SPECIAL REPORT

Negros: A Bastion of Landlord Resistance
Conclusion

To evade land reform, Negros plantation owners together with local executives and land reform officials have devised various schemes. All these enflamed cane farm workers even more.

By Karl G. Ombion and Ranie Azue
Bulatlat

Under the farcical distribution scheme known as the SDO, landlords retain
vast tracts of sugar plantations. CIRMS PHOTO

BACOLOD CITY - The history of landlord resistance to agrarian reform has never been more pronounced than in Negros Island.

In the 1980s, the peasants and farm workers-based revolutionary movement and the militant struggles of National Federation of Sugar Workers (NFSW) for lands alarmed the ruling elites in the region.

This prompted the Bitay Lacson-Coscolluela administration in Negros to implement at that time a 60-30-10 scheme: retention of 60 percent of lands in Negros for sugar production, 30 percent for diversified commercial crops, and 10 percent for so-called land transfer program through voluntary offer to sell, voluntary land sharing, temporary land use, contract growing and management contract.

Other similar schemes were the Sixto K. Roxas “Salvapulbamur Scheme” that wanted to promote the district-size Economic Development Management System as mere key production areas for commercial crops for exports; the Provincial Government-Philippine National Bank Scheme of “Negros Land for a Productive Life Program (NLPLP),” a socio-economic program without land transfer; and the Ed Locsin’s model of “Voluntary Land Sharing” and encouragement of peasants-landlords cooperative partnership projects backed by government and foreign funding assistance.

All these proved futile however as no actual land transfer took place. The peasants’ discontent only grew even more.

Under Aquino’s CARP, landlords’ resistance to agrarian reform has intensified all the more. Reportedly in connivance with the powers that be, big landowners were able to carry out land reform evasion schemes such as the leaseback scheme, buy-back Scheme, land use conversion, Community-based Forestry Management Contract, Foreshore Lease Agreement, contract growing scheme, SDO and now, JVA.

Contrary to DAR claims of high accomplishments in land distribution in Negros, a closer scrutiny of its actual land distribution as of 2004 reveals a measly 15 percent of its total targets of 246,465 hectares. Even DAR’s compulsory acquisition of commercial farms/plantations of 50 has. and above, which should have started in 1998, has covered a dismal 656 has. most of which are bank-foreclosed lands anyway. 

Another irony is the fact that of 153,650 has. of sugarlands marked by DAR Task Force Sugarland for land distribution, only 26,992 has. of sugarlands are actually covered in Negros Occidental, the bastion of landlord monopoly, while 126,658 has. are in Negros Oriental. 

Today, of the 1.33 million has. total land area of Negros, 818,991.026 has. are under private control. Of these, some 618,991 has. are controlled by 46,574 landowners; about 200,000 has comprising 101 has. and above are controlled by 486 families only. This practically placed around two-third of Negros lands are under private monopoly control.

It is not surprising therefore that the big landlords and big sugar planter-miller-traders have been fiercely opposing any agrarian reform implementation in sugarlandia. They have always insisted for the continuous consolidation of bigger lands and sugar farms into sustainable economic units.

According to a PSMA (Philippine Sugar Millers Association) leader, a viable economic size unit must retain at least 70 has. Less than that is not profitable anymore especially if one thinks “globally,” he said. Bulatlat / With CIRMS News Service