Land reform in the Philippines
[1] In 1901, 93% of the islands' land area was held by the government and William Howard Taft, Governor-General of the Philippines, argued for a liberal policy so that a good portion could be sold off to American investors.
[1] This and a downturn in the investment environment discouraged the foreign-owned plantations common in British Malaya, the Dutch East Indies, and French Indochina.
[1] Further the U.S. Federal Government faced the problem of much of the private land being owned by the Catholic Church and controlled by Spanish clerics.
In 1904 the administration bought for $7.2 million the major part of the friars' holdings, amounting to some 166,000 hectares (410,000 acres), of which one-half was in the vicinity of Manila.
An example of these clashes includes one initiated by Benigno Ramos through his Sakdalista movement,[4] which advocated tax reductions, land reforms, the breakup of the large estates or haciendas, and the severing of American ties.
The uprising, which occurred in Central Luzon in May 1935, claimed about a hundred lives When the Philippine Commonwealth was established, President Manuel L. Quezon implemented the Rice Share Tenancy Act of 1933.
[5] Primarily, the Act provided for better tenant-landlord relationship, a 50–50 sharing of the crop, regulation of interest to 10% per agricultural year, and a safeguard against arbitrary dismissal by the landlord.
As a result, peasant organizations agitated in vain for a law that would make the contract automatically renewable for as long as the tenants fulfilled their obligations.
In 1946, shortly after his induction to presidency, Manuel Roxas proclaimed the Rice Share Tenancy Act of 1933 effective throughout the country.
[5] As part of his Agrarian Reform agenda, President Elpidio Quirino issued on October 23, 1950, Executive Order No.
[6] To amplify and stabilize the functions of the Economic Development Corps (EDCOR), President Ramon Magsaysay worked[7] for the establishment of the National Resettlement and Rehabilitation Administration (NARRA),[7] which took over from the EDCOR and helped in the giving of some sixty-five thousand acres to three thousand indigent families for settlement purposes.
[7] Along this line of help to the rural areas, President Magsaysay initiated in all earnestness the artesian wells campaign.
[7] Finally, vast irrigation projects, as well as enhancement of the Ambuklao Power plant and other similar ones, went a long way towards bringing to reality the rural improvement program advocated by President Magsaysay.
[8] The code declared that it was State policy and, in pursuance of those policies, established the following On September 10, 1971, President Ferdinand E. Marcos signed the Code of Agrarian Reform of the Philippines into law which established the Department of Agrarian Reform, effectively replacing the Land Authority.
President Corazon Aquino envisioned agrarian and land reform as the centerpiece of her administration's social legislative agenda.
On January 22, 1987, less than a month before the ratification of the 1987 Constitution, agrarian workers and farmers marched to the historic Mendiola Street near the Malacañan Palace to demand genuine land reform from Aquino's administration.
However, the march turned violent when Marine forces fired at farmers who tried to go beyond the designated demarcation line set by the police.
[9] However, corporate landowners were also allowed under the law to "voluntarily divest a proportion of their capital stock, equity or participation in favor of their workers or other qualified beneficiaries", in lieu of turning over their land to the government for redistribution.
[11] Despite the implementation of CARP, Aquino was not spared from the controversies that eventually centered on Hacienda Luisita, a 6,453-hectare estate located in the Province of Tarlac, which she, together with her siblings inherited from her father Jose Cojuangco (Don Pepe).
[12] Critics argued that Aquino bowed to pressure from relatives by allowing stock redistribution under Executive Order 229.
As such, ownership of agricultural portions of the hacienda were transferred to the corporation, which in turn, gave its shares of stocks to farmers.
[12] The arrangement remained in force until 2006, when the Department of Agrarian Reform revoked the stock distribution scheme adopted in Hacienda Luisita, and ordered instead the redistribution of a large portion of the property to the tenant-farmers.
The Department stepped into the controversy when in 2004, violence erupted over the retrenchment of workers in the Hacienda, eventually leaving seven people dead.
However, there were constraints such as the need to firm up the database and geographic focus, generate funding support, strengthen inter-agency cooperation, and mobilize implementation partners, like the non-government organizations, local governments, and the business community.
8532 to amend the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law (CARL) which further strengthened the CARP by extending the program to another ten years.
