BY Edmuno Y. Cejar
MALUNGON, Sarangani (MindaNews) — The Philippine agrarian reform was supposed to make former tenants prosperous farmers and former land owners rich industrialists.
With land, it was believed tenants would become more productive and contribute a large chunk to the country’s GDP. But the opposite is true. Agriculture’s contribution to GDP is going down. In 2012 it was 13.1% but in 2023, only 8.6% (Statistica 2024).
Agrarian reform only succeeded in breaking up profitable farms prior to its implementation. The large majority of farmer beneficiaries are still poor. They now own land but they are still dirt poor and hungry.
I don’t have to go very far to demonstrate this point.
Once, while being driven to General Santos City in a client’s pickup truck, the driver pointed to an area in the midst of a wide irrigated field, green with growing rice. He told me he has two hectares in there, awarded to him under the agrarian reform. But he volunteered that he and his neighbors have decided to sell their small rice farms to a well-known subdivision developer because of the sky-high cost of inputs and low buying price for palay. He saw no point in growing rice.
In Malungon, my Blaan neighbors have been selling their Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR)-awarded farmlands to outsiders because corn farming is often a “failure,” meaning a high cost of inputs, a 30% interest per four-month cropping period on loans from traders and fluctuating low buying price for corn keep them perpetually in debt.
Still another example. A corporate banana plantation in Sarangani was acquired, subdivided, and awarded by DAR to former workers, some getting less than a hectare. Instead of earning steady pay and other non-cash employee benefits before, they now tend plots of string beans, okra, and other vegetables. Others grow tundan and cardava bananas. Still others have small plots of corn. Are their lives better now? Hardly.
And these stories are not exceptions. These stories and hard data support what we have been saying for ages that, despite glowing claims of the DAR and Department of Agriculture (DA), agrarian reform is a humungous flop. It decimated Philippine agriculture.
And don’t just take this farmer’s word for it. In a research piece in the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS), the premier research agency of the Philippine government, Calixto V. Chikiamco in his 2022 research paper entitled “Land Consolidation is the Answer” said: “The central problem of agriculture is that there are too many farmers marginally tilling small parcels of land (average of one hectare or less.) Many farmers are just producing enough for their consumption. Many farmers, too, are just part-time farmers because farming isn’t profitable and they have to earn non-farm income, such as driving tricycles.”
Or driving company pickup trucks.
Wrong Premise
This is water under the bridge but lessons learned from it can help rectify a big mistake.
Surely, most hacienderos of vast sugar plantations treated their workers like mules. Horrendous working conditions and grinding poverty were the lot of workers. That was pure and simple exploitation. Surely, tenancy or sharecropping in big landed estates made the landowners rich from the labor of farm workers. The farmers’ share in the fruits of their labor was a pittance. Just like the hacienda workers, they lived a life of destitution and deprivation while the landowners enjoyed the comfort of wealth.
There was a real need to spread the economic benefits of the land.
But most farms, at least in Mindanao, then were homesteads of 10 to 24 hectares. The owners earned enough and some from their farm. They produced enough for food for the family and from surplus they earned income for education of their children, pay for medical bills, a decent roof over their heads, decent clothes and a small comfort of life. They were the “middle class” of an agrarian economy.
But agrarian reform lumped them with the hacienderos and landed estates. How? By setting the retention area to five hectares.
Hacienderos and big land owners earned millions from compensation which they invested in businesses. A farmer with 10 or 24 hectares did not get compensation big enough for meaningful investment. The once relatively prosperous homesteader now had much less to farm. And poorer. Many sold what was left of their land to buy a passenger van or open a sari-sari store in town.
Land consolidation is the answer
In a farmers’ forum in Isabela City, Basilan, I was asked how small farms can become profitable. My answer was “Very difficult. In any business, and farming is a business, you need to have access to capital, appropriate technology, equipment and machinery, and economies of scale.
“No commercial buyer will do business with you if you produce only 10 kilos of kalamansi once every three weeks. But he will gladly treat you to a lunch meeting if you supply him with 50 tons of kalamansi every week.
“As a marginal farmer, banks don’t listen to you. And you can hardly afford the farm equipment that you need.
“What you and your neighbors can do is consolidate your farms into a corporative of say, 50 hectares, hire a manager and agriculturist to run the farm professionally. Banks will now listen. Commercial buyers of your produce will come to you. Your corporative can graduate to value-adding activity later. Then your collective farm can become profitable. You can even work in your corporative to earn additional income.” (A corporative is a cooperative run like a corporation.)
Years have shown that government scattershot programs — small loans/grants, livelihood projects, animal dispersal and inputs dole outs– have not improved small farmers’ lot.
Mr. Calixto V. Chikiamco, in the same research paper even goes further than just organizing a corporative. He advocates farm and land consolidation.
He says: “Ideally, land consolidation through ownership must also be promoted. Farmer families would rather own the land rather than rent it so they can pass it to succeeding generations. Increasing the land retention limit to 24 hectares will lead to more family-owned agribusiness ventures.”
The current retention is five hectares.
Before agrarian reform, individual homesteaders were allowed 24 hectares, which he could farm profitably.
Then, farmers with 24-hectare farms were by no means rich but they earned income enough for their needs and some. Now most agrarian reform beneficiaries are poor and hungry.
Time to go back to square one?
(MindaViews is the opinion section of MindaNews. Edmundo Y. Cejar is a regenerative farming practitioner and a natural reforestation advocate. Before shifting to farming, he worked for Dutch Philips Discrete Semiconductors, Gillette, Union Carbide, and Davao Fruits.)
