because there are no

support and extension services availableto them. This comes on top of thegenerally unfavorable economicenvironment due to rapid agricultural

sector liberalization in the 1990s and thedumping of cheap cereals, spices andvegetables from abroad. Falling farmincomes and mounting debt drivepeasants to stop amortizing "their" land

leading either to foreclosure, a sale of


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CARP accomplishment reports then donot reflect the hundreds of thousands of

hectares of land that "beneficiaries" arelosing back to landlords, commercial andreal estate developers. In any case itseems that not all 2.1 million DAR CARPbeneficiaries hold either EPs or CLOAssince there are only 1.7 million EP andCLOA holders as of December 2004.


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Poverty andlandlessnessThe clear failure of land reform in the

country has severe consequences for a

predominantly agricultural country likethe Philippines. The peasants who makeup the largest part of the populationcontinue to be exploited by rural land,credit, trading and marketing monopoliesand are kept in miserable poverty. Ruralpoverty incidence is two-and-a-half timesthat in urban areas and 73% of thecountry's poor live in agriculture-

dependent rural areas.


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Land rent is still common with tenantspaying anywhere from 30% to, in some

extreme cases, as much 90% of theirproduce to landlords.

The tersyuhan arrangement of a two-thirds share to the landlord and one-thirdto the tenant, which happens in manycoconut farms in the Bicol region, isamong the most common.


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Farmworkers are doubly burdened with

irregular work and even when there iswork to be found low wages.Agricultural daily minimum wagesranged from P151-P212 ($2.84-$3.99)nationwide yet farmworker wages werefound to go as low as P20 ($0.38) inNegros, P50 ($0.94) in Samar and P69($1.30) in Cagayan Valley. Peasantsmeanwhile have to contend with traders

charging high prices for agriculturalinputs like fertilizers and pesticides, whilepaying low prices for peasant produce.


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With peasant incomes perpetually falling

far below their needs, usury's grip isdeep with interest rates reaching theequivalent of 20% per month, 200% perharvest and 400% per year. In theprovince of Mindoro Oriental, P1,000

($18.83) loans have been chargedinterest of four (4) sacks of rice, orequivalent to over four times the originalloan amount.


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CARP cannot address peasant poverty

and landlessness because it was nevermeant to. Thus, the only hope forgenuine land reform in the country lieswith the growing peasant movement.Organized peasant groups have directly

confronted exploitation by landlords andtraders. They have improved theirlivelihoods and welfare in ways that,unlike CARP, do not sidestep the issue of

who should be benefiting from tilling andworking the land.

results of carp (2)

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