AGRARIAN AND NATURAL RESOURCES REFORM

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.

1. The foundation of Agrarian Land Reform.

- The various aspects of Land Reform are discussed and, in separate provisions, Agricultural

Land, Urban Land, and other Natural Resources (other lands of the public domain) are

singled out for treatment as being all subject to the general sweep of regulations governing

“Acquisition, ownership, use, and disposition.”

- “The right of farmers and regular farm workers, who are landless, to own directly or

collectively the lands they till or, in the case of other farmer workers, to receive a just

share of the fruits thereof.”

o Commissioner Bacani saw no necessary and self-evident bond of ownership

between the tiller and the exact same piece of land he tills. His own suggestion was

to found the right of ownership upon the exigencies of the common good in the

concrete circumstances of the nation.

o Commissioner Villegas. He warned, that we cannot constitutionalize certain

provisions which are requirements of the common good today which may not be

exigency of the common good in the year 2000”

o The adjective “basic” was discarded. Commissioner Aquino put it thus: “the polar

star-when we expound the principle of land reform- is that the farmer has a right to

the land he tills, but this is not an immutable right. His claim of ownership does not

automatically pertain or correspond to the same land that he is actually and

physically tilling.
- Subjection to land reform does not depend on the form of ownership. The laws on agrarian

reform simply speak of the “landowner” without qualification as to under what title the land

is held or what rights to the land the landowner may exercise. There is no distinction made

whether the landowner holds “naked title” only or can exercise all the rights of ownership.

P.D. No. 27 and R.A. No. 6657.

2. Holders of the right to own land through agrarian land reform.

- “Farmers and regular farm workers, who are landless.” The beneficiaries are classified into

farmers and farm workers.

o Farmers are those who have a tenancy relationship with the landowners, which

relationship may be present or historical.

o Commissioner Aquino. “basic principle of all land reform codes presently in effect” –

“that the tenancy relationship be abolished” Indeed, it might be true that there can

be a “beneficial tenancy”

- Farm workers are sub-classified into “regular” and “other”. This is recognition of the

substantial differences in the situations of the various farm workers. The right to claim the

lands they till is recognized only in the regular farm worker, and only the right to a just share

in the fruits of production is conceded to the non-regulars.

- The scope of ownership of an agrarian reform beneficiary can be made just to limitations.

o Congress has the right to limit the beneficiary’s right to sell, dispose, or even

mortgage the property.

o Congress may also take measures to prevent fragmentation resulting in

uneconomical or unproductive size.

o Even the rights of the beneficiary’s heirs can be effectively limited.

o “Economic family-size farm” as embodied in past land reform laws, notably R.A. No.

3844

- Can the right of the farmers and farm worker be waived?

o Commissioner Aquino: “the element of compulsion works against the landowner,

but not against the farmer or the intended beneficiary of the program. The right to

waive is not recognized when it amounts to a waiver in favor of another. Surely, we

will recognize the freedom of choice pertaining to the worker, on whether or not he

is willing to assume the obligation.”

o Commissioner Lerum: “my understanding is that the provision does not

contemplate a waiver but that the tenant may not want to exercise his right.”

o The ownership by beneficiaries can be either individual or collective.

o But does every kind of collective ownership satisfy the constitutional mandate?

Agrarian reform program is based on the right of farmers and regular farm

workers to own the lands they till. Essentially a land-to-the-tiller program.

Collective ownership is mentioned by the Constitution, it is submitted that

only that kind of collective ownership which preserves control of the tiller

over that land he tills satisfies the constitutional mandate.

3. Priorities and reasonable retention limits.

- “All agricultural lands”

- “Subject to such priorities and reasonable retention limits as Congress may prescribe, taking

into account ecological, developmental or equity considerations.”

- Priorities refer to various factors which can affect the pace and scope of implementation

and which can make implementation more manageable.

o Big landholdings

o Ill-gotten lands

o Idle or abandoned lands

- Priorities could also refer to crops or to the location of the land.

- Retention Limits

o Size of land an individual owner will be allowed to keep, whether he is a cultivator

or not, the general guideline is that these should be “reasonable.”

- “Small landowners” jurisprudentially refers to “teachers, clerks, nurse and other

hardworking and frugal people who, in a lifetime of sacrifice, gathered their pitiful little

savings and purchased small farms to supplement the inadequate pension from the

Government Service Insurance System or the Social Security System.”

- “Reference to small landowners does not necessarily mean that they should be ownercultivators.”

- Important Constitutional consideration in all this is that Congress is given discretion to set

priorities and retention limits. The over-riding guideline for Congress is that flexible concept

“reasonableness.”

- If Congress sets neither priorities nor retention limits?

o It should be noted that the mandate to implement an agrarian land reform program

is addressed to the State – an entity larger than Congress. And the parameters for

an agrarian land reform are set down in the Constitution for the State to flow. Thus,

absent priorities and retention limits set by Congress, but provided that the money

has been appropriated for a program, the executive department can proceed with

implementation either in cooperation with landowners voluntarily participating in

the program or through judicial expropriation.

- Lands not devoted to agricultural activity are outside the coverage of Comprehensive

Agrarian Reform Law (CARL). These include lands previously converted to non-agricultural

uses prior to the effectively of CARL by government agencies other than respondent DAR.

- Agricultural Lands are only those lands which are “arable and suitable agricultural lands”

And “do not include commercial, industrial and residential lands.”

- CARP statute also requires a notice of coverage to be furnished and sent to the landowner.

o Notice is part of the constitutional right to due process of law.

It informs the landowner of the State’s intention to acquire a private land

upon payment of just compensation and gives him the opportunity to

present evidence that his landholding is not covered or is otherwise excused

from the agrarian law.

However, one who claims to be landowner is such in virtue of a void sale

which was entered into to avoid expropriation; notice to the real owner
satisfies the law’s requirement.

4. Just Compensation

- The agrarian reform program mandated by the Constitution is not a land confiscation

program. The government acquisition of land, whether voluntary or forced, for distribution

to agrarian reform beneficiaries, there is need to compensate landowners justly.

- “Just Compensation” is a concept that has become the subject of extensive jurisprudence

under the Bill of Rights. Measurement devised by President Marcos in Presidential Decree

No. 76, the measure of just compensation is the assessed value of the land or the value

declared by the owner in his tax-declaration, whichever is lower.

- R.A. No. 3844: the just compensation depends on the farmer’s ability to pay and not on the

standard of fair market value.

- Just Compensation clearly applies in agrarian reform. Sec. 4, Art. XIII of the 1987

Constitution mandates that the redistribution of agricultural lands shall be “subject to the

payment of just compensation.” The landowners right to just compensation should be

balanced with agrarian reform. It is the duty of the court to protect the weak and the

underprivileged, but this duty should not be carried out to such an extent as to deny justice

to the landowner whenever truth and justice happen to be on his side.

- The concept of just compensation, embraces not only the correct determination of the

amount to be paid to the owners of the land, but also payment within a reasonable time

from its taking.

o Without prompt payment, compensation cannot be considered “JUST” inasmuch as

the property owner is made to suffer the consequences of being immediately

deprived of his land while being made to wait for a decade or more before actually

receiving the compensation.

o While prompt payment of just compensation requires the immediate deposit and

release to the landowner of the provisional compensation as determined by the

DAR. It also encompasses the payment in full of the just compensation to the

landholders as finally determined by the courts.

5. Voluntary Land Sharing

- The state must offer incentives such, for instance, as tax incentives. However, in no way

should voluntary land sharing be allowed to become a mode of circumventing agrarian

reform.

6. The Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law: R.A. No 6657

- Implements the agrarian reform provisions of the constitution. Some of its key provisions

were immediately challenged as an unconstitutional form of expropriation of private lands.

o The taking of private lands for redistribution is an exercise of the power of eminent

domain revolutionary in character in that it “affects all private agricultural lands

wherever found and of whatever kind as long as they are in excess of the maximum

retention limits allowed their owners.

This kind of expropriation is intended for the benefit not only of particular

community or of a small segment of the population but of the entire Filipino

Nation, from all levels of our society, from the impoverished farmer to the

land-glutted owner.

o The discretion to determine which lands to take for early distribution is something

that is given to the wisdom of the Congress

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.

The right to participate in the management of program, more than just the right to be consulted, in the

planning, organization, and management of an agrarian reform should be emphasized.

Beyond redistribution of land, the State must ensure that redistributed land will be efficiently beneficial

for all concerned.

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.

1. Agrarian Reform and Natural Resources

- This section extends the principles of agrarian reform to the disposition of other natural

resources.

- At the heart of agrarian reform is the principle capsulated in the phrase “land to the tiller.”

o This must be applied, mutatis mutandis, to the utilization of natural resources. Thus

one may speak of “natural resources reform.”

o Nations Principal natural resource is land of, two basic kinds: alienable and

unalienable.

o Section 6 refers to utilization of lands of the public domain.

Commissioner Monsod: in the case of other natural resources, forestry or

mining, the intent of this provision is merely to say that in applying the

principle of agrarian reform, the chief beneficiaries should be the people in

the area.

The people may be entrusted with the land but these lands need not be

given to them by title. It can be the same kind of concession or rights that

are now given under the law

o Stewardship

Commissioner Romulo: “the individual would have free use or free

occupancy but he would not be given a legal title to the land. That is what

we call in law of usufructuary.”

Commissioner Nieva added: “the State shall be give them all the support

and assistance that they would need to be successful in their utilization of

these natural resources.”

o Briefly Section 6 goes back to the scope of land reform.

 Commissioner Tadeo always had recourse to the broad definition of lands

articulated by Dr. Mahar Mangahas: “In principle, the term ‘lands’ would

include all forms of natural resources, including mineral, forests and water

resources, whether public or private, whether titled or untitled, whether

presently controlled by Filipinos or non-Filipinos, over which there is social

conflict induced by an unjust distribution.”

- The second paragraph of Section 6 owes its existence to the advocacy of Commissioner Ople

“that resettlement in the government’s agricultural estates was the preeminent form of

agrarian reform under the Magsaysay Administration and was used in other nations as well.

o Farmers and Farm workers are not to be considered as agricultural employees of the

state, but rather as resettlers and eventual owner of the land once these estates are

dissolved.

o Farm workers, includes laid-off industrial workers who might want to return to the

provinces and engage in farming.

Section 7. The State shall protect the rights of subsistence fishermen, especially of local

communities, to the preferential use of the 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.

According to Fr. Bernas, this is a first in Philippine constitution-making as this section makes specific

reference to the rights of small fishermen; understandably so as the country’s archipelagic nature and

apparent challenges to reach far-flung areas of the country have put these small fishermen in the center

of livelihood in these areas.

Fr. Bernas also stated that the provision was formulated and sponsored principally against the

background of problems created by the privatization of large portions of the Laguna de Bay area and the

problem of foreign fishing vessels allowed by treaty to conduct trawl fishing within seven kilometres
from the Philippine shores, both of which effective deprive subsistence fishermen of their livelihood.

This is the reason why government authorities like the Laguna Lake Development Authority, etc. was

established – to educate fishermen into forming cooperatives for their betterment.

A perusal of the records upon the drafting of the Constitution sheds light that the right given to

subsistence fishermen is preferential but not exclusive use of communal marine fishing resources, both

inland and offshore. An attempt to have the entire marine and fishing resources communal, however,

municipal fishing grounds are considered propios of the municipality, thus they exercise their

proprietary rights over these fishing grounds. Also excluded from such provision are fishponds outside of

lakes and rivers as these are considered private.

This section also specifies protection against foreign intrusion in offshore fishing grounds, which should

be read in conjunction with Article XII, Section 2, whose second paragraph reads: “The State shall

protect the nation’s marine wealth in its archipelagic waters, territorial sea, and exclusive economic

zone, and reserve its use and enjoyment exclusively to Filipino citizens.”

Lastly, fish workers are also assured the right to a just share from their labor in the use of marine and

fishing resources, which admittedly, are not anywhere classified by existing labor laws as sponsored by

Commissioner Delos Reyes. Their remuneration is then in the form of a share in the catch such that if

there is no catch, they earn nothing.

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.

Bernas starts of his commentary stating that Article XII, Section 1 dictates the need to establish a

dynamic relationship between agricultural development and industrialization. This section sees agrarian

reform as a unique instrument for releasing capital locked up in land for use in industrialization and

economic development. This is why the government must create an atmosphere favourable to

investment such as:

a. Providing landowners with incentives to investment

b. Placing usable capital in the hands of landowners subjected to agrarian reform

Reeling from the memory of the Land Bank bonds used in the agrarian reform program of Marcos, the
last sentence places a constitutional guarantee on both the value and negotiability of government bonds

with the government and government financial institutions.