The Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program Extension with Reforms
(CARPER) Law
(signed on August 7, 2009)
I GUIDING PRINCIPLES AND POLICIES (Section 2)
■ In pursuit of CARP, the State must give highest consideration to the welfare of the landless farmers and farmworkers 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
■ Land-to-the-tiller remains the core doctrine in the implementation of the CARP. (Farmers and regular farmworkers who directly own and collectively till the land have the right to own it).
■ Land has a social function and landownership has a social responsibility. (Owners of agricultural land have the obligation to cultivate directly or through labor administration the lands they own and make them productive).
■ A meaningful agrarian reform can only be achieved through simultaneous industrialization.
■ In just and equitable distribution of the ownership of the land to farmers and regular farmworkers, the following must be considered:
a. The rights of landowners for just compensation and retention right;
b. The developmental and ecological needs of the nation; and
c. The equity consideration of other farmworkers to receive a just share of the fruits of the land.
■ The right of farmers, farmworkers and landowners as well as cooperatives and other independent farmers’ organization to participate in the planning, organization and management of the program must be recognized.
■ Support to agriculture through appropriate technology and research and adequate financial, production, marketing and other support services must be provided.
■ Incentives to landowners to invest the proceeds of the agrarian reform program to promote industrialization, employment and privatization of public sector enterprises must also be provided.
■ The right of small landowners must be