AGRARIAN REFORM AND SOCIAL A.

AGRARIAN REFORM

LEGISLATION 1987 CONSTITUTION: ARTICLE II – DECLARATION OF PRINCIPLES AND STATE

Cristina Andrea N. Rioflorido, ALS Block D 2021
Notes:
 Based on Atty. Casis’s outline (weekly syllabus, SY 2018-2019)
 Codal provisions are copy-pasted from online (DAR Website for the CARL)
 Some notes are lifted from Atty. Casis’s notes (DAR Website)
 Super special thanks to Andrea De Vera for the recordings, Hosea Salazar for the
digests and notes
POLICIES PRINCIPLES
Section 21. The State shall promote comprehensive rural development and agrarian
reform.
1987 CONSTITUTION: ARTICLE XII – NATIONAL ECONOMY AND PATRIMONY
Section 1. The goals of the national economy are a more equitable distribution of
opportunities, income, and wealth; a sustained increase in the amount of goods and
services produced by the nation for the benefit of the people; and an expanding
productivity as the key to raising the quality of life for all, especially the underprivileged.
The State shall promote industrialization and full employment based on sound
agricultural development and agrarian reform, through industries that make full of
efficient use of human and natural resources, and which are competitive in both domestic
and foreign markets. However, the State shall protect Filipino enterprises against unfair
foreign competition and trade practices.
In the pursuit of these goals, all sectors of the economy and all region s of the country
shall be given optimum opportunity to develop. Private enterprises, including
corporations, cooperatives, and similar collective organizations, shall be encouraged to
broaden the base of their ownership.

1987 CONSTITUTION: ARTICLE XIII – SOCIAL JUSTICE AND HUMAN RIGHTS

Section 3. The State shall afford full protection to labor, local and overseas, organized
and unorganized, and promote full employment and equality of employment
opportunities for all.
It shall guarantee the rights of all workers to self-organization, collective bargaining and
negotiations, and peaceful concerted activities, including the right to strike in accordance
with law. They shall be entitled to security of tenure, humane conditions of work, and a
living wage. They shall also participate in policy and decision-making processes affecting
their rights and benefits as may be provided by law.
The State shall promote the principle of shared responsibility between workers and
employers and the preferential use of voluntary modes in settling disputes, including
conciliation, and shall enforce their mutual compliance therewith to foster industrial
peace.
The State shall regulate the relations between workers and employers, recognizing the
right of labor to its just share in the fruits of production and the right of enterprises to
reasonable returns to investments, and to expansion and growth.

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Section 4. The State shall, by law, undertake an agrarian reform program founded on the
right of farmers and regular farmworkers who are landless, to own directly or collectively
the lands they till or, in the case of other farmworkers, to receive a just share of the fruits
thereof. To this end, the State shall encourage and undertake the just distribution of all
agricultural lands, subject to such priorities and reasonable retention limits as the
Congress may prescribe, taking into account ecological, developmental, or equity
considerations, and subject to the payment of just compensation. In determining
retention limits, the State shall respect the right of small landowners. The State shall
further provide incentives for voluntary land-sharing.
Section 5. The State shall recognize the right of farmers, farmworkers, and landowners,
as well as cooperatives, and other independent farmers' organizations to participate in
the planning, organization, and management of the program, and shall provide support
to agriculture through appropriate technology and research, and adequate financial,
production, marketing, and other support services.
Section 6. The State shall apply the principles of agrarian reform or stewardship,
whenever applicable in accordance with law, in the disposition or utilization of other
natural resources, including lands of the public domain under lease or concession suitable
to agriculture, subject to prior rights, homestead rights of small settlers, and the rights of
indigenous communities to their ancestral lands. The State may resettle landless farmers
and farmworkers in its own agricultural estates which shall be distributed to them in the
manner provided by law.
Section 8. The State shall provide incentives to landowners to invest the proceeds of the
agrarian reform program to promote industrialization, employment creation, and
privatization of public sector enterprises. Financial instruments used as payment for their
lands shall be honored as equity in enterprises of their choice.
RA 6657 – COMPREHENSIVE AGRARIAN REFORM LAW OF 1988
Section 2. Declaration of Principles and Policies. — It is the policy of the State to pursue a
Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP). The welfare of the landless farmers
and farmworkers will receive the highest consideration to promote social justice and to
move the nation toward sound rural development and industrialization, and the
establishment of owner cultivatorship of economic-size farms as the basis of Philippine
agriculture.
To this end, a more equitable distribution and ownership of land, with due regard to the
rights of landowners to just compensation and to the ecological needs of the nation, shall
be undertaken to provide farmers and farmworkers with the opportunity to enhance their
dignity and improve the quality of their lives through greater productivity of agricultural
lands.
The agrarian reform program is founded on the right of farmers and regular farmworkers,
who are landless, to own directly or collectively the lands they till or, in the case of other
farm workers, to receive a just share of the fruits thereof. To this end, the State shall
encourage and undertake the just distribution of all agricultural lands, subject to the
priorities and retention limits set forth in this Act, having taken into account ecological,
developmental, and equity considerations, and subject to the payment of just
compensation. The State shall respect the right of small landowners, and shall provide
incentives for voluntary land-sharing.
The State shall recognize the right of farmers, farmworkers and landowners, as well as
cooperatives and other independent farmers' organizations, to participate in the
planning, organization, and management of the program, and shall provide support to
agriculture through appropriate technology and research, and adequate financial
production, marketing and other support services.
The State shall apply the principles of agrarian reform, or stewardship, whenever
applicable, in accordance with law, in the disposition or utilization of other natural
resources, including lands of the public domain, under lease or concession, suitable to
agriculture, subject to prior rights, homestead rights of small settlers and the rights of
indigenous communities to their ancestral lands.
The State may resettle landless farmers and farmworkers in its own agricultural estates,
which shall be distributed to them in the manner provided by law. By means of
appropriate incentives, the State shall encourage the formation and maintenance of
economic-size family farms to be constituted by individual beneficiaries and small
landowners. The State shall protect the rights of subsistence fishermen, especially of local
communities, to the preferential use of communal marine and fishing resources, both
inland and offshore. It shall provide support to such fishermen through appropriate
technology and research, adequate financial, production and marketing assistance and
other services. The State shall also protect, develop and conserve such resources. The
protection shall extend to offshore fishing grounds of subsistence fishermen against
foreign intrusion. Fishworkers shall receive a just share from their labor in the utilization
of marine and fishing resources.
The State shall be guided by the principles that land has a social function and land
ownership has a social responsibility. Owners of agricultural lands have the obligation to
cultivate directly or through labor administration the lands they own and thereby make
the land productive.
The State shall provide incentives to landowners to invest the proceeds of the agrarian
reform program to promote industrialization, employment and privatization of public
sector enterprises. Financial instruments used as payment for lands shall contain features
that shall enhance negotiability and acceptability in the marketplace. The State may lease
undeveloped lands of the public domain to qualified entities for the development of
capital-intensive farms, and traditional and pioneering crops especially those for exports
subject to the prior rights of the beneficiaries under this Act.
Section 3. Definitions. —For the purpose of this Act, unless the context indicates
otherwise:
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 (a) Agrarian Reform means redistribution of lands, regardless of crops or fruits the defaulting tenant-farmer is a member, with the cooperative having a right of recourse
produced, to farmers and regular farmworkers who are landless, irrespective of against him;
tenurial arrangement, to include the totality of factors and support services
The government shall guaranty such amortizations with shares of stock in government-
designed to lift the economic status of the beneficiaries and all other
owned and government-controlled corporations;
arrangements alternative to the physical redistribution of lands, such as
production or profit-sharing, labor administration, and the distribution of shares No title to the land owned by the tenant-farmers under this Decree shall be actually
of stocks, which will allow beneficiaries to receive a just share of the fruits of the issued to a tenant-farmer unless and until the tenant-farmer has become a full-fledged
lands they work. member of a duly recognized farmer's cooperative;
Title to land acquired pursuant to this Decree or the Land Reform Program of the
Government shall not be transferable except by hereditary succession or to the
PD 27 – DECREEING THE EMANCIPATION OF TENANTS FROM THE BONDAGE OF
Government in accordance with the provisions of this Decree, the Code of Agrarian
THE SOIL, TRANSFERRING TO THEM THE OWNERSHIP OF THE LAND THEY TILL
Reforms and other existing laws and regulations;
AND PROVIDING THE INSTRUMENTS AND MECHANISM THEREFOR
The Department of Agrarian Reform through its Secretary is hereby empowered to
In as much as the old concept of land ownership by a few has spawned valid and
promulgate rules and regulations for the implementation of this Decree.
legitimate grievances that gave rise to violent conflict and social tension,
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The redress of such legitimate grievances being one of the fundamental objectives of the
New Society,
Since Reformation must start with the emancipation of the tiller of the soil from his
bondage,
Agrarian Reform vs. Land Reform

NOW, THEREFORE, I, FERDINAND E. MARCOS, President of the Philippines, by virtue of (Table)

the powers vested in me by the Constitution as Commander-in-Chief of all the Armed
Forces of the Philippines, and pursuant to Proclamation No. 1081, dated September 21,
1972, and General Order No. 1 dated September 22, 1972, as amended do hereby decree
and order the emancipation of all tenant farmers as of this day, October 21, 1972:
This shall apply to tenant farmers of private agricultural lands primarily devoted to rice
and corn under a system of sharecrop or lease-tenancy, whether classified as landed
estate or not;
The tenant farmer, whether in land classified as landed estate or not, shall be deemed
owner of a portion constituting a family-size farm of five (5) hectares if not irrigated and
three (3) hectares if irrigated;
In all cases, the landowner may retain an area of not more than seven (7) hectares if such
landowner is cultivating such area or will now cultivate it;
For the purpose of determining the cost of the land to be transferred to the tenant-farmer
pursuant to this Decree, the value of the land shall be equivalent to two and one-half (2
1/2) times the average harvest of three normal crop years immediately preceding the
promulgation of this Decree;
The total cost of the land, including interest at the rate of six (6) per centum per annum,
shall be paid by the tenant in fifteen (15) years of fifteen (15) equal annual amortizations;
In case of default, the amortization due shall be paid by the farmers' cooperative in which

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B. LANDS COVERED C. EXCLUSIONS FROM THE COVERAGE OF CARL
1. Section 4 and 5, CARL 1. Section 10, CARL
2. Section 7, CARL a. Department of Agrarian Reform v. Philippine Communications Satellite Corp., G.R. No.
152640, June 15, 2006
3. Agricultural Lands: Section 3(c), CARL
b. Central Mindanao University vs. DAR, GR No. 10009, Oct. 22, 1992
a. Natalia Realty, Inc., et al. v. Department of Agrarian Reform, et al., G.R. No. 103302
August 12, 1993 2. RA No.7881 – Fishponds and Prawn Farms
b. Roxas & Co., Inc. v. DAMBA-NFSW and DAR, G.R. No. 149548 : December 4, 2009
c. Jose Luis Ros, et al. v. Department Of Agrarian Reform, et al., G.R. No. 132477, August 31,
2005
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4. Agricultural Activity: Section 3(b), CARL
a. Luz Farms v. Secretary of Agrarian Reform, G.R. No. 86889,
December 4, 1990
b. Department Of Agrarian Reform v. Delia T. Sutton, et al., G.R. No. 162070, October 19, (◕ ‿ ◕ ✿)
2005
c. Milestone Farms, Inc. v. Office of the President, G.R. No.
182332, February 23, 2011
5. Idle Land: Section 3(e), CARL

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