15 years of CARP:
CARP Beyond the Numbers

The Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) is now reduced to a numbers game, as government officials boast of how its targets are reached mainly through official statistics and anecdotal evidence of selected farmers finally getting what is due them. But are these anecdotes a reflection of the overall reality in the countryside? Should CARP-related statistics be taken at face value?

By ROY MORILLA 
Bulatlat.com/Peasant Education and Studies Center (PESC)

Inutile CARP is lambasted by peasant protesters on June 10, CARP's 15th anniversary
Photo by Aubrey Makilan

Since its implementation in 1988, agrarian reform secretaries have only made a scoring sheet out of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP).

Every year, the Departments of Agrarian Reform (DAR) and Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) release their so-called accomplishment reports in implementing the program.

These reports are usually tabulated with items like Operation Land Transfer (OLT, the Marcos land reform program under Presidential Decree [PD] 27), Voluntary Offer to Sell (VOS), Compulsory Acquisition (CA) of private lands, lands owned by government financial institutions (GFIs) and alienable and disposable public lands (A & Ds) by the DENR.

The departments come up with big numbers, involving millions of hectares of land and with thousands of reported Certificates of Land Ownership Awards (CLOAs), Certificates of Land Transfer (CLTs) and Emancipation Patents (EPs).

An objective assessment of CARP, however, should take into account the plight of the farmer-beneficiaries themselves. It is a common sight for peasant organizations coming from different rural areas to protest the CARP's implementation and to call for a genuine land reform program.

In Southern Tagalog, the regional farmer organization Katipunan ng mga Samahang Magbubukid sa Timog Katagalugan (KASAMA-TK) reports that there are 129,467 hectares of land under land disputes and conversions, mostly land grabbing cases perpetuated by big landlords.

In Cagayan Valley in northern Philippines, farmer organizations say that there are 422,648 hectares of agricultural lands under dispute. Some 14,860 hectares of these are filed with the DAR Adjudication Board (DARAB).

The total agricultural lands under dispute from these two regions involving DAR already reach 133,814 hectares.

Widespread land conversion

The problem with the implementation of CARP is the systematic and massive land use conversion by big landowners. During the 1990s, DAR approved 95 percent of the total applications, covering 56,168 hectares of productive agricultural lands. 

No less than former Agriculture Undersecretary Cristino Collado disclosed in 1998 that from 1992 to 1998, around 800,000 hectares of agricultural lands were converted, reducing 2.1 million hectares farmlands to 1.3 million hectares.

CARP supposedly covers these vast agricultural lands for distribution to tenant farmers. Combining all these lands converted and under dispute from the two regions, they would total 933,813 hectares.

Reduction of target

The CARP's target was actually reduced in 1996, with the DAR tasked to distribute only 4.3 million hectares, and the DENR, 3.77 million hectares. 

At present, partial list of commercial farms managed by big agro-corporations like Dole and Del Monte in Mindanao span 209,000 hectares and these are considered to be exempted from land distribution.

With these commercial lands and the reported development projects in Cagayan Valley reaching 387,480 hectares, this would give the DAR only a practical working scope of 3.7 million hectares and not 4.3 million hectares as claimed.  

The 0.93 million hectares coming from only two regions would give the DAR an approximate maximum accomplishment of 2.71 million hectares only and not its reported 3.0 million hectares.

During his consultation last June 4 with the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) and lawyers from Sentro para sa Tunay na Repormang Agraryo (SENTRA), Agrarian Reform Secretary Roberto Pagdanganan admitted that they have no clear accounting of CLOAs that were cancelled or under dispute.

With this admission, the reported 74 percent accomplishment of CARP becomes very dubious.

Not an issue of accuracy

The point of all these is not just the accuracy of the statistics but the essence of CARP which runs counter to genuine agrarian reform. Nevertheless, DAR should review all its accomplishments because more probably, a significant proportion of their accounted CLOAs or land distributions had long been nullified and thus had already dislocated supposed farmer-beneficiaries.

It is imprudent to disregard the existence of massive land use conversions and cases of land grabbing that have displaced and further oppressed landless farmers. It is also misleading to claim that CARP's accomplishment is increasing while the farmers are disclosing the failure of the said land reform program.

Indeed, a genuine agrarian reform program should not be about numbers but the objective realization of equality and justice through the social equity of land for the landless farmers. Bulatlat.com

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