Concept of Agrarian Reform:

CONSTITUTION
Art. II, Sec. 10 The State shall promote social
justice in all phases of national development.
Art. XIII, Sec. 1 The Congress shall give
highest priority to the enactment of measures
that protect and enhance the right of all the
people to human dignity, reduce social,
economic and political inequalities, and remove
cultural inequities by equitably diffusing wealth
and political power for common good. To end
this, the State shall regulate the acquisition,
ownership, use, and disposition of property and
its increments.
Art. XIII, Sec. 2 The promotion of social
justice shall include the commitment to create
economic opportunities based on freedom of
initiative and self-reliance.
SOCIAL JUSTICE
Calalang v. Williams
Social justice is neither communism nor despotism
(cruel / absolute power / oppressive way), nor
atomism (independent and indivisible), nor anarchy
(absence of authority), but the humanization of laws
and the equalization of social and economic forces by
the State so that justice in its rational and objectively
secular conception may at least be approximated.
Social justice means the promotion of the welfare of
the people, the adoption by the Government of

measures calculated to insure economic stability of all

the competent elements of society, through the
maintenance of a proper economic and social
equilibrium in the interrelations of the members of the
community, constitutionally, through the adoption of
measures legally justifiable, or extra-constitutionally,
through the exercise of powers underlying the
existence of all governments on the time-honored
principle of salus populi est supremo, lex.
POLICE POWER & EMINENT DOMAIN
The power of eminent domain, or the power to acquire
private property for a public use, can generally be
distinguished from the police power, which is the
power to adopt regulations to promote the public
health, safety, and welfare of a community, even
though the exercise of either power may impair the
fair market value of private property.
ECONOMIC VIABILITY OF SMALL LANDHOLDINGS
Meaning of Economic Family-Size Farm An area
of farm land that permits efficient use of labor and
capital resources of the farm family and will produce
income sufficient to provide a modest standard of
living to meet a farm familys needs for food, clothing,
shelter and education with possible allowance for
payment of yearly installment on the land, and
reasonable reserves to absorb yearly fluctuations in
income.

CONSTITUTIONAL ISSUES
Association of Small Landholders of the Philippines v
Secretary of Agriculture
The question of the constitutionality of EO 229 and PP
131 because this is a violation of the equal protection
clause. However, case shows that PD 27 already
grants them retention rights (RA 6657).
AGRICULTURAL TENANCY:
RA 1199, as amended by RA 2263, Sec. 3
Agricultural Tenancy Defined 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 farmer 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.
Sec. 5(a) A tenant shall mean a person who,
himself and with the aid available from within his
immediate farm household, cultivates the land
belonging to, or possessed by, another, with the
latters consent for purposes of production, sharing
the produce with the landholder under the share
tenancy system, or paying to the landowner a price
certain or ascertainable in produce or in money or
both, under the leasehold tenancy system.

Sec. 5(b) A landholder shall mean a person,

natural, or juridical, who, either as owner, lessee,
usufructuary, or legal possessor, lets or grants to
another the use of cultivation of his land, lets or
grants to another the use or cultivation of his land for
a consideration either in shares under the share
tenancy system, or a price certain or ascertainable
under the leasehold tenancy system.
Essential requisites in order to create a tenancy
relationship between the parties:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

Parties are owner/possessor and tenant

Subject is an agricultural land
Consent
Purpose of agricultural production
Consideration
Personal Cultivation

Hilaro v. IAC
Doctrine: Where land is within the poblacion, the
presumption is it is residential, not agricultural.
Thepresumption assumed by the appellate court, that
a parcel of land which is located in a poblacion is not
necessarily devoted to residential purposes, is wrong.
It should be the other way around. A lot inside the
poblacion should be presumed residential, or
commercial or non-agricultural unless there is clearly
preponderant evidence to show that it is agricultural.
Facts: Hilario filed a complaint against Salvador

alleging that they were co owners of the land where

he constructed his house but without consent.
Salvador refused to vacate and filed a complaint on
the ground of lack of jurisdiction on IAC. Hilario was
not after claiming the property, but the recovery of
possession of the real property. The RTC had no
jurisdiction whatsoever.
-

Tenancy cannot be created nor dependent

upon what the alleged tenant does on the
land. Consent of the landowner is
necessary.
No tenancy can be formed where alleged
tenant does not pay any rental or share of
harvest to the land owner.

RA 3844 Sec. 4-38

THE CODE OF AGRARIAN REFORM to create a
system
of
owner-cultivatorship
and
economic
familysize farm as basis of Philippine agriculture.
Code
of
Agrarian
Reform
vis--vis
Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law CAR is not
a repeal of CARL. CAR supplements CARL.
Reform of CAR:
a. Abolished share tenancy and replaced it with
share leasehold
- All share tenancy arrangements were

automatically converted to leasehold.

SHARE TENANCY
-

Two persons
agree on a joint
undertaking for
agricultural
production (one
furnishes land
with labor and
the other
contributing to
any one or
several items of
production.
The produce to
be divided to
landholder and
tenant.

LEASEHOLD
-

Farmer cultivates
the land belonging
to or possessed by,
another with the
latters consent for a
price certain in
money or in produce
or both.
A leasehold can
exist under the
following situations:
a. In case area
retained by
land owner is
tenanted;
b. Farmerbeneficiary
leases the land
awarded to him
by another;
c.
Farmerbeneficiary
leases the land
awarded to him
back to the
former owner of
the land; or
d. When land
awarded to a
farmers
cooperative or
association is
leased to
agricultural
corporation.

b. Bill of rights for agricultural workers

c. Department of Agrarian Reform was established
d. Established Land Bank as the financial arms of
the agrarian reform programs

Guerrero v CA
Doctrine:
Mere fact that a person was not the one who seeded the land
with coconuts does not mean that he could not be a tenant
thereof.Cultivation is another important factor in determining
the existence of tenancy relationships. It is admitted that it had
been one Conrado Caruruan, with others, who had originally
cleared the land in question and planted the coconut trees, with
the respondent coming to work in the landholding only after the
same were already fruit bearing. The mere fact that it was not
respondent Benitez who had actually seeded the land does not
mean that he is not a tenant of the land. The definition of
cultivation is not limited merely to the tilling, plowing or
harrowing of the land. It includes the promotion of growth and
the care of the plants, or husbanding the ground to forward the

products of the earth by general industry. The raising of coconuts

is a unique agricultural enterprise. Unlike rice, the planting of
coconut seedlings does not need harrowing and plowing. Holes
are merely dug on the ground of sufficient depth and distance,
the seedlings placed in the holes and the surface thereof covered
by soil. Some coconut trees are planted only every thirty to a
hundred years. The major work in raising coconuts begins when
the coconut trees are already fruit- bearing. Then it is cultivated
by smudging or smoking the plantation, taking care of the
coconut trees, applying fertilizer, weeding and watering, thereby
increasing the produce. The fact that respondent Benitez,
together with his family, handles all phases of farmwork from
clearing the landholding to the processing of copra, although at
times with the aid of hired laborers, thereby cultivating the land,
shows that he is a tenant, not a mere farm laborer.