RA 3844 (Agricultural Land Reform Code of 1963)

This is during the administration of Diosdado

Macapagal.

Agricultural lessor means a person, natural or

juridical, who, either as owner, civil law lessee,
usufructuary, or legal possessor, lets or grants to
another the cultivation and use of his land for a
price certain.

Abolishes the Agricultural Share Tenancy

Agricultural Land means land devoted to any
growth, including but not limited to crop lands, salt
beds, fish ponds, idle land and abandoned land.
Idle lands means land not devoted directly to any
crop or to any definite economic purpose for at
least one year prior to the notice of expropriation
except for reasons other than force majeure or any
other fortuitous event but used to be devoted or is
suitable to such crop or is contiguous to land
devoted directly to any crop and does not include
land devoted permanently or regularly to other
essential and more productive purpose.
Abandoned lands means lands devoted to any
crop at least one year prior to the notice of
expropriation, but which was not utilized by the
owner for his benefit for the past five years prior
to such notice of expropriation.
Share tenancy as used in this Code means
1) the relationship which exists whenever two
persons agree on a joint undertaking
2) for agricultural production wherein
3) one party furnishes the land and
4) the other his labor, with either or both
contributing any one or several of the items of
production, the tenant cultivating the land
personally with the aid of labor available from
members of his immediate farm household,
and
5) the produce thereof to be divided between the
landholder and the tenant.
Agricultural lessee means a person who, by 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, for a
price certain in money or in produce or both. It is
distinguished from civil lessee as understood in the
Civil Code of the Philippines.

Proviso
. . . existing share tenancy contracts may continue
in force and effect in any region or locality, to be
governed in the meantime by the pertinent
provisions of Republic Act Numbered Eleven
hundred and ninety-nine, as amended, until the
end of the agricultural year when the National
Land Reform Council proclaims that all the
government machineries and agencies in that
region or locality relating to leasehold
envisioned in this Code are operating, unless
such contracts provide for a shorter period or the
tenant sooner exercise his option to elect the
leasehold system . . . .

RA 6389
Sec. 4. Automatic Conversion to Agricultural
Leasehold. - Agricultural share tenancy throughout
the country, as herein defined, is hereby declared
contrary to public policy and shall be
automatically converted to agricultural leasehold
upon the effectivity of this section.

P.D. 27
This shall apply to tenant farmers of private
agricultural lands primarily devoted to rice and
corn under a system of sharecrop or leasetenancy, whether classified as landed estate or not;
The tenant farmer, whether in land classified as
landed estate or not, shall be deemed owner of a
portion constituting a family-size farm of five (5)
hectares if not irrigated and three (3) hectares if
irrigated;
In all cases, the landowner may retain an area of
not more than seven (7) hectares if such

landowner is cultivating such area or will now

cultivate it;

any case, it is probably fair to say that in the long

run none of these goals were accomplished.
xxx

Commentary
In principle P.D. 27 was a great improvement over
previous legislation because all rice and corn
tenants whose landlords owned more than 7
hectares were to be sold the land they tilled at a
price 2 1/2 times the average annual production;
they were given 15 years to pay the land Bank at 6
percent Interest.
No tenant initiative was required. When the
tenant fully paid, and only then, he would receive a
title transferable exclusively to his heirs.
(Landlords were to be paid 10 percent in cash and
90 percent in Land Bank bonds.)
In the meantime the eligible tenant would receive a
Certificate of Land Transfer (CLT) identifying
his cultivated area and promising him the right to
purchase the land.
xxx

For the President himself, land reforms most

important political function was to strike a blow at
the oligarchy, those wealthy elite who had
formed the core of his political opposition.
Not surprisingly the Aquino estates were among
the first to be expropriated.
The subsequent pattern of implementation helped to
confirm this interpretation. The President simply
lost his originally keen interest after the owners
with more than 100 hectares had been
dispossessed.
The political purpose of land reform and its
ancillary policies was to create mass support for the
New Society and its leader, legitimize him abroad,
and undermine support for alternative leadership on
both the right and the left.
Since great estates in sugar, coconut and other
export crops were excluded from its coverage in

The number of tenants to benefit from this decree

quickly became a controversial question.
By 1980, DAR claimed to have issued CLTs
(Certificate of Land Transfer) to 90 percent of the
targeted tenants, but best estimates are that nearly
half of those printed in Manila never actually
reached the hands of the cultivator.
xxx
Delay in fixing the price, and delinquency in
amortization resulted from the fact that instead of
setting land price on the basis of production as the
decree provided, landlords were allowed to
negotiate with tenants, and DAR field officials
sometimes aided the landlord, already the stronger
party.
On other occasions, to be sure, when DAR officials
stood up for tenant rights under the law, they were
verbally threatened or judicially harassed by
landlords. Many DAR officials had court cases
initiated against them for merely doing their duty.
xxx
Since land Bank bonds could be sold for cash by
landlords, at a discount to be sure, in order to
make other investments, or could be invested in
approved projects at face value, the loss of land
usually did not involve a significant loss of wealth.
By 1980, 5,860 landowners had been paid by the
Land Bank an average of P207,347 each.
xxx
The net result of land redistribution was to put more
than 86,000 tenants on the road to ownership (with
only 2 percent completing the process); while this
was less than 9 percent of a very conservative
estimate of all rice and corn tenants, it was,
nevertheless, a greater accomplishment than in any
previous administration.
xxx

There was apparently a feeling in Malacaang

that more was to be gained politically by easing
the pressure on landlords (especially those with
less than 24 hectares) than by pushing through to
the full extent of the law.
Foreign analysts, however, were more inclined to
conclude that half measures were worse than
none at all, i.e., that incomplete reform raised
expectations and thus intensified the frustration
of those who did not benefit.
Revolutionary political organization in the
countryside by 1981 would seem to have justified
that conclusion. Some prime land reform areas had
become bases for the Communist-led New Peoples
Army (NPA).

E.O 228
Sec. 1. All qualified farmer beneficiaries are now
deemed full owners as of October 21, 1972 of the
land they acquired by virtue of Presidential Decree
No. 27.

E.O. 129-A (Reorganization Act of the DAR)

PP 131 (Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program