CARP: Reforming a flawed land reform process

FORMER National Economic and Development Authority director general Cielito Habito today urged both houses of Congress to enact a law that will again extend the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP), which is set to end this year.

Habito, now the director of the Ateneo Center for Economic Research and Development, says it would be more logical for the government to continue CARP and accelerate its implementation, and address the shortcomings that had undermined its progress in the past.

At a press conference this morning at the Sulo Hotel, Habito said tillers should be given full ownership and control of the land, to encourage them to “invest more in raising its productivity.” He added that average farm sizes should be smaller to intensify land use and yields per hectare.

Habito pointed to a recent survey by the Philippine Partnership for the Development of Human Resources in Rural Areas (PhilDHRRA) wherein 81 percent of agrarian reform beneficiaries “attested to having become better off as a result of CARP.”

By the end of the year, the country has had a total of 38 years of agrarian reform implementation. Yet there remains some 1.3 million hectares of land still to be covered by the law.

Habito acknowledged that skeptics and oppositors of agrarian reform blame the program for an aggregate decline in agricultural investments and farm productivity since the enactment of Republic Act No. 6657, or the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law, in 1988.

“But this conclusion is unwarranted. Declining aggregate farm productivity over time cannot be directly attributed to CARP, as many other factors are likely to have led to this trend,” he said.

Habito pointed out that landowners facing CARP hold back on investments for fear that they will fail to harvest what they planted. He said a survey of 100 landowners he undertook with a former colleague showed that there was an average cutback of P11,066 in investments when the landowners faced CARP.

Another reason, he said, was that banks refuse to accept farm lands as collateral for loans, leaving CARP beneficiaries with too little financial options in managing their farms. Banks, he said, are wary of accumulating landholdings since under the law, banks and their lands are subject to CARP.

The former NEDA chief said these two problems can be addressed by hastening the CARP process and establishing a different retention limit for banks.

So far, 13 bills have been filed seeking the extension of agrarian reform. But the proposals face a difficult political battle in Congress. For one, House Speaker Prospero Nograles’s legislative agenda is silent on the issue.

Among those with proposed bills are Nueva Ecija Rep. Eduardo Nonato Joson, vice-chairman of the House committee on food security, who is seeking to extend the life of CARP for seven years. His bill allots P327 billion for land tenure improvement, agrarian justice delivery, and support services.

Joson said the funding is necessary to bolster the chances of a farmer holding on to his land, saying many beneficiaries, unable to finance even a crop season, have sold their land.

Indeed, a review of CARP by German Technical Assistance (GTZ) shows that 26 percent of CARP beneficiaries have sold their land. (see for example the PCIJ’s 1998 report, Luxury Resort Rises on CARP Land) The highest number of such cases was noted in Laguna with 53 percent of new landowners giving up their land. Nueva Ecija, Joson’s province, has 41 percent.

The 272-page GTZ report, made public in December last year, outlined what went wrong with the 20-year old program: land distribution with scant or no support services; only 50 percent of the required funding for CARP was alloted by government; 60 percent of the funds alloted went mainly to personnel salaries; and low rate of amortization collection from farmers, among others.

Jimmy Tadeo, chairman of Paragos-Pilipinas, who began working for farmers organizations in 1964 in Plaridel, Bulacan, lamented that these factors, coupled with corruption, are reasons why many farmers have abandoned the land they came to own through land reform.