Land to the Tillers Remains an Elusive Dream

The GTZ study also showed that about 26 percent of the farmer-beneficiaries nationwide sold their lands. In Nueva Ecija 41 percent of farmer-beneficiaries sold their land. In Laguna a high 53 percent of beneficiaries sold and mortgaged their lands. The same is true for 26 percent of beneficiaries in Quezon province, and 35 percent in Iloilo province.

Related studies cited by GTZ said that in Southern and Central Luzon, three out of five holders of Certificate of Land Ownership Awards (CLOAs) or Emancipation Patents (EPs) have sold their rights or mortgaged and then abandoned their properties without paying.

The GTZ study produced results similar to that of a recent survey commissioned by the Negros Occidental provincial government that revealed that a high 40 percent of agrarian reform beneficiaries in the said province sold or leased back the lands they acquired through CARP.

The report also said 66 percent of 3.1 M agrarian reform beneficiaries have not been given support services; the Land Bank of the Philippines has not given any crop loan to agrarian reform beneficiaries because less than 17.8 percent of them can’t even pay for their amortization on the purchase price of the land; and neither was there enough funds to pay landowners.

Exemption and conversion

In 1991, local government units were given the authority to reclassify lands under their jurisdiction as provided for by Section 20 of the Local Government Code. In the same year, Department of Justice (DOJ) Secretary Franklin Drilon issued the opinion that lands already reclassified into residential, industrial or commercial use or purpose prior to June 15, 1988 are not covered by CARP (DOJ Opinion No. 44 Series of 1990).

The DOJ opinion and the authority given to local governments to reclassify lands paved the way for rampant land use conversion and exemption from agrarian reform coverage. In fact, October 2007 statistics from the Center for Land Use Policy, Planning and Implementation (CLUPPI) of the Department of Agrarian Reform showed that 22,900 hectares of agricultural lands have been exempted from CARP coverage because these lands have been reclassified before the agrarian reform law took effect.

Meanwhile, all lands reclassified after June 15, 1988 have to be covered by a conversion order from the DAR through CLUPPI. To date, the DAR has approved 48,767 hectares for conversion.

New law

In a statement, Pahilga said the provision of CARP allowing exemptions and conversions has spelled doom for farmers nationwide and has given landlords the leeway to hold on to large tracts of landholdings. For this reason, SENTRA calls for the abolition of CARP which agrarian lawyers deemed “inherently defective.”

“CARP allowed the exemption from its coverage even irrigated rice lands and other productive agricultural lands like the 144-hectare Sumilao property.” Pahilga added.

To answer the need for genuine land reform, partylist representatives from Anakpawis (toiling masses), Bayan Muna (people first) and Gabriela Women’s Party (GWP) filed House Bill 3059 or the Genuine Agrarian Reform Act of 2007 on Nov. 13. The bill aims to break up land monopoly and distribute lands for free.