Use Hacienda Luisita as agrarian reform model, Philippine government urged

Manila: Following a Supreme Court decision affirming the distribution of one of the biggest agricultural estates to farmworkers, a lawmaker is urging the government to use the opportunity to set in motion true socio-economic reform.

Last April 24, the Supreme Court last affirmed its earlier decision to distribute some 4,915 hectares of agricultural to some 6,400 farmer-beneficiaries of Hacienda Luisita in Tarlac, but while farmers' group had hailed the decision as a triumph for farmworkers, Senator Francis Pangilinan said securing the favourable verdict from the court is only half battle. He said much is to be done to make land reform work in the country.

"The bigger challenge now would be to make sure that the farms become viable, profitable, and sustainable for the farmers and their families," said Pangilinan, Chairman of the Senate Committees on Agriculture and Food, and Social Justice and Rural Development.

"Otherwise, they will just sell their land and then we're back to zero as far as securing the farmers are concerned." He continues: "Data forwarded to the Committee on Agriculture state that only about one-third of agrarian reform communities have been successful. Others have sold their land or have remained unable to transform their lands into profitable farms."

Pangilinan said government would play a big role in the success of genuine land reform in the country.

He said farmers from Hacienda Luisita, "as well as our other agrarian reform communities, need support services such as organising farmers into cooperatives, providing them credit and crop insurance, linking their produce to the markets, giving them technical assistance and access to the latest technology and know-how, and so on."

The entire country is training its eyes on the success of Hacienda Luisita as it is expected to serve as a model on how similar, largely inherited, big land estates across the country will be broken up.

Hacienda Luisita is owned by the family of incumbent President Benigno Aquino III.

The fact that only a few families own the large tracts land committed to farming had been blamed as the reason why the country continues to lag behind in terms of social and economic reforms. It is also the premise by which the feudal peasant-big landowner relationship remains entrenched in the country.

"As a high-profile agrarian reform community, Hacienda Luisita can be the model for how true agrarian reform ought to be carried out in our countryside. But all stakeholders will have to work together to ensure that this does not become just another lost cause. Our farmers have waited so long for this, and it is unacceptable that they continue to suffer now that they finally have a chance to succeed with their own land."

"Land redistribution if not supported by other critical services will simply be redistributing poverty, turning an organised enterprise into a disorganized community of impoverished farmers. This we cannot allow to happen," Pangilinan concludes.

Supreme Court decision on Hacienda Luisita, it is expected to open the floodgates on land distribution as that other similarly big land holding owned by influential families will be redistributed to farmworkers.