Agrarian Reform

By: Karl R. Ocampo – Reporter, Philippine Daily Inquirer, 21 Aug 2020 The government’s Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) has triggered severe fragmentation of agricultural lands, ultimately disempowering farmers who do not have the capital to sustain production on their own while struggling to pay their obligations so they can get their land titles.

By Alex Magno (The Philippine Star), Jul 15, 2017 If Agrarian Reform Secretary-designate Rafael Mariano had his way, he would have voided all the agribusiness venture agreements (AVAs), cancelled all farmers’ amortizations for the land awarded them and wrought havoc on the flourishing plantation industry in Mindanao. One of his undersecretaries, in fact, urged the…

By Louise Maureen Simeon (The Philippine Star), October 18, 2016 MANILA, Philippines – The National Anti-Poverty Commission (NAPC) reiterated its opposition to a proposed ban on the conversion of agricultural lands into commercial use, saying such a plan would leave farmers landless and the urban poor homeless.

Landholdings of farmers nationwide declined by almost 50 percent in 32 years, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) reported. Data released by the PSA showed that the average landholding of farmers declined to 1.29 hectares per farm in 2012, from 2.84 hectares per farm in 1980.

CITY OF SAN FERNANDO— Agrarian reform continues to divide groups calling for equitable land distribution but can’t agree on how it should be done.

ANGELES CITY, Philippines – The Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) ends today with a farmers’ group rating it as the bloodiest with 664 farmers getting killed in the name of land reform.

IT will be business as usual for the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) come July 1 as it steps up to issue more than 14,000 notices of coverage (NOCs) to private agricultural lands before June 30, 2014, DAR officials said on Saturday.

MANILA, Philippines – The extended period for agrarian reform ends on June 30, but more than 35,000 landholdings covering more than 271,000 hectares of land all over the country have yet to be covered by government notices.

AS the expiration of the law extending the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) draws near, farmers are gearing up for simultaneous protest actions to express their sentiment over the issue of agrarian reform. One group of farmers is calling for the junking of the law that gave birth to CARP while another group is calling…

A central component of Philippine agricultural policy is tied up with the agrarian reform program. After many years of implementation, the program is nowhere near the objective that land reform in the country was set out to fulfill. The comprehensive agrarian reform program (CARP) failed to concentrate on the job because it took on too…

MANILA, Philippines – Two Mindanao lawmakers have filed a bill seeking to extend the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) by five years. Land acquisition and distribution as provided under Republic Act 6657 will expire on June 30 this year.

MANILA, Philippines – The government has assured farmer-groups that the program of distributing lands to farmer-beneficiaries will not end when Republic Act 9700, the CARPER Law, expires in June.

Six months after the Supreme Court handed down the decision ordering the immediate distribution of the Hacienda Luisita, farmer-beneficiaries are a step closer, yet still far from becoming its owners. Under the Department of Agrarian Reform’s (DAR) normal land-distribution process, the Hacienda Luisita farmers are still 15 steps away from becoming owners of their own…

THE Supreme Court decision on the Hacienda Luisita case covers the distribution of the 4,915.75-hectare sugar estate to qualified farmer-beneficiaries, but does not cover the Centro Azucarera de Tarlac (CAT).

MANILA, Philippines – Leading Filipino-Chinese Businessman Washington Sycip asked for an assurance from the President’s economic managers not to extend the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP).

3511k agrarian workers affected; pullout due to peace problem Lawmakers on Sunday denounced the government’s plan to fire some 11,000 agrarian reform employees by October as its rice self-sufficiency program suffered a serious blow from Japan’s decision to yank $159 million in funding for irrigation projects in Mindanao due to peace and order problems.

MANILA, Philippines – Malacañang assured farmer-beneficiaries yesterday that the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) was expeditiously working toward distributing land to them as mandated by the Comprehensive Agrarian Program Extension with Reforms (CARPER) Law.

Hacienda Luisita farm workers petitioned the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) to revoke a 15-year-old land-use conversion order it issued to Hacienda Luisita Inc. and called for the distribution of the lands to farmworkers.

MANILA, Philippines – Even before its 2014 target deadline, the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) has maintained its position to distribute the remaining 1.093 million hectares of agricultural lands under the agrarian reform program. Agrarian Reform Secretary Virgilio de los Reyes said the budget for landowners’ compensation is no longer much of a problem unlike…

MANILA, Philippines – The Supreme Court (SC) yesterday dismissed a petition of a lawyer questioning the legality of Executive Order No. 883 issued by the previous administration in May last year that granted Career Executive Service Officer (CESO) rank to eligible lawyers in the executive branch.

PEPING SAYS: On Hacienda Luisita, Postscript has received an email from businessman Jose “Peping” Cojuangco saying: “Whenever I can, I follow your column which I find to be one of the fair commentaries currently in the media. I write you to clarify certain facts about Hacienda Luisita.

MANILA, Philippines – The government is standing by its order in 2005 for the distribution of land, not shares of stocks, to farmer-beneficiaries of Hacienda Luisita, the sugar estate owned by President Aquino’s family in Tarlac.

ANGELES CITY, Philippines – The 12-member council of Tarlac City has come out with a resolution, saying that the recent Supreme Court’s order for a referendum on stock distribution option (SDO) among farmfolk “will only obfuscate the real objective of land reform.”

TARLAC CITY, Philippines – Hundreds of farmers working at the Cojuangco-owned Hacienda Luisita Inc. (HLI) yesterday disclosed that they are in favor of the stock distribution plan and not the distribution of farmlands. Jojo Zuñiga, spokesman for the group claiming as members some 7,441 legitimate Luisita farmers, told The STAR that they favor the stock…

COJUANGCO-AQUINO CLAN MOVING TO ‘SOW DISUNITY’ The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) have closed ranks with militant farmers in rejecting the recent Supreme Court (SC) order for the Department of Agrarian Reform to hold a referendum among Hacienda Luisita Inc. (HLI) farm workers for them to choose between land distribution and staying with…

MANILA, Philippines – The Supreme Court (SC)’s decision on Hacienda Luisita drew condemnation yesterday from militant groups. “The Supreme Court’s cowardly act clearly demonstrates that it is an instrument of deception, oppression and exploitation. It subscribes to the politics of accommodation of the Aquino government,” Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas secretary-general Danilo Ramos said in a…

It’s back to square one for the hacienda workers. While the Supreme Court (SC) has turned down the petition filed by the Aquino-Cojuangco-family controlled Hacienda Luisita Inc. (HLI) over how to go about processing the sugar estate into the government’s agrarian reform program, upholding the 2006 revocation of the Stock Distribution Option during the Arroyo…

The so-called compromise agreement announced by the management of the Cojuangco-owned Hacienda Luisita Inc. (HLI) comes ahead of an upcoming decision of the Supreme Court on the legality of the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council (PARC) decision to revoke the 16-year-old stock distribution option (SDO). The SDO took the place of outright distribution of land to…

MANILA, Philippines—The Supreme Court recently affirmed its 2007 ruling that sugar plantations are covered by the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law, or Republic Act No. 6657.

MANILA, Philippines – The Supreme Court (SC) has affirmed the legality of ban on conversion of agricultural lands into commercial use imposed by the administration of former President Arroyo two years ago to address rice shortage in the country then.