Grad school paper (agrarian reform)

AGRARIAN REFORM AS A PATHWAY OUT OF POVERTY:

THE PHILIPPINE EXPERIENCE

Introduction

The development of agriculture remains to be an unfinished task for developing countries in spite of global concern over recent shakeups in the world financial market and a looming downturn of the giant US economy brought about by the sub-prime mortgage woes. In the midst of these pressing concerns, people in developing and least developed countries remains to be in the quagmire of poverty and the issue of land has been seemingly left behind.

Although agricultural importance, land and agrarian reforms are issues for Third World and some developing countries, development in the agricultural sector should not be undermined or abandoned, but efficiency and sustainability in production systems should be pushed and pursued if governments are serious in taking poverty out of rural areas. A first step is to make incentives right by strengthening property rights.

In developing countries, land continues to constitute as the principal source of livelihood, security and status. In his foreword to the 2008 World Development Report, Robert Zoellick has emphasized that, “three out of every four poor people in developing countries live in rural areas, and most of them depend directly or indirectly on agriculture for their livelihoods.” About six families out of ten are still engaged in agriculture (Prosterman, et. al 1990). Agriculture remains as the key sector of economic activity in the developing countries of the Asia-Pacific Region. Relatively, agriculture’s contribution to GDP is from 8.4% in Malaysia to more than 50% in Myanmar, although its share in employment is higher (Khundkher, 2007).

Developed countries (those who have strong industrial and services sectors), have already departed from improving agriculture (though protectionism has been prevalent) and instead concentrated in developing technology and accumulation of capital. Still, a portion of the world’s economy depended on agriculture as its main export. Asia, for one, remains as a basket of agricultural goods, most of the agricultural produce of the worlds are sourced from this continent. It accounts for almost 39% of agricultural value added of world gross product (WDR, 2008: 340).

The large share of agriculture in poorer economies suggests that strong growth in agriculture is critical for fostering overall economic growth.

Agrarian Reform Policies and Development

The choice of the issue of agrarian reform is anchored on the importance of agriculture in developing the economy. Agriculture’s role is important because most people in poor and developing countries are still in agriculture and make their living from land. Perkins, Radelet and Lindauer (2006: 614) see the need to explore the problem of land prior to agricultural production. For them, the property right that matters most in the agricultural sector is the right over the use of land.

There is a need to redistribute land in order to propel agricultural productivity. Eswaran and Kotwal (2006) presuppose that “the greater the amount of land (capital) a worker has access to, the greater is his or her productivity. In developing countries, land-to-labor ratio is a crucial determinant of the productivity of the poor in agriculture.” A study on redistribution between landholding classes found that transfers between landholding classes do increase the poverty-reducing impact of land-based targeting, though the extra impact is not large (Ravallion and Sen, 2006).

As countries develop, their labor force shifts to industry and services and in the process the well-being of the people improves. Agricultural productivity is the key to poverty alleviation. The process of secular decline in poverty is inevitably associated with a movement of labor from agriculture to other sectors and how agricultural productivity growth facilitates such movement.

In many countries the highly unequal distribution of land arose originally not from market transfers but from the allocation of land to politically privileged groups (Binswanger, Deininger, and Feder 1995). Land and agrarian reforms[1] have always been very politically-intense issues. So political that the economic side of it has always been neglected, if not totally ignored. Regimes have used such a policy as a matter necessary for its survival or legitimacy[2].

From an economic point of view, it is argued that growth would be enhanced if wealth were redistributed from the rich to the poor, because the marginal productivity of capital is higher for the poor (Chenery in Dagdeviren, et. al., 2001).

The underlying thought in implementing a policy of land distribution is that it is aimed at dividing the land, deconcentrating it from the hands of the few so that the gains of the economic pie is shared, equality is achieved, poverty is reduced and the economy back on the track to progress (Hayami, et. al. 1987; MacDonald, 1999; Caymo and Celonanga, 2007). The stylized fact has put forth that poverty incidence in agriculture is high relative to other sectors; therefore development efforts should be in place in reducing poverty level in this sector.

Because land continues to constitute the principal source of livelihood, security and status, landlessness is at the root of some of the world’s most serious and persisting problems, with consequences frequently extending to severe exploitation and deprivation of minimal political rights and basic human needs. Yet, for decades[3] this problem, an issue that should be at the heart of the development process, has been neglected or ignored (Prosterman, 1987: 10).

Putzel (1990: 8) emphasizes that the rapidly growing population has put enormous pressure on land resources. He observes that the skewed pattern of landownership means that as many as 70% of those who earn their living from agriculture do not own and do not have secure access to land. In one of his papers on agrarian reform and development economics, Balisacan (2007) adds up that “high inequality in land distribution is bad for both equity and overall economic growth.”

Agrarian Reform in the Development of Economies

The most remarkable accomplishment of agrarian reform as a redistributive policy can be gleaned from the experience of the so-called East Asian Economic Miracle. The literatures on land reform have proclaimed as a success those policies that were carried out by Japan, Taiwan and South Korea; successful in the sense that those policies were instrumental in ensuring a highly egalitarian agrarian structures (Hayami and Godo, 2005: 214) and transforming the structure of the economy from an agricultural to industrial (Adriano, 1991).

The timing and setting of these economies played a crucial role in carrying out the reform. The land-to-the-tiller programs in the Asian countries were implemented immediately after the war and were accomplished in a short period of time (Hayami and Godo, 2005; Adriano, 1991: 70).

Kay (2001) also presses on the element of timing on the implementation of an agrarian reform policy as he studies Asian and Latin American countries development. He differentiates that in South Korea and Taiwan, agrarian reform came before any significant industrialization had taken place and was a key ingredient in the subsequent successful industrialization process. He continues:

“Most agrarian reforms in Latin America happened after industrialization was already firmly established and were often seen as a way to revive the flagging industrialization process dues to what has been termed the ‘exhaustion of the easy phase of import-substitution industry’. But land reform was not considered as a prerequisite for industrialization in Latin America while in Taiwan and South Korea land reform was a major factor in getting their industrialization started.”

It was not only the Philippines where land reforms were pursued; various Asian and Latin American countries have their share in implementing agrarian reform although with great and far success.

Traditional agrarian system abound most of Latin America, in which most of the people are subsistence farmers working on land of large landholders and that landlords have little incentive to divert part of their income from consumption to investment in their estates, since they tend to receive an acceptable income, “a mere redistribution of the land in Latin America will not automatically bring about an improvement in production and productivity” (Alexander, 1963: 561-2).

Agrarian reform can be seen as an effective program of redistributing wealth and, for some, in improving a country’s economic well-being. In studying the difference in the economic development of Latin American and East Asian countries, Aquino (2003: 27) concludes:

Most of East Asian countries did Agrarian Reforms and carried out comprehensive agrarian development programs, where governments have supported farmers by giving them credits and protecting them from foreign competition. Especially this has been the case in Japan, Korea and Taiwan.

When landowners have a big political clout, like in Philippines and in some Latin American countries, it is difficult to carry out agrarian reform programs (Aquino, 2003).

It should be learned that agrarian reform implemented by governments is not a stand alone policy that by itself would transform the whole economy into a developed country overnight.

In endorsing land reform as an redistributive strategy, Chenery (1979) has warned that redistribution of assets may be accompanied by significant reductions in productivity, which is attributable to the failure of providing the necessary institutional infrastructure and complementary inputs to maintain the earnings potential of the redistributed asset.

In earlier stages of developing strong economies of Taiwan and South Korea substantial land reforms were implemented, with great emphasis on education, and an overall strategy favoring labor-intensive expansion in the nonagricultural sectors, especially labor-intensive manufactured exports (Ahluwalia, et. al., 1979).

Grindle (1990: 179-80) tells that despite the extent of agrarian reform in Mexico, underproductivity, landlessness and marginality characterize most of the country’s rural people. The lesson of Mexico’s experience is that in the absence of a supportive policy environment; in the absence of significant investment in credit, infrastructure and research, extension, Green Revolution technology and human capital formation, and in the absence of a legitimate capacity or rural people to make sustained political and economic demands on the government, agrarian reform cannot resolve deep-seated problems of rural poverty, underproductivity and inequity.

Keyder and Kudat (2000), in analyzing the agrarian transformation in Eastern Europe and some parts of the former Soviet Union, have emphasized that “regime change brought with it faith in the advantages of private ownership and market system, thus redefining the task of reform as making agriculture work efficiently in a market economy.”

In contrast with the Philippine experience, “land reform in the ex-socialist bloc were generally in terms of economic efficiency rather than social goals” (Keyder and Kudat, 2000; 7). The economic reasons that were brought up was that “land reform stressed the efficiency of private ownership and market regulation, rather than concerns for equity, landlessness, social stability and rural-to-urban migration,” which was the opposite for the Philippines.

It has been almost 60 years since Bangladesh introduced land reform legislations and the “overall impact was thus insignificant in terms of both efficiency and equity.” Recent similar legislative measures were also carried out but with “limited impacts on settling the landless poor.”

The legislative measures undertaken by successive governments in Bangladesh do not appear to have brought perceptible benefits to the land poor and landless in Bangladesh. However, some polarization and awareness might have been created among the rural poor and the landless relating to their rights and prerogatives within a highly unequal and inefficient agrarian structure as indicated by unequal distribution of landownership and increasing trend of landlessness (Saha, B.K. 2000-2001 in Sato, 2004).

Even with its considerable industrial development, India’s agriculture remains as its largest sector, the government has since put agrarian reform a priority in its development agenda. The past 50 years have been characterized with significant changes in land ownership with its estimated 17.3 million acres of redistributed land (Sato, 2004). Aided by available panel data, Besley and Burgess (2000: 391) found out that land reforms do appear to have led to reductions in poverty in India. By affecting access to land, land reform may have more a lasting effect on poverty.

In neighbor Indonesia, not only “the imbalance of land authority, uncertainty of protection to land rights at the village community levels and imbalance in land use and utilization pattern due to different geographical composition and population distribution among the islands are the problems.” Sato has recorded “the rapid conversion of meager agricultural land to non-agricultural usage” as causing severe threats to sustainability of agricultural practices and aggravating the problem of landlessness among the farmers in villages in Indonesia.

Thailand’s Agrarian Land Reform Office has revised its objectives under its program (Sato, 2004: 41). It has now emphasized its resolve to a) distribute land to farmers according to ALRA; b) enable farmers to access capital resources; c) ensure self-development of the farmers in the land reform area; and d) increase the perennial plantation, food resources and income generation activities and processes. Similar to the experience of the Philippines, Thailand has met resistance from “rich farmers, and fund constraints” as stumbling blocks in proceeding with land reform.

The diverse experiences of developing countries in carrying out agrarian reform have mixed results. While it was a success for others, some have made conditions worst.

Impacts of Agrarian Reform

The available studies on agrarian reform have produced varied consequences and results. It is noteworthy to consider that there should be complementary programs that are laid side by side with agrarian reform for it to prosper and spur development of the agricultural sector, only then can it reduce poverty in rural areas.

Aside from having to redistribute land as a source of income, agrarian reform has also brought about changes in agriculture and in the economy as a whole. Land redistribution is politically feasible, its economic effects on poverty can be ambiguous (Bardhan, 1995).

A cross country observation, which includes the Philippines, by Binswanger and Deininger (1997: 1962), revealed that by implementing large public investment programs in rural areas and partial land reform programs, which addressed structural problems, can result in modest increases in agricultural output and modest reductions in rural poverty.

The same authors have also noted that redistributive land reform not only gives land to more efficient produce but also reduces credit market imperfections, which lead to improved investment decisions by the poor in the economic side. Greater wealth also increases the ability of the poor to directly participate in the political process.

Ranis (1995) has observed that as a result of the land reform and the increasingly labor-intensive mix of agricultural outputs, the distribution of rural incomes in Taiwan also improved dramatically. At the same time, farmers’ ability and willingness to take advantage of new investment opportunities outside of agriculture increased. Both trends further encouraged the growth of rural, small- and medium-scale industries and services.

Pranab (1995) has pronounced doubts that land redistribution may not always boost productivity and reduce poverty if small farmers will not be able to access production credit (particularly significant as purchased inputs become more important in modern agriculture), to information and marketing networks, and to the capacity to diffuse and insure against risk. According to him, the redistribution of land from large to small farmers may also reduce the demand for hired labor (while correcting the under use of family labor on small farms) and depress the wage rates for landless laborers, particularly if they get no land in the land reform. This would put the larger farmers as having better access to these resources.

Banerjee (1995) makes the case for land reform suggesting that “with more assets the poor are able to obtain more credit and better insurance coverage, which helps them invest more effectively.” He also believed that the children of the beneficiaries of land reform may have better health and more education, which may make them more productive.

The land given to them may even be used to start small businesses of their own by using their land as loan collateral. He emphasized that “land can be a permanent source of income for poor families.”

On a final note, Barlowe (1953: 180) summarizes that “the impact that land reform has on economic development varies considerably according to the nature of the land reform program, the manner in which it is carried out, the resources of the country and the extent to which they have already been developed, and the social, economic, political, and legal institutions of the country. In a sense, the greatest contribution that land reform can make in some countries lies in its ability to improve the institutional setting within which economic development is expected.”

However the magnitude and intensity of studies conducted in understanding Philippine agrarian reform, and even in international scene, there remains to be more room for much needed quantitative data that could clearly and definitively conclude the impact of such policy on economic development.

Agrarian Reform in the Philippines

In the Philippine context, the skewed land distribution pattern is not a product of recent history but a legacy of its long colonial experience (Adriano, 1991).

The Philippines has implemented a myriad of land and agrarian reform programs for almost a century[4] now, all aimed at improving the backbone of the economy, but still lay in the quagmire of poverty and inequality. The gap between the rich and the poor is yet to be bridged and poses an insurmountable task not only to the Philippines but to other developing nations.

The first real attempt to implement a redistributive land reform was marked by the passing of Presidential Decree No. 2 (PD-2) by President Ferdinand Marcos in 1972 under a dictatorial regime with similarly authoritarian settings in China, and very high US influence in Japan and South Korea (Aquino, 2003). According to PD-2 the whole country was declared as land reform area. Subsequently, PD No. 27 initiated the distribution of rice and corn lands to actual tillers through operations land transfer (OLD) whereby tenants were to become full owners after paying 15 equal amortizations (Khundker, 2007).

However, Marcos’s land reform attempt achieved only limited gains due to lack of support services and cumbersome process of obtaining land by the intended beneficiaries. Further, high retention limit (7 hectares) and limited coverage of the reform area (only rice and corn lands were being distributed to the actual tiller) also led to limited results. Despite limited success, some observers are inclined to term PD 27 as the springboard of the CARP introduced later.

In its continued struggle to redistribute land, the Philippine government’s newly-installed Congress in 1987, after overthrowing the 20-year Marcos dictatorship, passed the RA 6657 or the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law. The law was signed by Pres. Corazon Aquino in June 10, 1988.

Aquino, herself coming from a land-rich clan in Tarlac, was criticized for not grabbing the opportunity to truly implement an agrarian reform policy but instead passed the opportunity to the landlord-controlled Congress. Though the administration of Aquino has failed (Hayami, et. al., 1987; Putzel, 1990; Gordoncillo, et. al. 2003) to live up to the promise of putting the CARP as the centerpiece of her government (Bandyopadhyay, 1985; Putzel in Silliman, 1998), the agrarian reform program has been comprehensive in comparison with all the past policies related to land distribution in the country (Khundker, 2007; Navarro, 2007). It is but more harder for the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) and other line agencies concerned to implement the reform especially in a resistant and hostile atmosphere.

Hayami, Quisumbing and Adriano (1990) observe:

“In terms of scope and coverage, Philippine land reform laws have actually surpassed most land reform laws in South and Southeast Asia. Yet, the reform efforts have faller short of the country’s needs, as indicated by the intensified insurgency problem in recent years.”

CARP and the ARC Approach

Approved in 1987 by Pres. Aquino, CARP is composed of three critical elements which enable its service-delivery aside from the redistribution of land: Land Tenure Improvement, Program Beneficiaries’ Development and Agrarian Reform Justice.

The expired CARP is being administered under an extended 10-year program within the premises of RA 8532 and was allotted P50 billion pesos for its implementation. Three phases of agrarian reform execution involves: 1) the democratization of land ownership which is focused on the acceleration of land transfer and land tenure improvement programs, 2) enhancement of farm productivity through better access to support services: basic rural infrastructure, credit, market, technology and extension services, 3) optimization of farm management to realize the full productive and income potential of awarded lands and to promote global competitiveness (Prestoza, et. al. 2003).

Table 1.1. CARP Scope and Accomplishment, as of December 2006
Land Type/Mode of Acquisition							Scope (in hectares)		Accomplishment (%)
DAR							4,428,357		86.4
Private Agricultural Lands							3,093,251		69.5
	Operation Land Transfer						616,233		91.1
	Government Financing Institutions						243,434		66.1
	Voluntary Offer to Sell						437,970		127.9
	Compulsory Acquisition						1,507,122		17.7
	Voluntary Land Transfer						288,492		208.6
Non-Private Agricultural Lands							1,335,106		125.5
	Settlements						604,116		119.2
	Landed Estates						70,173		115.0
	Government Owned Lands						660,817		132.3
DENR							3,771,411		81.0
	Public A&D Lands
	Integrated Social Forestry/						2,502,000		68.7
	Community Based Forest Mountain						1,269,411		105.2
TOTAL							8,199,768		83.9
Note: Subject to the ongoing inventory of CARP scope.
Source: DAR and DENR as cited from Balisacan, 2007

To implement CARP, Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) made a strategic decision to comprehensively focus its activities on agrarian reform committees (ARCs). Agrarian Reform Communities is a barangay or a cluster of barangays where a critical mass of farmers and farm workers were awaiting the full implementation of agrarian reform. The ARC concept was partly responsible for reinvigorating the interest of foreign donors in CARP.

The ARC development strategy emphasizes on institutional development and participation. It has been proven to be an effective approach for support service delivery and has contributed in the promotion of self-reliance and the capacity of ARC members to manage their projects (Arlanza, et. al., 2006). The ARC development strategy composed of Land Tenure Improvement, Social Infrastructure and Local Capacity Building, Sustainable, Area-based Rural Enterprises Development and Basic Social Services System Development.

In a published manual, (Basconcillo, et. al. 2005: 81-146), the DAR lists down eight elements to be considered so that a viable ARC is established: 1) land tenure improvement; 2) organizational building and strengthening; 3) economic and physical infrastructure support services; 4) farm productivity and income improvement; 5) agri-based rural industrialization; 6) basic social services; 7) balanced ecosystem development and 8) gender and development.

With the passage of a law extending CARP for another ten years, the ARC concept has evolved and developed to be known as the KARZones or the KALAHI Agrarian Reform Zones which are the convergence sites of DAR operations in collaboration with other rural development agencies. They serve as convergence venues of various government-initiated extension services and technology promotion programs for agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBs).

KALAHI Agrarian Reform Zones are defined as a sub-provincial area comprising of one or more municipalities with critical mass of ARBs and farming households. The zone is composed of ARCs and adjacent AR barangays within the DA’s SAFDZ; areas covered by DSWD-CIDSS: KKB (KALAHI – Comprehensive and Integrated Development Support Services: Kapangyarihan at Kaunlaran sa Barangay) each zone should coincide with the boundaries of congressional districts. Kalahi Zones should have at least two ARCs, existing ARCs have high level of development, at least 50% of barangay are covered by CARP, at least 75% LTI accomplishment in the whole zone and with at least 30% of the farming population are ARBs.

After the term of Sec. Ernesto Garilao, the concept and principles of ARC development were viewed and evaluated. Two major findings were identified: 1) the need to expand the coverage to increase the magnitude of ARB reach, and 2) the lack of resources to address perceived ARC needs given the limitations of government resources (Basconcillo, et. al. 2005).

CARP Assessments

In more than 20 years of its implementation, the CARP has been studied and assessed in almost all its aspects that it deserves to be reviewed and presented.

CARP impact assessments were available as early as 2003 (Reyes, 2001; Gordoncillo, et. al., 2002a and 2002b; Habito, et. al., 2001; Paunlagui and Rola, 2001; Bautista and dela Cruz, 2002; Manasan and Mercado, 2001). The impact assessment delved on the micro; meso; investment, productivity and land market; social capital and civic entrepreneurship; fiscal aspect; impact on poverty; and institutional and organizational assessment. These seven studies on the impact of the agrarian reform program constitute a valuable and comprehensive analysis of how land asset reform implemented under a democracy has affected the quality of life of the ARBs, and how financial resources were utilized towards this end (Lim, 2003).

Among the highlights (Lim, 2003) of the impact assessments are its results on the tenurial relations brought about by the CARP, bottlenecks to its implementation were also identified, the persistence of share tenancy and land mortgaging are still prevalent, although there significant declines in share tenancy, leaseholding and incidence of owner non-cultivators between 1989-1999.

There was also no evidence of improved distribution of land and income in the rural areas and that poverty incidence remains to be high at 63% which is even higher than the national poverty incidence. At the bottom of the eight-volume impact assessment are policy recommendations aimed improving the administration of agrarian reform. Among those policy suggestions is for the government to resolve existing land distribution, land valuation and other conflicts and to finish agrarian reform in the targeted areas.

Habito, et. al. (2003) confirm that land acquisition and distribution has been relatively slow-paced among proprietors, with numerous instances of subdivision of threatened land among non-cultivating children (with one sibling taking care of the management of all other sibling’s parcels). This sluggishness contrasts with the dispatch with which LAD has proceeded in corporate farms outside sugarcane. The respondents in their study indicated shared tenancy decreased to 17% in 2000 and 23% in 1990. Owner-cultivators increased from 29% in 1990 to 40% in 2000, while those who were amortizing owners also increased from 12% in 1990 to 17% in 2000. Likewise, rice farmers who were already ARBs in 1990 significantly improved their labor productivity more than the non-ARBs.

In a recent study (Arlanza, 2006) commissioned on the performance in area coverage by DAR with the German Technical Cooperation:

Based on the performance in terms of area coverage, the implementation of the Program has already accounted for 82 percent of the total estimated scope. However, a more stratified assessment of this performance reveals that the rate of completion was pulled up by the extremely high performance in distributing government-owned lands (120 percent), voluntary land transfers (179 percent), voluntary offers to sell (126 percent), and the final completion of OLT (95 percent). The more important task of distributing lands under compulsory acquisition (CA) has not been prioritized. The cumulative coverage of this category has accounted for only 16 percent of the estimated scope.

Conclusions

As numerous studies on agriculture and land reform have confirmed, agrarian reform is not the only way out of poverty reduction. While agrarian reform programs were promoted to be a redistributive program in order to lower inequality, there remains be more for government to provide in terms of improving the quality of institutions, pouring more infrastructure investments in agriculture, provision for technological growth, and allowing credit access to farmers. Empirical studies have proven this point.

Barlowe (1953) emphasized that land reform offers no panacea. It can carry and give life to the seeds of economic development, but the process of development must be nurtured by many forces and factors that lie beyond the scope of land reform. In the same line, land and agrarian reforms should be viewed only as a part of a comprehensive economic and social development strategy rather than a cure-all (Adriano, 1991 and Balisacan, 2007).

Dudwick, et. al. (2007; 2) notes that although land reform may potentially contribute to pro-poor growth by the increasing farm efficiency and by distributing land widely, it is only one of many important complementary reforms and cannot be expected to stimulate sustainable pro-poor growth by itself.

Balisacan (2007) draws lessons from developing countries from a historical perspective. He emphasized, among others, on the speed and credibility by which the program was implemented, the institutions in place, the political legitimacy and acceptability of the program, its simplicity, transparency, and uniformly enforceable rules of participation. As early as 1991, Adriano has identified the major bottlenecks and loopholes of the CARP, a) limited coverage, b) issue of single versus variable retention limit and award ceiling; c) non-land transfer and priority areas: provisions favoring agribusiness corporations, d) co-existence of two modes of productive organizations (i.e. small farms and large-sized agribusiness-operated farms), e) inefficiency and inequality arguments of tenancy regulation and f) cumbersome land valuation.

Eswaran and Kotwal (2006: 120, 126) draws from the outcomes of the Green Revolution where the high-yield variety technology was introduced. The green revolution increased income inequality in relative terms. An important lesson from this is that public investment in appropriate irrigation schemes, the development of credit institutions and primary education are essential to ensuring an equitable distribution of the gains from agricultural productivity growth.

In order for agriculture to grow, it should go hand-in-hand with the expansion of markets, infrastructure and producer services so that land and labor can be shifted continuously toward their most profitable uses. Improving the productivity of agriculture is the single most important step a developing country can take to reduce poverty. For this to happen, agrarian reform should be implemented before agricultural productivity can be attained, only then can it be said that it has become a pathway out of poverty.

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[1] Land reform is the transfer of agricultural landholdings (i.e. land) to landless tenants or laborers, while agrarian reform includes land reform and essential as well as supportive measures required to make the beneficiaries of land reform economically viable and self-reliant.

[2] Agrarian reform has been seen by many and still is considered as the answer to stabilize the socio-political being of the country (Prosterman, 1987; Hayami, Quisumbing and Adriano, 1987; Thorbecke, 1988; Putzel, 1992; Kay, 2001).

[3] The problem of landlessness and its relationship to economic development, social equity and political stability faced today by leaders in the Philippines and Central America, in Bangladesh and Zimbabwe, were faced in sixth century B.C. Athens by Solon and Pisistratus, in second century B.C. Rome by the Gracchi brothers (who were assassinated as a result of their attempts at land reform), and in ancient China, where land was periodically divided on an equitable basis. Prosterman, et. al. (1990: 1).

[4] The DAR has recorded the Philippine Organic Act of 1902 which has set the ceiling for lands to be acquired (16 has. for private individual and 1,024 has. for corporation.) The law, however, was hardly implemented because it only enabled the American agricultural interests to control huge tracts of land.

The preceding article is a paper submitted to Dr. Arsenio Balisacan as DE291 (Development Economics) requirement during my graduate school stint (Master in Development Economics) in the School of Economics, University of the Philippines - Diliman, October 2008. This paper induved a worth of 1.50 in final grade...