The unfinished business of agrarian reform
Where are we now with agrarian reform in the Philippines? On June 10, 38 years would have passed since the enactment of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program. Earlier this year, Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) Secretary Conrado M. Estrella III told the media that only 700,000 hectares of agricultural land remain to be redistributed. After four decades of continuous implementation, the government claims that agrarian reform is almost complete.
However, an emerging coalition named the “June 10 Land Rights Committee,” is questioning claims that agrarian reform can already be concluded. Agrarian and climate justice movements that compose this committee point to the unfinished business of agrarian reform in the country. Many rural working people have yet to benefit from land redistribution, even as the lack of state support has compelled many beneficiaries to sell their lands.
Research we have conducted with the national rural working peoples’ movement KATARUNGAN or Kilusan para sa Repormang Agraryo at Katarungang Panlipunan identifies four interconnected challenges faced by the agrarian sector: reform reversals and land reconcentration; contestations over conflicting land laws and overlapping claims; escalating capitalist land grabs and violence; and a deepening price scissors between higher farming costs and low farm gate prices, resulting in the loss of agrarian livelihoods.
Significant but partial land redistribution was made possible through the “bibingka strategy” of strong peasant mobilization from below and coalition-building with state reformers in the 1990s and early 2000s. This resulted in the redistribution of nearly half of the country’s 13 million hectares of agriculturally productive lands including alienable and disposable public lands, private agricultural lands and forest lands covered under Community-Based Forest Management Program, which benefited about three-fifths of all peasant households.
But neoliberal policies of liberalizing agricultural imports and slashing government support services for farmers have challenged the gains made by agrarian movements. The past four decades have also seen rapid urbanization and the expansion of metropolitan areas like Metro Manila, which have increasingly absorbed rural land and labor for nonagricultural activities. Reflecting global trends, almost 50 percent of the Philippine population now lives in urban areas. This development has come alongside the rise of a large reserve of jobless or near-jobless working people with precarious livelihoods and food insecurity. Meanwhile, the intensifying impacts of climate change have exposed peasants and other rural working people to unpredictable weather and ecological shocks. Together, these factors have eroded their capacity to sustain their livelihoods on the land, making dispossession a gradual yet persistent reality.
The shifting political and socio-ecological landscape has exposed the limits of relying solely on land redistribution for attaining agrarian justice, pro-poor rural development, and sovereign industrialization. This is why contemporary agrarian movements are advancing a holistic framework for agrarian reform: the 4Rs—Redistribution, Recognition, Restitution, and Regulation. The 4Rs, now pushed by a broad global coalition of social movements, progressive academics, and rights advocates, were crystallized into an agenda during the Second International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ICARRD+20) in Cartagena, Colombia, in February 2026.
Redistribution remains essential, but it must be complemented by recognition of the diverse land rights of indigenous peoples, women, and youth, as well as the customary and communal tenure systems that persist outside formal titles. Restitution is necessary to address past and ongoing injustices and to provide reparations for dispossession and displacement. Regulation is crucial to prevent new waves of land grabbing, set limits on accumulation, prevent agricultural land-use conversion, and ensure that land serves people’s needs, including food and housing, for the present and the future.
Agrarian and climate justice movements and advocates will be trooping to the DAR Central Office on June 10 to highlight issues of land grabbing, reform reversals, and unfinished land redistribution. But this is only the beginning. Philippine agrarian reform today stands at a crossroads. To move forward, it must transcend a narrow focus on redistribution alone and embrace the holistic 4Rs agenda, reimagining agrarian reform as a living, ongoing process that links democratic land control with food sovereignty and climate justice.
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Karlo Mikhail Mongaya and Sheila Mae Pagurayan are researchers for the national working people’s movement KATARUNGAN. Karlo attended the ICARRD+20 in Cartagena, Colombia.
