Wednesday, September 07, 2016

The Philippine Land Reform Failure

Rafael “Ka Paeng” Mariano, Secretary of the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) said more than 28 years have passed after the implementation of CARP [Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program], still, there are no indications that the life of the Filipino tenant-farmer has improved.” This, despite almost 4,802,000 hectares, or 88.6 percent of 5,415,000 hectares of agrarian reform lands already distributed to 2,790 beneficiaries since the CARP was implemented, he added. 


Mariano said he believed the problem was rooted to “collusion between and among landlord-oligarchs…At the end of the day, we will go back to the issue of oligarchy and why there is a need for a genuine agrarian reform law,” the DAR chief said. Mariano said he had been receiving reports of farmer-cooperatives being “duped” by former landowners into forming business ventures that only worsened the economic condition of these farmers and in which only the landowner profited from the arrangement.

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