thesis

Transformation after two decades of agrarian reform program

Pamela Crosby
MSc in Geography Candidate
Department of Geography
University of the Philippines Diliman

Introduction

In the Philippines, a large proportion of the population is involved in the agricultural sector. According to the Bureau of Agricultural Statistics (BAS), an office under the Department of Agriculture (DA), about 12.03 million were employed in the agriculture sector. It represents about 35 percent of the country 's employment in 2008. In terms of wage, an agricultural worker earns on average Php325 (7.3 US dollars)* daily, if employed in agricultural lands within the National Capital Region, the political and economic center of the Philippines or between Php185-257 (4.2-5.8 US dollars), if employed outside NCR (National Wages and Productivity Commission, 2008). Comparing these figures to earnings from non-agricultural employment, Php325-362 (7.3-8.1 US dollars) in NCR and Php183-287 (4.1-6.5 US dollars) outside NCR, the difference is quite significant.

Oftentimes the terms “agricultural” is often equated to “rural” although they are not necessarily so. These words in turn are associated with poverty, backwardness, and underdevelopment. The bleak characterization of the rural-agricultural areas is attributed to landlessness, or more aptly, to unequal access to land, which in turn, maintains the dependency of the landless on landed entities, be they traditional landlords or huge commercial companies. In both cases, tenant farmers and farm workers are treated as mere tillers of land and have no decision-making power over the utilization of the land and the resources in it.

For rural developers, the way then to correct stagnation and poverty in the rural areas is to redistribute land, which is tantamount to redistributing wealth and power (Thiesenhusen, 2001; Borras, 2008b). By having access to land, tillers are no longer forced into an iniquitous sharing system with

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