The Unfinished Business of Agrarian Reform in the Philippines

The Unfinished Business of Agrarian Reform in the Philippines
By Nikka Rivera

Agrarian reform in the Philippines was never only about distributing land. When the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law was enacted in 1988, it sought to address longstanding inequalities in land ownership and land concentration by redistributing agricultural land to landless farmers and farmworkers, securing their tenure, and creating the conditions for more dignified and sustainable rural livelihoods. Nearly four decades later, the work remains unfinished. Yet the country is now confronting a legal interpretation that could fundamentally change how we understand the future of agrarian reform.

In March 2026, the Department of Justice issued a legal opinion (DOJ Opinion No. 16, s. 2026) stating that the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP), established under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law, ceased to be effective on June 30, 2014. The opinion went further, concluding that the provisions of the law itself, including the five-hectare retention limit on agricultural land ownership, are also no longer in effect.

This opinion arose from what appears to be a technical question addressed to the DOJ: whether landowners should still secure a Land Transfer Clearance from the Department of Agrarian Reform before transferring agricultural land. But the answer given by the DOJ has created implications far beyond this administrative requirement.

Whether this interpretation ultimately survives legal scrutiny remains to be seen. The June 30, 2014 deadline has long been understood in relation to the completion of land acquisition and distribution under CARP, while the law itself expressly allowed cases and proceedings initiated before that date to continue until their completion. The controversy therefore lies not only in the deadline itself, but in the legal consequence now being attributed to it: that the expiration of the period of land acquisition and distribution also meant the cessation of the agrarian reform law as a whole, including protections and restrictions that were intended to govern agricultural land beyond the process of distribution. 

But the legal debate raises a more fundamental question too: can we really treat agrarian reform in the Philippines as a closed chapter anyway?

That objective of agrarian reform remains unresolved in at least two ways. Firstly, there are still lands covered by agrarian reform processes awaiting distribution. At the same time, farmers who have already received land are confronting a different set of challenges as agricultural lands face growing demand from industrial estates, economic zones, infrastructure, renewable energy, and other competing uses. For example, these pressures are already visible in places such as Batangas, where lands awarded through agrarian reform are being leased and assembled for large-scale solar developments. With renewable energy an urgent national priority, similar pressures will undoubtedly continue to emerge as the country expands energy and other infrastructure. This makes the question of how agrarian reform lands and the rights of their beneficiaries will be protected increasingly important.

Secondly, the situation that necessitated  the introduction of the five-hectare retention limit in the first place is still a threat today: concentrated agricultural land ownership. So if, as the opinion concludes, this statutory limit has ceased to operate, what safeguards are the government employing to prevent agricultural land from becoming concentrated again as demand for land increases?

On the other hand, the agrarian reform framework cannot remain frozen in the conditions that shaped it in 1988. The pressures on land have changed, and our policies need to respond to those changes. Rather than treating the 2014 deadline as the end of agrarian reform, this should be the moment to confront its unfinished work and define what a new agrarian reform framework should look like.

Such a framework must do more than set another deadline for land distribution. It must provide a clear pathway for completing the distribution of the remaining lands and hold the Department of Agrarian Reform accountable for carrying out this unfinished work. But the responsibility of the State does not end with land distribution. It must also ensure that farmers who have already received land are able to secure their rights and livelihoods. This means strengthening the support and protection available to agrarian reform beneficiaries when new investments enter their communities, land transactions are negotiated, or changes in land use threaten the gains they were supposed to receive from agrarian reform.

The legal debate triggered by the DOJ opinion is therefore more than just whether CARP legally expired in 2014. If the government now takes the position that the legal framework that governed agrarian reform for decades has ceased to operate, it must also confront what will replace it. Lands remain undistributed, agrarian reform beneficiaries continue to face pressures on lands already awarded to them, and the safeguards against the reconcentration of agricultural land are now being called into question. These are not problems that disappear with the expiration of a law. They are reasons for the government and Congress to define the next phase of agrarian reform and ensure that its unfinished obligations are not abandoned with the old framework.

Source: DOJ Opinion No. 16 S 2026 dated 09 March 2026