Philippines: Supreme Court decides to distribute land to over 6,000 farm workers

“This is a land mark ruling, for which the farm workers in Hacienda have long awaited,” said Yifang Tang, country officer for the Philippines at FIAN International. “After 22 years, finally a real step has been taken by the Government of the Philippines towards fulfilling the right to food of 6296 farm workers, ordering land distribution and nullifying the stock-distribution option,” she added.

In the Philippines, many farmers do not have access to land and are working as tenants or share-croppers despite the existence of a public policy for land redistribution. The 1988 Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program states that private agriculture holdings exceeding five hectares of land should be redistributed to landless farmers.

In 1989, the landowners of Hacienda Luisita  – a 6000 hectare plantation estate owned by the  the family of the current President Benigno Aquino – implemented a stock distribution option (SDO) in the area as an alternative to land redistribution. Under the SDO scheme, certificates of stock were given instead of actual land. This did not contribute to uplifting the lives of farm workers, but only deepened poverty through diminished work days, very low take home pay and lack of economic security for the workers. In reality, the land owner continued to control the use of the land and benefitted from its fruits.

FIAN has been actively engaged in this case. The FIAN Philippine Section has been providing support to mobilizations and press conferences initiated by the farm workers and their support groups. FIAN International intervened on various occasions, including sending public letters addressed to the Philippine Government; the most recent one in August 2011, asking the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court to urgently implement agrarian reform.

On July 5 2011, the Supreme Court upheld the validity of the SDO as a mode of agrarian reform, and tasked the Department of Agrarian Reform to get the farm workers to vote whether they wished to receive stocks or land. However, the parties filed motions for reconsideration, leading to the recent decision of the Supreme Court out rightly ordering for the distribution of the entire hacienda to the farm workers.

“While this Supreme Court decision is a cause for celebration, we feel that the process of redistribution will still take some time, may be even more than a year,” informs Danny Carranza of FIAN Philippines. “Therefore, we need to guarantee that alternative livelihoods for workers are provided in the transition phase towards actual land redistribution. We will campaign for it,” he reaffirmed.