The document discusses the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) in the Philippines, which aims to grant land ownership to landless farmers and farmworkers. CARP was established in 1988 to address the inequitable control of agricultural lands by large landlords. It involves the redistribution of public and private lands to qualified beneficiaries like landless farmers, tenants, and farmworkers. While CARP has succeeded in redistributing millions of hectares of land, challenges remain as some lands have not been fully distributed and landowners still control some properties. Overall assessments of CARP's success are mixed, as it has made progress but fallen short of its original targets.
The document discusses the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) in the Philippines, which aims to grant land ownership to landless farmers and farmworkers. CARP was established in 1988 to address the inequitable control of agricultural lands by large landlords. It involves the redistribution of public and private lands to qualified beneficiaries like landless farmers, tenants, and farmworkers. While CARP has succeeded in redistributing millions of hectares of land, challenges remain as some lands have not been fully distributed and landowners still control some properties. Overall assessments of CARP's success are mixed, as it has made progress but fallen short of its original targets.
The document discusses the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) in the Philippines, which aims to grant land ownership to landless farmers and farmworkers. CARP was established in 1988 to address the inequitable control of agricultural lands by large landlords. It involves the redistribution of public and private lands to qualified beneficiaries like landless farmers, tenants, and farmworkers. While CARP has succeeded in redistributing millions of hectares of land, challenges remain as some lands have not been fully distributed and landowners still control some properties. Overall assessments of CARP's success are mixed, as it has made progress but fallen short of its original targets.
The document discusses the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) in the Philippines, which aims to grant land ownership to landless farmers and farmworkers. CARP was established in 1988 to address the inequitable control of agricultural lands by large landlords. It involves the redistribution of public and private lands to qualified beneficiaries like landless farmers, tenants, and farmworkers. While CARP has succeeded in redistributing millions of hectares of land, challenges remain as some lands have not been fully distributed and landowners still control some properties. Overall assessments of CARP's success are mixed, as it has made progress but fallen short of its original targets.
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Agrarian Condition
For a long period of time agrarian system of the Philippines was being controlled by the large landlords. Small farmers in the Philippines are struggling for their rights to land and other natural resources.
What is CARP?
- CARP stands for the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program, a government initiative
that aims to grant landless farmers and farmworkers ownership of agricultural lands. The legal basis for CARP is the Republic Act No. 6657 otherwise known as Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law (CARL) signed by President Corazon C. Aquino on June 10, 1988. It is an act which aims to promote social justice and industrialization, providing the mechanism for its implementation, and for other purposes.
- CARP, or the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program, is the redistribution of public
and private agricultural lands to farmers and farmworkers who are landless, irrespective of tenurial arrangement. CARP’s vision is to have an equitable land ownership with empowered agrarian reform beneficiaries who can effectively manage their economic and social development to have a better quality of life. - The primary objective of instituting CARP law was to successfully revise land reform in Philippines. President Arroyo who signed the Executive Order No. 456 on August 23 to rename Department of Land Reform to Department of Agrarian Reform. This had been done to expand the functional area of the law.
Programs
- One of the major programs of CARP is Land Tenure Improvement, which seeks to hasten distribution of lands to landless farmers. - Similarly, the Department offers Support Services to the beneficiaries such as infrastructure facilities, marketing assistance program, credit assistance program, and technical support programs. - Furthermore, the department seeks to facilitate, resolve cases and deliver Agrarian Justice.
Who are the beneficiaries of CARP?
- Landless farmers, including agricultural lessees, tenants, as well as regular, seasonal and other farmworkers. The Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) identifies and screens potential beneficiaries and validates their qualifications. - For example, to qualify, you must be at least 15 years old, be a resident of the barangay where the land holding is located, and own no more than 3 hectares of agricultural land. - Not a government employee
What are the government offices involved in the program?
- Many agencies are involved in the implementation of CARP. The lead agencies are the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR), - Conducts land survey in resettlement areas -orchestrates the delivery of support services to farmer- beneficiaries and promotes the development of the viable agrarian reform communities. -began to supervise other allied activities to improve the economic and social status of the beneficiaries of land reform in Philippines - Landbank of the Philippines, will pay the landowner and in charge for the payment of the beneficiaries - Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR). They are in charge of the identification and distribution of covered land, and is commonly refererred to as CARPable land. - Register of deeds, record of real estate deeds or other land titles that is maintained by a local government official. The register of deeds will be used in conjunction with a grantor-grantee index that lists the owner of record and any transfers of property. - Assessor’s office, who is responsible for setting the value of all property within the City/Baranggay for the purposes of determining the taxable value of real and personal property, upon which is levied property taxes for all taxing jurisdictions - Local Government unit
How will the government acquire the landholdings?
- There are different modes of acquiring and distributing public and private agricultural lands. - Voluntary Offer to Send (VOS) - Voluntary Land Transfer (VLT) - Compulsory acquisition (CA) For private lands under compulsory acquisition, the DAR will issue Notices of Coverage to the original owners of the landholdings.
What is a notice of coverage?
- A Notice of Coverage (NOC) is a letter informing a landowner that his/her land is
covered by CARP, and is subject to acquisition and distribution to beneficiaries. It likewise informs the landowner of his/her rights under the law, including the right to retain 5 hectares. What were the challenges encountered in the course of acquiring and distributing private lands?
- There were numerous problems in implementing the land reform program:
- In some cases, technical descriptions in the land titles (which determine the boundaries of the land) were found to be erroneous and had to be corrected. - Some titles were destroyed, and therefore, had to be reissued by undergoing a court process, similar to filing a case. - Potential beneficiaries argued among themselves on who should or should not be qualified as beneficiaries; these disputes had to be mediated or resolved by the government. - In other cases, landowners may petition that their lands be exempted or excluded from CARP coverage, and some of these petitions have gone up to the Supreme Court. - Implementation of agrarian reform of the Philippines proceeded at a very slow pace due to lack of political will. Redistribution of land is also very slow.
What are the challenges faced by CARP?
- According to figures provided by the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council, by Dec. 31, 2013 or a quarter-century of land reform implementation and two extensions, there was still a shortfall of about a million hectares of undistributed land. Admittedly, these private agricultural lands are the most problematic, contentious and difficult to cover. - Lands that had been classified as distributed still continue to be under the control of landowners. Farmer-beneficiaries have not been able to take actual possession because of armed, violent resistance by landowners. - Among the most notorious loopholes of CARP is the Voluntary Land Transfer scheme where landowners connive with DAR officials to “distribute” lands to dummies, or to fictitious beneficiaries. - Overpricing and legal maneuverings frustrate actual coverage. Disagreement on land valuation among government, beneficiaries and landowner results in interminable delay of land acquisition and distribution. This is often combined with legal maneuverings to thwart coverage. - Other practices that result in agrarian reform reversals include the cancellation of certificates of land ownership awards and reduction of scope coverage. The latter alone has resulted in over a million hectares taken off the land distribution target of CARP. - Through the power of the purse, the landlord-dominated House of Representatives, which prepares the national budget, has notoriously underfunded CARP implementation. Of the estimated P225-billion budget requirement to fully implement CARP over a period of 20 years, only about P175 billion was actually appropriated by Congress. Of the P150 billion provided by law to fund the five-year extension under Carper, only P130 billion was actually provided. Is CARP a failure?
- The DAR and DENR claim that the past 25 years of CARP has led to the distribution of 8.25 million hectares, just a shade below 90 percent of its actual target of 9.21 million. These lands were parceled out to 5.43 million beneficiaries. - However, these accomplishments are highly contested. If we were to compare these figures with the original scope at the beginning of the program, DAR would have accomplished 80 percent of its target, with a balance of at least 2 million hectares. - Not with standing the criticism, the figures demonstrate that CARP has succeeded in covering a substantial portion of its total target scope despite the many problems that affected program implementation. Thus, it is incorrect to simply dismiss CARP as a failure. Former constitutional commissioner and staunch agrarian reform advocate Christian Monsod notes that, “… the landowners are simply wrong in the assertion that CARP has failed. It has underperformed but it is not a failure ….”
He went on to castigate the landlords in Congress for setting up the agrarian reform program to fail and then utilizing these “failures” to scrap the program.
“CARP is a Philippine state policy that ensures and promotes welfare of landless farmers and farmworkers, as well as elevation of social justice and equity among rural areas.”
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