Authentic Agrarian Reform Manifesto

Manifesto: Advance authentic agrarian reform
that achieves rural development
and industrialization!



Consequences of Joint Congressional Resolution Extending the CARP

On 17 December 2008 a Joint Congressional Resolution was passed extending the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) for six months, twenty years after its enactment, with the proviso that takes away the obligatory character of the land acquisition and distribution (LAD) aspect of that program. The Resolution can become law if not vetoed by the President. We would then have either "LAD on demand" or "optional LAD" or both.

"LAD on demand" would be dependent upon the strength and readiness of farmers' organizations loudly demanding LAD in their areas and the effective budgets of CARP in the government budget (General Appropriations Act). "Optional LAD" on the other hand would make the program completely dependent on landlord voluntarism, or an extension of landowners' voluntary offer to sell (VOS)—not strictly impossible, if one looks at the financial incentives. In either case the Joint Resolution will most probably end up in the Supreme Court as a constitutional question.


Agrarian Reform and Rural Development in the Philippine Constitution

In Article II (Declaration of Principles and State Policies) of the Philippine Constitution we, the sovereign Filipino people, who had earlier implored the aid of Almighty God to build a just and humane society, promote the common good, conserve and develop our patrimony, and secure to ourselves and our posterity the blessings of independence and democracy under the rule of law, put it in black and white as a constitutional mandate that "the State shall promote comprehensive rural development and agrarian reform" (Article II, Section 21).

In Article XII, discussing the National Economy and Patrimony, our Constitution states that "The goals of the national economy are a more equitable distribution of opportunities, income, and wealth; a sustained increase in the amount of goods and services produced by the nation for the benefit of the people; and an expanding productivity as the key to raising the quality of life for all, especially the underprivileged" (Article XII, Section 1).

To that end, the Constitution immediately follows up with the mandate that "The State shall promote industrialization and full employment based on sound agricultural development and agrarian reform, through industries that make full and efficient use of human and natural resources, and which are competitive in both domestic and foreign markets" (Article XII, Section 1).

Not content with that, the Constitution, in Article XIII (Social Justice and Human Rights) even devotes several sections to Agrarian and Natural Resources Reform (Article XIII, Sections 4 to 8), in one section of which it would mandate the State to "undertake an agrarian reform program founded on the right of farmers and regular farm workers who are landless, to own directly or collectively the lands they till or, in the case of other farm workers, to receive a just share of the fruits thereof" (Article XIII, Section 4, underscoring supplied).


Unfulfilled Promises Regarding Agrarian Reform

We have often heard the managers of agrarian reform report a two percent reduction in poverty after many years of spending billions upon billions of pesos in the land acquisition and land parceling-out program. This simply is not good enough!

Many long years back we were assured by government, in the very first sections of the agrarian reform law, that the "welfare of the landless farmers and farm workers will receive the highest consideration to promote social justice and to move the nation toward sound rural development and industrialization" (R.A. 6657, Chapter I, Section 2). In this way, had the conditions for economic development and the creation of new wealth been already put in place, even in the subsequent years, including giving tillers access to capital, technology and markets, many of our people could already have become richer or less poor.

Our Constitution was quite explicit in mandating the State to "provide support to agriculture through appropriate technology and research, and adequate financial, production, marketing, and other support services" (Article XIII, Section 5).

The State could have provided "farmers and farm workers with the opportunity to enhance their dignity and improve the quality of their lives through greater productivity of agricultural lands" (R.A. 6657, Chapter I, Section 2). Needless to say, however, this did not happen.

The State promised to be guided "by the principles that land has a social function and land ownership has a social responsibility" (ibid.). For perhaps the first time in Philippine history, the non-absolute character of land ownership was affirmed in law. "Owners of agricultural land have the obligation … to make the land productive" (ibid.). In that regard, through the Constitution the State committed to assist them, as already stated, "through appropriate technology and research, and adequate financial, production, marketing and other support services" (Article III, Section 5).

But again, obviously, the commitment was not adequately realized—in part because of the imbalanced identification of the whole agrarian reform program with one part thereof—land acquisition and distribution—which would routinely eat up more than three fourths of the total program budget to the near-total neglect of its connection to the very goals of the program, namely the enhanced dignity and improved quality of farmers' lives and people's liberation from poverty with the promised rural development and industrialization.

Elsewhere, moral leaders had warned that "the experience of agrarian reform, put into action by many governments and many countries, has failed miserably …because of a kind of 'original sin' which impeded their success: that of being almost exclusively identified with the expropriation of land and its subsequent sub-division. All this is certainly necessary and fundamental ... but it is not enough (in no. 3 of "Land, A Common Good of All Humanity," a statement by Roger Cardinal Etchegaray on the occasion of the issuance by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace on 23 November 1997 of the document "Towards a Better Distribution of Land: the Challenge of Agrarian Reform").


Taking Up the Correct Underlying Principle of Agrarian Reform

We support the vigorous and persistent efforts of various farmers' organizations and their supporters from people's organizations, social movements, and institutions, including the Church, to correct the defects in the present CARP and to come up with a new agrarian reform law and program that will truly benefit our farmers and the country at large.

In this connection, we strongly reaffirm and emphatically reiterate the underlying principle of agrarian reform: land does not belong to the landowners alone—old or new—but to all the people. It is a limited resource for a growing number of humans, all of whom, to the very last one, are without question "land animals." The very space in which to extend their being involves the occupation of land. Land ownership has to be inescapably regarded as stewardship—that is, merely a means to attain the ends of land use which are: food security for all; decent habitats for all; and an ecologically harmonious economic regime for the common good.

We therefore urge the responsible authorities and the people generally, but especially our fellow farmers and farm workers, to re-focus attention on these original goals of agrarian reform—greater and sustainable productivity of agricultural lands, and moving the nation towards rural development and industrialization.

The current legislative-executive crisis offers us a unique opportunity to craft a new law on agrarian reform and rural development. We believe it is not too late to achieve authentic agrarian reform and thus establish the foundation for our country's leap to overcoming poverty and Third World nation status and finally becoming a strong carefully industrialized national economy—in other words, a First World country at last.


Admitting and Rectifying the Failures of the State

This would mean affirming anew, as we do now, that without this kind of development in the economy, even social justice measures will redound to worse poverty and will fail to bring about prosperity for the many. This has been the Philippine experience for decades now, as various governments tried to implement a "land reform" program in the crude sense of land acquisition and distribution, but failed to focus on the clear goals of development and industrialization.

The state even missed out on the constitutionally and legally mandated support services in the three crucial stages of the process related to the production of agricultural goods—pre-production, production proper, and post-production, and thus our newly "emancipated" peasants have had a very hard time coping. Many of them ended up much worse off than during their share tenancy years. Who could blame them if they often felt that they would have been better off with a caring paternalistic feudal lord?

Most significantly, Central Luzon and Southern Tagalog, which were the original regions that demanded authentic agrarian reforms, hardly make it to the top five regions of agrarian reform beneficiaries. Massive land conversion to purposes other than agricultural left many of these areas with neither farm nor farmers. In many areas, the CARP became the worst real estate scam in Philippine history, barring none.

Under the law, the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) was mandated "to carry out land consolidation projects to promote equal distribution of landholdings, to provide the needed infrastructure in agriculture, and to conserve soil fertility and prevent erosion" (R..A. 6657, Section 39). This hardly happened. What often happened was the exercise by DAR of its power under the CARL that "when the land ceases to be economically feasible and sound for agricultural purposes … to authorize the reclassification or conversion of the land and its disposition" (Section 65). And so it happened that one hectare after another of the most valuable top soil came under the bulldozer, never again to contribute to our people's food security.

We must stop the folly before it is really too late. Let us craft a more focused piece of legislation now. Mere extension or more of the same constitutes a grave danger to our national security.


Return to Basics

It is time to return to basics. We must effectively recognize Land—including all natural resources—as a distinct factor of production, distinct from and yet together with Labor and Capital, making the factors of production not effectively two but rather three in all. Labor and Capital represent human effort and deserve fair recompense. Land, however, is another matter. It is produced by no person's effort or responsibility. It is one of the things that are "just there," and whoever uses it may prevent others from doing so—thus making it imperative for a given society to agree on the rules of the use of land. Hence the many provisions of the Constitution practically redefining land ownership in the nature of stewardship.

The paramount rule should be for society to collect appropriate rent for the Land—and for all other natural resources—from those who "own" or command exclusive use of what is unquestionably common heritage. To date we have not yet passed any law that would tax away all or most of the "economic rent"—i.e. the rent that raw land or its resources would bring on the open market. We have not yet broken the bad habit of trying to tax human-made wealth instead of more ethically replacing such taxes with rent for "ownership" of what belongs to all, like land and natural resources, and whose value is, anyway, quite clearly, due to the existence of society and its activities. When we pass at last the laws adopting the law of economic rent, we shall more than afford to let it replace most existing taxes and still have more than enough of our wealth to spare for national development.


Immediate Measures

For the immediate, however, we social democrats from among farmers and farm workers of the Philippines and their allies hereby call for a stop to business as usual in the LAD aspect of the total agrarian reform program that would evidence a national tendency to throw good money after bad. How many so-called ARBs (agrarian reform beneficiaries) are there who only exist on paper but do not actually till the land, or who have received CLOAs (certificates of land ownership) without really knowing what the piece of paper is all about? Scarcity of land resource demands that the government conserve the same for the whole citizenry and for generations to come. Hence it is imperative for the government to secure, for the poor, equitable access to our common land resource

We reiterate that no one may appropriate the land to the prejudice or exclusion of the society and of generations to come. We should rather warmly welcome stewardship agreements founded on the consideration that beneficiaries will make them productive and will pay land value taxes as rents thereof.

We urge government to help beneficiaries consolidate small farm holdings to correct the negative impacts of land parceling. Consolidation may take the form of progressive integration of beneficiaries with farmers' collectives and cooperatives. These farmers' collectives and cooperatives shall carry on the management of the consolidated farms within their territory and pool available resources to ensure greater returns to owner-cultivators and sustained productivity. In this way responsibility for sustained increase in productivity becomes communal. In such a situation, individual cultivators will enjoy psychological security, knowing that they are not alone in confronting the manifold problems related to farming (cf. R.A. 6657, Chapter IX, Section 39). Preserving the communal nature of land and other natural resources will strongly promote greater and sustainable productivity.

We exhort the government to convert idle public lands suitable to agriculture into state farms, place these under the management and operation of farmers' cooperatives and associations, and invite in willing landless farmers, by way of "stewardship contracts" under terms and conditions that will ensure maximum returns to them, sustained productivity, and government revenues through lease rentals or in the form of the land value tax.

We call upon government to advance as much as feasible the stewardship system over agricultural lands. To this end the government shall conduct a thorough and conscientious audit of all CLOAs awarded. Such lands under CLOAs that are found to be in the possession of ARBs other than the original awardees shall be deemed to be of public domain, and will form part of lands for consolidation, cultivation and development within the stewardship system.

We ask government to give priority to farmers' and producers' cooperatives and associations as beneficiaries of the land consolidation program conditioned on non-parceling of these lands after distribution and their non-conversion to other uses by the beneficiaries.

We press government to support individual beneficiaries in the effective use of land, of modern technology, and of environment-friendly farm practices to ensure just returns and productivity. We urge it to speed up the consolidation of fragmented farms, with sufficient regard to the rights of owner-cultivators, and to ensure better access to infrastructures, technology, farm inputs and material, and financial assistance from public and private agencies.

We ask government to support the establishment of an Agricultural Marketing Service such as the one envisioned in the Agriculture and Fisheries Modernization Act (AFMA), taking into account the following reflections: that agricultural prosperity and food security are not merely about food production and productivity; that today they are more about post-production and the appropriate food marketing systems that relate to the basic and complex process of moving food and farm products from producer to consumer—quickly, efficiently, and with fairness to all.

In this connection, we urge the government to set up the requisite big post-harvest facilities of sufficient number and appropriately distributed location. These will be administered be farmers' cooperatives or corporations, and used by farmers upon payment of reasonable toll.

Finally, we hereby declare all agrarian reform beneficiaries' immediate and absolute freedom from amortization debts to the Land Bank of the Philippines. By historical logic and definition, the former tenants and leaseholders—the poor farmers as a class—have more than paid their dues to both landlord and State down the decades and down the centuries. We therefore link hands today firmly and rise to a new freedom—the freedom of the children of the soil who collectively own or cultivate the land and abide in life-giving harmony with it. We rise and shout: Advance authentic agrarian reform that achieves rural development and industrialization!



Partido Demokratiko Sosyalista ng Pilipinas
(Philippine Democratic Socialist Party)

30 December 2008