My brief presentation is divided into five parts. First is the brief overview of the implementation of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP). Second, which will be the longest part of my speech, I will proceed to identify key agrarian reform issues confronting the Estrada administration. The third part will then briefly analyze the issue of food security and critique of the emerging food security strategy of the government. The fourth section will address the question of rural poverty and the government strategy to poverty alleviation. Finally, I will identify a few issues of pressing concern that international groups, such as overseas Filipinos and solidarity friends, can identify with and can participate in policy and political campaigns for reforms in the Philippines.
CARP was enacted into law in June 1988, or almost eleven years ago. Ten years after implementation, or in June last year, the program was reported to have accomplished 57% of its targeted lands for distribution. This means a little more than 4 million hectares of private and public lands distributed to almost two million rural poor citizens. The 43% balance in land reform are composed of private and public lands, where private lands constitute some 1.6 million hectares of lands. These are distributed roughly as follows: 75% coconut lands, 15% sugar haciendas, 5% commercial farms (such as banana plantations), and 5% remaining rice and corn lands. Looking at this balance, one can say that these are the more politically contentious estates because of strong landlord resistance to reform.
The past administration of Ernesto Garilao at the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) accounted for almost two-thirds of the total accomplishment of land reform in private lands. Indeed, under Garilao, land distribution was relatively hastened at an average pace of around 200,000 hectares of land annually. But again, most of these lands were of the "less contentious" category. The Garilao administration has contributed significantly to the modest progress of the program in several ways. First, Garilao adopted the strategy of working closely with autonomous NGOs and peasant organizations unlike his predecessors. Second, the past administration was able to resurrect the interest of the foreign donor community to agrarian reform. At the end of his term, Garilao was able to mobilize almost US$1 million for support services through his strategy on rural development called Agrarian Reform Communities, or ARCs. Third, the past administration seriously campaigned in purging the bureaucracy of corrupt officials, although apparently it was not completely successful. But the reformist DAR officials began to grow in numbers even when remaining to be minority within the bureaucracy. Finally, before going out of office, the Garilao leadership vigorously campaigned before the Congress for the passage of the Agrarian Reform Fund Augmentation Law (R.A. 8532) that has two key implications: additional P50 billion (or around 3 Billion Dutch Guilders) fund for CARP, and the continuity of CARP for another ten years (it was supposed to end in June 1998).
But there were several problems during the past administration, which may not necessarily be blamed to the DAR leadership. First, rampant land use conversions, legal and illegal, were observable nationwide. Second, and related to the first, local government units that are against CARP or principally concerned in real estate speculations, began to get involve more actively in maneuvers against CARP. Example of this is the Sumilao case in Bukidnon. Third, it did nothing substantial to serve the interest of farmworkers in commercial farms where actual land acquisition and distribution were deferred for ten years, or from 1988 to 1998. Farmworkers like me were supposed to have been prepared by the DAR for the eventual take over of the plantations when the deferment expired in June 1998. They did not. This is one reason for all the complicated problems we are now facing in banana plantations. Finally, majority of those who received lands were left without substantial rural development intervention by the state. The main strategy of the government to achieve rural development after land reform has been the ARC. An ARC is a barangay or cluster of barangays where land reform was implemented and where focused and programmatic delivery of support services are carried out. Most foreign donor agencies are putting their financial assistance through ARCs. However, to date, only 931 ARCs were declared nationwide which cover only less than one million hectares of land out of the more than 4 million hectares distributed. In addition, only less than 20% of the total agrarian reform beneficiaries are located in these ARCs. This means, therefore, that majority of the agrarian reform beneficiaries are left without any systematic state support for rural development.
In summary, the past administration did several important things that pushed for the faster and more meaningful implementation of CARP. However, due to various constraints and limitations, many more important things were not done. But judging the past administration must always be done in historical perspective: let us not forget that when it took over the DAR in 1992, the state of CARP implementation and the DAR bureaucracy was extremely bad.
The administration of Secretary Horacio Morales is lucky in some ways and not in others. It is lucky because it took over a bureaucracy that is not as bad as when Garilao took over in 1992. It is not as lucky because the remaining private lands slated for reform are the highly contentious lands.
The Estrada administration declared that it will complete the land distribution part of CARP within six years, or by 2004. This means that it must distribute lands at an average of 267,000 hectares each year for six years. The past administration had an average of 200,000 hectares/year, but with the relatively easier types of land. Can the Estrada administration meet its promise?
It is too early to judge the 9-month old administration of Morales, but its initial acts can give us some hints on what to expect from it. I will start from a more positive note by sharing two concrete evidence of Morales' pro-reform stance. On the one hand, Morales dared to expropriate the land of a powerful big landlord in Bondoc peninsula in Quezon. The landlord stubbornly refused. Morales mobilized the full weight of the state. He brought in various top officials of several departments, the police and the military, the Office of the President, members of Congress such as AKBAYAN's Etta Rosales, and several more to assist in implementing land reform in this particular landholding. During the actual installation of the beneficiaries in the land, two military helicopters and three military armored personnel carriers brought more than a hundred police and military combatant led by two military generals. The poor peasants were installed into the land successfully. It was a first in the history of agrarian reform in the country. Although, a week after the daring land reform implementation, the youngest daughter of Secretary Morales was kidnapped, but released later --- the main suspect was the same expropriated landlord in Bondoc peninsula whose main message was for Morales to slow in implementing the program in his landholdings.
On another case, Morales showed us – the banana farmworkers – his commitment to agrarian reform by passing a DAR guideline in acquiring banana plantations. Let me elaborate on this issue of my immediate concern. The banana plantations concentrated in Davao peninsula constitute a very lucrative industry with a yearly gross sales of P15 billion or One Billion Dutch Guilders. They were classified as commercial farms, and hence, land acquisition and distribution was deferred for ten years. The deferment arrangements expired in June of last year. Land expropriation should have immediately proceeded, but the DAR was not ready. There were various interrelated issues in the banana plantations. First, many plantation owners are resisting land reform. Second, if land reform is implemented, the employee-employer relationship is necessarily cut, and so, under the law, the farmworkers are entitled for separation pay. The plantation owners are not willing to pay. Third, most of those willing to have their lands land reformed are doing so under the condition that farmworkers who will be beneficiaries of land reform enter a joint venture arrangement with plantation owners or multinational companies, such as "leaseback" contract, or contract-buying, but whose terms are advantageous only to the plantation owners and MNCs. Fourth, deferment of land reform in banana plantations were granted under the law on the condition that during the ten year deferment, the plantation companies pay farmworkers 10% of yearly gross sales as production share, plus 3% of net income yearly as profit shares. Most companies cheated farmworkers in the accounting of these production and profit shares. Fifth, because companies wanted to reduce the amount they wanted to pay farmworkers for production and profit shares, and because they wanted to purge their plantations of militant unionists, they retrenched farmworkers. Some 20,000 farmworkers were thrown out of work between 1988 and 1998.
The past administration apparently did not know what to do. They came up with a guideline on how to implement land reform in banana plantations, but the guideline, if implemented, would have automatically disqualified retrenched farmworkers from the benefits of land reform. The Morales administration, realizing these problems, cancelled that guideline, and came-up with a new order categorically stating that retrenched farmworkers are not disqualified from being beneficiaries of land reform. This is DAR Administrative Order No. 9. This is the most important action taken by the Morales administration that we, banana farmworkers, will directly benefit.
I am sure that there are several more good things the administration had done for the past months that I may not know, or may not be very concrete to people who are not very close observers of land reform in the Philippines. For example, one very profound positive change under the Estrada-Morales administration at the DAR is that, before, my organizations, UFEARBAI and BARBAI, used to be snobbed by the local DAR. But when Morales came in, he told the local DAR in public that two most important groups that he (Morales) will work with are UFEARBAI and BARBAI. From the perspective of legitimacy and state accountability, I think these are very important positive changes.
But there are also a number of threats at the agrarian front under the Estrada administration, which if not properly addressed may derail or even subvert the entire agrarian reform process. First, the Congress, or more specifically, Senator John Osmena, succeeded in not allocating a single peso to the DAR's 1999 budget meant for acquisition of new lands. Hence, the DAR has no money to acquire new lands for this year. If this happens again next year, then we better forget land reform altogether. Second, big landlords, many of whom are former Marcos cronies, are pushing for practically exempting their lands from land reform. I have three examples. One is Danding Cojuangco for his lands not only in Negros but also in Mindanao; another is Roberto Benedicto in Negros; and finally our very own Don Antonio Floirendo, the "banana magnate." Floirendo for instance does not really want his lands covered by land reform. Or he is willing to submit for land reform only a small portion of his more than 8,000 hectares of banana plantation. In addition, Floirendo, a Marcos crony, continues to control a 5,212 hectares of public land in Davao del Norte. This is the Davao Penal Colony or DAPECOL which Floirendo leases from the Department of Justice. But for your information, there is not a single prisoner working in this banana plantation. In Davao, we banana farmworkers normally say that we will only believe that indeed Estrada is pro-poor and pro-agrarian reform if and when he subjects the 5,212 hectares of DAPECOL to land reform. Because it is only the President who can order the transfer of DAPECOL from the Department of Justice to the DAR in order for land distribution to happen.
Third threat is the silent but widespread anti-land reform maneuvers of local government units. This is particularly regarding land use conversions through land use reclassifications.
So, overall, there are a lot of opportunities for the advancement of agrarian reform under the Estrada administration, but there are equally various threats that we should be aware of. These threats can be lessened though because Morales is also adopting the "Bibingka Strategy" in land reform implementation" "Gatong sa ilalim," meaning "social pressure from below" complemented with "Gatong sa ibabaw", meaning "reformist initiatives from above."
In summary, agrarian reform continues to be a very important issue in the Philippines. It is the key to food security and anti-poverty. I will now discuss two more topics, food security and anti-poverty, but just as briefly as possible.
Food security has at least two basic components: food supply and food access. Most people, when they talk of food security refer only to food supply. But history shows us that there were many occasions in the past when the Philippines had enough or more than enough supply of food but then millions go hungry. This highlights the issue of access. Food security is one promise of the Estrada administration.
There are two conventional approaches to achieving food security. One is to open up new land frontiers for food production – which was done by many countries. However, the Philippines had no more lands to open up. The other approach is through technological advancement (like biotechnology). However, this approach is quite expensive both for the state and the farmers and may prove to be not environmentally sustainable. The Estrada administration appears to be adopting the second approach. It may not achieve it food security goals.
However, there is a very interesting idea in achieving food security coming from Secretary Morales of DAR: to open up an "old frontier" for food production --- this is the coconut lands. The country ahs some 3 million hectares of coconut lands. In coconut lands, land utilization is only 10% because there are no plants in between coconut trees. In coconut lands, labor utilization is very low at 20% because of the highly seasonal character of farm work. Hence, it is not surprising that more than 90% of coconut farmers and farmworkers are the poorest of the rural poor. They are also the most food-deficit farmers in the country. 90% of the coconut lands are not intercropped (no crops in between coconut trees). Therefore, effectively, amidst food insecurity, the country maintains some 2.5 million hectares of "idle" lands --- in between coconut trees. If intercropping is promoted and 2.5 million hectares of land converted to food production, then, the Philippines can very well achieve food security at the national level and at the household level. And through this approach we do not need so much state funds. But we need one thing --- the key to unleash the full potential of these "sleeping coconut lands" is agrarian reform. Tenants and farmworkers will not plant in between coconut trees unless the land is theirs, otherwise the landowner will impose highly lopsided sharing arrangement.
There might be other approaches to food security but I think this proposal is the most practical, common sense, and highly achievable proposal.
For rural people who do not have lands to plant food crops, like the banana farmworkers, ensuring enough income from our own farms will enable us to buy food from the nearby food producing communities.
Two-thirds of the Filipino poor are rural poor. Majority of the rural poor are those who do not have access to land, like farmworkers, especially the seasonal ones. This is why, the coconut lands have the highest poverty incidence because of the presence of millions of seasonal farmworkers. In plantations in Mindanao like the banana plantations, we also find many very poor people, especially those who work part-time in these plantations. How can we alleviate poverty?
My answer is that agrarian reform is crucial but not enough. Why? It is estimated that only one poor peasant out of every three can directly benefit from land reform. For example in banana plantations, there are estimated 80,000 potential beneficiaries for the available 30,000 hectares of land slated for land reform. Those who cannot avail of lands under CARP are the historically poorer section of the peasantry. No state agencies have clear policy on how to address their plight. If poverty reduction is to be achieved, then serious and systematic policy intervention must be made that directly target these poorest of the rural poor. Finally, there are simply state policy intervention that can be done that will double incomes of poor households without infusing any state funds. For example, in coconut lands the prevailing sharing arrangements is the so-called tersyuhan, or 67% share for the landlord and 33% share for the tenant. And there are more than one million hectares of coconut lands that are under the retention rights of small owners. The law says that these lands and the sharing arrangement must be converted from 2/3-1/3 sharing arrangement to leasehold, or 75-25 in favor of the tenant. Doing these tenurial change will double the income of the tenant, from 33% share to 75% share of the harvest – without any state funds being poured into these households. The Estrada administration must seriously focus its attention to these types of simple reforms to achieve poverty reduction.
Again, there are various opportunities within the Estrada administration that we must exploit,as there are many threats that we must be on guard. The Estrada administration is composed of pro-reform and anti-reform forces, or pro-agrarian reform and anti-agrarian reform. We must support reformist groups, like the Morales group, so that they can stay in power and even expand more. We need them to complement our social pressure from below.
Overseas Filipinos, solidarity groups abroad, and foreign governments and agencies can do a lot. Some of them may be able to:
These are only some proposals. I will not pre-empt your creativity in conceptualizing activities that you think are important for the advancement of agrarian reform, rural development and democratization in the Philippines. I'll leave it for you to do.
At this point, I end my what turned out to be a long speech. Thank you very much and mabuhay kayo!
