Land Reform in the Philippines
Agrarian reform in the Philippines
In the Philippines, as the country is about to celebrate 100 years of independence, the century-old struggle of the small farmers for agrarian rights continues. Skewed landownership patterns remain unsolved and continue to plague agriculture. It is estimated that 2.9 million small farms (<5>25 ha) account for 11.5 percent of the total farmland. In most cases, the farmer-owner relationship is still feudal, and landownership is concentrated among a few who are not so much interested in agricultural sustainability and productivity but in controlling the use of their land and consolidating their political power in the rural areas.
Tenancy rates in the countryside range from 50 to 70 percent. Just like other marginal farmers, tenants - whether sharecropping or leasehold - have to contend with a rural élite which not only enjoys a monopoly in land resources, but also single-handedly controls the distribution of technological inputs, rural banking, the renting out of farm machinery as well as the storage, transportation, processing and marketing of farm produce. Taken as a whole, marginal farmers, tenants and farm workers total 10.2 million, 70 percent of whom are landless. The Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law (CARL or RA 6657) was passed in 1988 to change this situation. With an allotment from the Congress of about p 50 billion (US$1.92 billion), the ten-year law has a remaining balance of p 4.91 billion (US$0.18 billion) to date. However, distribution of lands to the tillers is below the expected targets and may not be accomplished during the last year of CARP. After a quarter of a century, from 1972 to 1996 the government distributed a cumulative total of 2.56 million ha or 60 percent of the planned allocation of 4.3 million ha.
The government's slowness in land transfer activities is due to its lack of political will to implement agrarian reform, manifest in operational and legal bottlenecks and in blockades by big landowners who have seats in Congress and posts in the government bureaucracy. As a result, massive agricultural land conversions are being carried out under the government's fast-track industrialization programme. The legal moves by Congress to stop CARP include: exemptions of big prawn farms, fish ponds and aquaculture areas from CARP coverage; foreign investors' leasing of private lands for up to 75 years; and the proposed 25-year moratorium on CARP implementation in the Mindanao region.
A number of undocumented farmers' testimonies and agrarian cases regarding the plight of the farmers mention harassment and, at times, murder. Those who have been issued land titles were not physically given lands while those who had secured ownership of their farms were not receiving the support and resources that were supposed to enable them to enhance their welfare. Despite the farmers' grave situation, big landowners continue to threaten CARP beneficiaries and explicitly mock the agrarian reform law.
Assessment
CARRUF still considers the land as its property and is questioning its acquisition by the DAR. The corporation maintains that it hired Noble's private army to exercise its "proprietary rights". Such a statement is a clear indication that landlords will continue to mock the law through legal tactics and outright use of force. The struggle for farmers' rights is thus far from over. The case of the CARRUF estate in Bukidnon epitomizes the fact that the goals of agrarian reform have not yet been attained. As of March 1997, the DAR has failed to install 1 950 farmer beneficiaries in 4 910.30 ha of private agricultural lands. In fact, of the land that is up for compulsory acquisition, the DAR has only distributed 2 percent of the titles for properties of 25 to 50 ha and 2.8 percent of the titles for properties of 5 to 24 ha. It is with these private lands that DAR needs to speed up the implementation of CARP.
There are bound to be more incidents like that of the CARRUF sugar estate. Thus, there must be stronger political will on the side of the government and more involvement of all government line agencies, local government units and Philippine National Police in ensuring the implementation of the agrarian reform programme and the security of its beneficiaries. The government is expected to be accountable in upholding the CARL, despite its many loopholes and limitations. NGOs and people's organizations in the Philippines will be ever-vigilant against the forces that impede agrarian reform while, at the same time, continuing to collaborate critically with government to expedite the implementation of CARP.
Agrarian reform requires a redistribution of political and economic power so that democratization, social justice and peace can be created. Ultimately, the struggle for a genuine agrarian reform lies beyond the implementation of CARP.
Land Reform in Taiwan
Between 1949 and 1953, Taiwan carried out its first land reform, an extensive program that reduced the rent of most tenants, improved tenancy conditions, and enabled a large number of landless peasants and small holders to purchase land from the government and from landlords at below market prices. Students of land reform, almost without exception, have given Taiwan's first land reform high marks. Less well known is the fact that the 1949-53 land reform was seriously flawed. To protect tenants and to prevent the reemergence of large landlords, the 1949-53 land reform legislation imposed strict conditions under which landlords could repossess rented land, and set a ceiling on tenanted land that may be held by landlords. In time, these restrictions became a serious source of economic inefficiency. With rapid industrialization, rural workers in Taiwan shifted from agriculture to nonagricultural activities and the number of part-time farmers increased dramatically. But because of the restrictions in the land reform legislation, part-time farmers were reluctant to rent out their land. Instead land was worked less intensively or lay idle. Thus, even with workers leaving agriculture, the average farm size declined because the number of (full-time and part-time) farm households continued to increase. As agricultural conditions deteriorated in the late 1960s and the 1970s, an increasing number of people, both within and outside the government, became convinced that a second land reform was needed. In 1982, after more than a decade of discussion and debate, the "Second-stage Agricultural Land Reform" was launched. The book under review is about this second reform--why it was needed, the planning and the debate that produced its final form, and its achievements.
The book is organized into two parts. Part 1, consisting of chapters 2, 3, and 4, describes the politics, the agricultural policies, and the interest groups in post-war Taiwan and analyzes how they influenced the planning and the content of the second land reform. Part 2 (chapters 5 and 6) discusses the need for the second land reform from the perspective of farmers in Mei-nung, a market town in south Taiwan, and farmers' response to the reform. Part 1 is based on interviews with former policy makers and extensive reading of the literature on Taiwanese agriculture, local news papers, and the "literature of the village soil (hsiang-t'u wen-hsueh)." Part 2, which draws heavily on surveys of farm households, factory employees, and former residents of Mei-nung, is more original and provides interesting insights into rural problems and difficulties caused by rapid industrial growth and distortions in resource allocation. Findings from these surveys suggest that farmers were confused and frustrated about the government's agricultural policy and few understood the need for a second reform.
Land Reform in Japan
Land reform in Japan after World War II has long been considered one of the most successful agrarian reform projects in the world. But does empirical research support that reputation? Or was land reform only a political success?
Immediately after World War II, drastic agricultural land reform was implemented in Japan. This reform has been considered one of the most successful agrarian reform projects in the world. It is often said that the reform gave former tenant farmers new incentives, which contributed to the rapid growth of Japanese agriculture, but little empirical evidence has been presented to support that assertion.
Most past studies discussed the impact of reform without distinguishing between political and economic issues. How was the agrarian structure changed by reform? What kind of economic and political issues were raised, solved, or remained intact?
Kawagoe explores the political and economic motives for reform and the conditions that allowed such drastic reform to succeed. He also identifies economic issues that were inoculated by the reform, and chronologically traces reform's progress.
His conclusion: Japanese land reform succeeded politically but, as an industrial policy, brought serious economic problems. Japan's reform experience offers precious lessons to developing countries now intent on implementing agrarian reform.
Land reform in Japan demolished a class structure based on landholding. Landlords were no longer supreme and rural society was restructured, so the rural population became supportive of the ruling conservative party. But land reform had little effect on agricultural production. Land ownership was transferred from landlords to tillers of the soil, and small tenant farmers became small owner-cultivators, with no apparent change in farm size. The traditional agricultural production structure from prewar Japan remained.
Agriculture grew after the war, but not because of land reform—possibly because of greater technical knowledge and the recovery of critical inputs, such as fertilizer, that were in short supply during the war.
The income and standard of living of rural people may have improved, but it is not clear to what extent land reform contributed to capital formation in agriculture. More empirical work is needed.
Land Reform in Korea
Land reform limited success as agent of economic and social change.
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- One of the most hotly debated topics over the years has been land reform.
Dating from the influential 1951 United Nations report, "Land Reform: Defects in Agrarian Structure as Obstacles to Economic Development," redistribution of land has been hailed as a remedy for third-world poverty.
Examining the record in Asia and Latin America, University of Illinois economist Salim Rashid argues that land reform has had limited success as an economic tool and offers a "very indirect means" of political and social reform. Improved education, credit from banks, industrialization and "rule of the law" all hold greater promise to end the cycle of rural impoverishment and periodic starvation.
There are many reasons why the issue should be re-examined, according to the UI economist. The threat of Communism has disappeared, and land reform had a Cold War motivation. Moreover, the relatively few examples of successful land reform in Korea and Taiwan were achieved under non-democratic regimes.
"What are the prospects for land reform under democratic regimes in countries like India, the Philippines, Brazil or Mexico? Does land reform remain of central importance when countries like Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand have been able to grow without such reform?"
Much of the supposed success of land reform stemmed from early favorable reports of Stalinist collectivization in Soviet Russia. Subsequent decades, however, have made it clear that the farm collective stunted Soviet agriculture and failed to improve significantly the lot of the poor.
"It is astonishing to think how the presumed success of the Soviet model served to inspire generations in developing countries -- and how no one made an effort to ascertain if this model was factual."
Much of the advocacy for land reform involves animus toward landowners who enjoy undue legal and social privileges. Rashid said the solution for such inequality is for state authorities to enact reforms that give landless farmers access to educational facilities, bank credit, extension services and a competitive local economy.
A government unable to provide its rural citizens with a basic set of legal and social rights is invariably too complacent or corrupt to undertake the enormous task of redistributing land across society.
In addition, land reform has typically been stymied by the enormous cost of buying private property or the social disruptions that stem from outright confiscation of the land.
"Advocates of radical land reform argue that land reform has not worked because it has been subverted. But of course. This is what comes of planning a radical reform without thinking how it is to be administered," Rashid noted in his paper, "Is Land Reform Viable Under Democratic Capitalism?"
"When one reads the list of items needed for successful land reforms, it is a complete menu for economic development. But then it is probably better to aim explicitly at economic development, and if such development necessitates land reform, that is the appropriate time to face up to this issue."
