“The philippine rice share

tenacy act of 1933”

(act 4054)
What is the Philippine rice share tenacy
act of 1933 ?
• When the Philippine Commonwealth was established,
President Manuel L. Quezon implemented the Rice Share
Tenancy Act of 1933. The purpose of this act was to regulate the
share-tenancy contracts by establishing minimum
standards. Primarily, the Act provided for better tenant-landlord
relationship, a 50–50 sharing of the crop, regulation of interest
to 10% per agricultural year, and a safeguard against arbitrary
dismissal by the landlord.
“Flaw of the law”
• The major flaw of this law was that it could be used only when the
majority of municipal councils in a province petitioned for it.

• Since landowners usually controlled such councils, no province ever

asked that the law be applied.
-Therefore, Quezon ordered that the act be mandatory in
all Central Luzon provinces.
-However, contracts were good only for one year. By simply
refusing the renew their contract, landlords were able to eject tenants.
As a result, peasant organizations agitated in vain for a law that would
make the contract automatically renewable for as long as the tenants
fulfilled their obligations.
• In 1936, this Act was amended to get rid of its loophole, but the
landlords made its application relative and not absolute.
Consequently, it was never carried out in spite of its good
intentions. In fact, by 1939, thousands of peasants in Central
Luzon were being threatened with wholesale eviction

• By the early 1940s, thousands of tenants in Central Luzon were

ejected from their farmlands and the rural conflict was more
acute than ever.
“Agricultural Tenancy Act of the
Philippines of 1954” (RA 1199)
What is agricultural tenacy?
-Agricultural tenancy is the physical possession by a person
of land devoted to agriculture belonging to, or legally possessed
by, another for the purpose of production through the labor of
the former and of the members of his immediate farm household,
in consideration of which the former agrees to share the harvest
with the latter, or to pay a price certain or ascertainable, either in
produce or in money, or in both.
What is the purpose of this?

• It is the purpose of this Act to establish agricultural tenancy

relations between landholders and tenants upon the principle of
school justice to afford adequate protection to the rights of
both tenants and landholders to insure an equitable division of
the produce and income derived from the land to provide
tenant-farmers with incentives to greater and more efficient
agricultural production.
• Systems of Agricultural Tenancy; Their Definitions. - Agricultural
tenancy is classified into leasehold tenancy and share tenancy.
• Share tenancy exists whenever two persons agree on a joint undertaking
for agricultural production wherein one party furnishes the land and the
other his labor, with either or both contributing any one or several of the
items of production, the tenant cultivating the land personally with the aid
of labor available from members of his immediate farm household, and the
produce thereof to be divided between the landholder and the tenant in
proportion to their respective contributions.
• Leasehold tenancy exists when a person who, either personally or with
the aid of labor available from members of his immediate farm household,
undertakes to cultivate a piece of agricultural land susceptible of
cultivation by a single person together with members of his immediate
farm household, belonging to or legally possessed by, another in
consideration of a price certain or ascertainable to be paid by the person
cultivating the land either in percentage of the production or in a fixed
amount in money, or in both.