San Isidro Labrador, the patron saint of farmers and peasants and rural communities, whose feast day it was last May 15, didn?t come through for the Filipino farmers, who in desperation were asking for his intercession to pierce the hearts and consciences of our legislators into doing what not only social justice but efficiency considerations demand: pass the Carper (Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program with Reforms) bills?Senate Bill 2666 and House Bill 4077. Or so it seems, because May 15 came and went, but none of the targeted legislators seemed to show any signs of having undergone a conversion experience because Carper is still in suspended animation.

One can speculate that San Isidro, along with the other saints (Teresa of Avila, Francis Xavier, Philip Neri, Ignatius of Loyola), who were canonized on the same day, did their best, but hearts were too hard and heads were too soft to reach. On the other hand, it could be that the good saints are sending the message that God helps those who help themselves, and more work is needed.

Based on the latter premise?the first being too horrifying to contemplate?let us review the situation for the nth time in case there is something that has been missed in the campaign to get Carper passed by June.

Why June? Because, as the reader will remember, the original CARP, which was to have been completed in 10 years (by 1998) was not completed, and so it was funded for another 10 years, to June 2008. And it was still not completed, thanks to a combination of under-funding on the part of the legislature, lack of commitment on the part of the executive, and dilatory tactics on the part of landowners.

Then there was an extension for another six months to December 2008, after which there was another six-month extension?to June 2009?the articulated objective being to give time to the legislators to improve the CARP so that it can be successfully completed (thus the term Carper). What is significant is that over this last six-month period, all compulsory land acquisition activities were suspended?thanks in part to a very powerful landowner-led lobby (led by the President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo?s brother-in-law, Iggy Arroyo, and her son Mikey Arroyo; but a great many congressmen and senators are themselves landowners or own and control corporations that own land) whose main aim is to stop completely any more compulsory land acquisition or at least to postpone it indefinitely.

Arrayed against the landowners are the farmers who have been waiting for their land not just since 1988, but long before then as promised by government leaders as far back as Manuel Quezon. This time, the farmers are supported by the Catholic Bishops? Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), by labor organizations like the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP), by various agriculture-based NGOs, by student organizations notably those from Ateneo de Manila University and University of the Philippines, by other civic-social organizations.

If the issue were to be resolved by numbers alone, there can be no doubt that the advocates of completing agrarian reform as provided by the Constitution would win hands down. But political and financial muscles are major factors, and right now, they trump the numbers.

Can we determine more precisely where the CARP implementation failed? What is clear is that the biggest failure has been in the compulsory acquisition of private lands, which are really the more productive farm lands. How do we know that? Because where the CARP accomplishment as a whole (including government-owned lands, etc.) is above 80 percent of target, the accomplishment as far as lands for compulsory acquisition are concerned is less than 20 percent.

But we can also glean where the failure in land acquisition and distribution (LAD) has been on the basis of crops. Comparing the latest official figures (as of January 2009) of the estimated LAD balances by crops with the estimates of the total areas devoted to these crops, we see that less than 6 percent of palay and corn land remains to be distributed; for coconut land, the balance is less than 11 percent; for pineapple land, the balance to be distributed constitutes less than 3.5 percent of the total; for bananas, the figure is even less than 2.5 percent. So far, therefore, in terms of the LAD balance by crops, coconut stands out with still 11 percent of coconut lands to be distributed.

But then we come to sugar. And here, the difference is glaring, and shows where the agrarian reform program has been stymied, where the opposition to agrarian reform has been most successful. A whopping 39 percent of sugar land still has to be reformed?more than three times the percentage for coconut, more than six times for rice, and more than 15 times for bananas.

Now that we know the crop where agrarian reform has failed the most, let?s look at the province where it has failed the most. And here we see that Negros Occidental by itself, one of 88 provinces, accounts for almost 12 percent of the total Philippine area still to be reformed, and 76 percent of the total sugar land still to be covered. If we compare the balances of unreformed land, Negros Occidental has more than 10 times the balance of unreformed land in Quezon province, although the latter?s land area is at least 10 percent bigger.

What this all says is that agrarian reform has actually succeeded for the most part except where sugar land is concerned (with coconut a far second) and has failed the most in Negros Occidental. Clearly, that?s where the focus of the reform effort should be.