SWEET AND SOUR The landmark decision of the Supreme Court ordering the distribution of the land is sweet victory to Hacienda Luisita workers. For the Cojuangcos, it spells the end of the family’s control of the vast sugarcane plantation and sugar milling business in Tarlac. Photo shows workers loading sugarcane on a truck on Wednesday. TONETTE OREJAS/INQUIRER CENTRAL LUZON
A precious title to their own little plot of land or collective ownership and cultivation of a vast estate with other farmers?
The victorious farmers in the Tarlac sugar estate owned by the Cojuangco clan of President Benigno Aquino III on Friday were in the thick of discussions on whether to pursue individual or collective ownership of the land they have won in a court action.
According to a union officer, the farmers are leaning towards collective ownership as this would ensure that the land would be preserved and cultivated for the benefit of all beneficiaries.
“We have been proposing [collectively owning Luisita] for so long to the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR). We want one single title for the land but with all the names of the original beneficiaries listed in the title,” said Lito Bais, acting chair of the United Luisita Workers Union (Ulwu).
He said union members will be presenting this proposal in a rally at the DAR office in Quezon City on Nov. 28.
No attempt to dictate
Agrarian Reform Secretary Virgilio de los Reyes on Friday said nobody is attempting to dictate to the farmers—the 6,200 farmer-beneficiaries will decide how the 5,000 hectares of land awarded to them will be carved out and titled.
“This should not be a debate. They will be given options. [Whether] it is collective or individual titling will be the choice of the owner of the land, the farmer-beneficiary,” De los Reyes said.
The primary decision maker on how to go about distributing the land will be the individual farmers, he said.
In a landmark Nov. 22 decision, the Supreme Court ordered the distribution of 4,915.75 ha of Hacienda Luisita to 6,296 registered farmworker-beneficiaries in accordance with the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law passed more than two decades ago under President Aquino’s mother, the late President Corazon Cojuangco-Aquino.
The high court also voided the stock distribution option (SDO) being implemented by the Hacienda Luisita Inc. (HLI), saying this has not benefited the farmers who have been working the land for generations.
The Supreme Court case stemmed from a Presidential Agrarian Reform Council (PARC) decision in 2005 canceling the SDO scheme in Hacienda Luisita and ordering the estate’s owners to redistribute the land.
The huge and sprawling Tarlac sugar estate, which the family acquired in the late 1950s, is owned and managed by the brothers of the late President.
The SDO scheme agreed on in 1989 in Hacienda Luisita gave the farmworkers who qualified as Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) beneficiaries 33 percent of the shares of stock in HLI instead of land.
Under a compromise deal, the workers were given two choices—to retain their shares of stock in the corporation or get parcels of land from 1,366 ha of the estate.
Individual vs collective
A former agriculture undersecretary on Friday urged the government to pursue individual titles in Hacienda Luisita.
Arsenio Balisacan, who is now dean of the University of the Philippines School of Economics and an agricultural economist, urged the government to pursue individual titling to Hacienda Luisita beneficiaries.
Balisacan said collective titles actually diminish the value of the land. Banks do not accept this as collateral, giving farmers no choice but to go to loan sharks for credit.
Collective Certificates of Land Ownership Awards also do not improve rural economies as it weakens “the capacity of LGUs [local government units] to collect real property taxes, their main revenue source,” the economist added.
Individual titles, on the other hand, enhance the value of land. “It empowers the farmers,” Balisacan said.
It allows them to have credit from banks to get capital. This could be used to educate their children, buy farm machinery, purchase inputs, and diversify their crops, leading to increased income, he said.
Balisacan and De los Reyes dismissed those who predicted that the parceling of Hacienda Luisita to individual farmers, with each getting less than one hectare, would render the land bankrupt and useless.
Balisacan said farmers could still form cooperatives to maximize the value of the agricultural land. But the matter of farm management, he said, should be differentiated from the issue of ownership.
“You can still have economies of scale without compromising ownership,” he said.
As landowners, the farmers will be able to dictate the price of their produce, De los Reyes said.
They could even engage in sugarcane contract farming with private companies, including HLI. The company would only need to seek permission from the PARC, he said.
According to De los Reyes, since many of the 6,200 beneficiaries belong to the same family, they might want their lot to be adjacent to the plot of another family member, and that would be allowed.
The DAR chief said it would be up to the farmers if they want to form cooperatives and engage in contract growing. Nobody will tell them what to plant.
“Some are saying that only sugarcane should be planted there. Who dictates that? If they want to plant sugarcane or vegetables, that is their choice,” De los Reyes said.
Balisacan said the Department of Agriculture and the DAR should be aggressive in assisting farmers now that they have become landowners. Extension services should be poured into the area to enable farmers to till the land effectively.
The DAR has yet to release the list of beneficiaries entitled to a share of the land, and HLI sources said they have not yet confirmed who among the farmers are likely to have been excluded.
On Thursday, HLI counsel Antonio Ligon said 4,000 beneficiaries, whom he described as legitimate farmworkers, had been apparently excluded from the coverage of the court decision. He did not elaborate.
Bais said the estate’s original tenants who opted to own HLI stocks will now have to abide by the court decision.
According to Felix Nacpil Jr., chair of the Alyansa ng mga Manggagawang Bukid sa Asyenda Luisita (Ambala) union, if the 6,296 farmworkers in the 1989 master list were to share the 4,195 ha to be distributed, each farmer would receive 7,806 square meters.
The original estate spans 6,453 ha, based on a royal grant to the Spanish company Compañia General de Tabacos de Filipinas (Tabacalera). The land size shrank because portions were converted for industrial use while others were sold to the Subic-Clark-Tarlac Expressway (SCTEx).
Should the number of farmworkers turn out to be 10,000, as the HLI reckons from a memorandum of agreement that allows the inclusion of children as beneficiaries, each can get 4,915 sq m or less than half a hectare, said Ligon.
Cojuangco statement
The HLI, in a statement issued by Joey Romasanta, spokesperson of Jose Cojuangco & Sons Inc., said it would respect and abide by the high court ruling.
“The Cojuangco family has never been averse to land distribution as a universal solution to the problems besetting the hacienda. We are hoping that any decision will take into consideration the more than 10,000 farmworkers-beneficiaries and not just the original 6,200 approved by the PARC and the DAR,” Romasanta said.
“Now that the [SDO] is being set aside, we hope that the Supreme Court will take a second look at the 4,000 [farmworkers] who will not benefit from the land distribution as per the [court’s] decision. This way, all the problems hounding the Luisita will be laid to rest,” he said.
Lawyer Jobert Pahilga, who represents the farmworkers, said he expects the HLI to file a motion for reconsideration on the court’s decision in the next 15 days.
Nacpil said the matter of just compensation for the owners, as required by the CARP law, was not a concern of Ambala.
Free distribution of land is what the group wants, he said.
Making the land productive is largely the responsibility of the beneficiaries, said Nacpil.
“Ambala will lead farmworkers in collective farming. We will use the P1.33 billion [which the high court ordered the HLI to pay the farmworkers] as capital for equipment, seeds, among others,” he said.
All lands covered by CARP are subject to just compensation, according to Teofilo Inocencio, DAR director in Central Luzon, which covers Tarlac.
Inocencio said the Land Bank of the Philippines has a formula for just compensation and this will undergo an adjudication process.
Inocencio said he could not give a timetable for the processing of qualified beneficiaries and distribution of land titles because he has yet to read the high court’s decision.