Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-t5tsf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T12:24:22.219Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Old Wine in a New Bottle: Land Settlement and Agrarian Problems in the Philippines

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 April 2011

Peter Krinks
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Summary

The homesteading system instituted in the Philippines in 1903 was intended to stimulate economic development through increased agricultural output from previously unoccupied lands and also to relieve agrarian problems in densely settled parts of the country. A case study shows that while early homesteaders did significantly improve their conditions, the intense demand for land rapidly led to the development of squatting and tenancy. Average farm sizes are declining but there are simultaneously indications of a trend towards concentration of land ownership, which accords with experience in other peasant economies.

During the intense concern for economic development over the past 25 or so years, many governments have expressed their faith in the development of new agricultural land as at least a partial answer to a wide range of economic and social problems. These problems include regionally dense populations with inadequate farm sizes, inequitable systems of holding and renting land, inefficient methods of production and marketing, lack of capital and difficulties of capital formation, and low yields from land that is losing fertility through constant cropping. Frequently, ignorance, poverty or the agrarian structure inhibits the adoption of measures for improvement.

Those countries with significant areas of little used land resources have tended to rely on developing these resources as an answer to agrarian problems rather than attempting to tackle defects in the whole structure. Since the structure is not changed, it is not surprising that in due course the firmly institutionalised problems of the older areas gradually established themselves in areas of new settlement too. This is essentially what Boeke referred to as “static expansion”. More recently, Mellor has pointed out, “Expanding the land area at constant productivity and incomes is not economic development in the usual sense — it is only a holding action in the face of a growing population”. Even with rising productivity such as associated with the Green Revolution, there is considerable evidence to suggest the continuation, if not exacerbation, of agrarian problems.

By examining in detail a case study of colonisation in the Philippines, this paper will show that even if productivity and incomes in a new area are initially high, the operation of customary economic and social processes is likely to ensure the recreation of traditional problems. Such a conclusion is nothing new. It has been repeated depressingly often not only in recent decades but also of course throughout history.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , March 1974 , pp. 1 - 17
Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore 1974

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 For discussions, see Boeke, J. H., Economics and Economic Policy of Dual Societies, Haarlem, 1953.Google Scholar

2 Moerman, M., Agricultural Change and Peasant Choice in a Thai village, Berkeley, 1966, p. 31.Google Scholar

3 Ahmad, Z. M., ‘The Social and Economic Implications of the Green Revolution in Asia’, International Labour Review, 105, 1, 1972, pp. 9–34.Google Scholar

4 See Pelzer, K. J., Pioneer Settlement in the Asiatic Tropic, New York, 1945Google Scholar: Mc-Diarmid, A. M., ‘Agricultural Public Land Policy in the Philippines during the American Period’, Philippine Law Journal, 26, 6, 1953, pp. 851–88.Google Scholar

5 See Sturtevant, D. R., ‘Philippine Social Structure and its Relation to Agrarian Unrest’, Unpublished Ph.D Thesis, Stanford University, 1958.Google Scholar

6 Instructions to the Philippine Commission, cited in A. M. McDiarmid, p. 854.

7 See e.g., Field, F. V. and Field, E. B., ‘Philippine Inter-island Migration’, in Lasker, B. (ed.), Filipino Immigration to Continental United States and Hawaii, Chicago, 1931Google Scholar: Pfanner, M., ‘Postwar Land Colonisation in the Philippines’, M.A. Thesis, Cornell University, 1958.Google Scholar

8 See Sandoval, P., ‘Socio-economic Conditions of Settlers in Kidapawan Mindanao’, Philippine Agriculturist, XL, 9, 1957, pp.498–518.Google Scholar

9 Mindanao Development Authority, A Survey of Resources and Potentialities, Social Conditions, Values, Institutions and Regional Problems in Mindanao, Sulu and Palawan (Mimeo), Davao City, 1965, p. 13.Google Scholar

10 See Mariano, J. A., Soil Survey of Davao Province, Philippines, Manila, 1953.Google Scholar

11 Krinks, P., ‘Peasant Colonisation in Mindanao’, Journal of Tropical Geography, 30, 1970, pp. 38–47.Google Scholar

12 See Davies, R., ‘Land Settlement and Title Clearance’, Mimeo, 1957.Google Scholar

13 Using the only available price deflator extending back to pre-war days, PI,500 equals P285 in 1937 prices.

14 Rivera, G. F. and McMillan, R. T., The Rural Philippines, Manila, 1952, p. 125.Google Scholar

15 Sibley, W., ‘Work Partner Choice in a Philippine Village’, Silliman Journal, IV, 3, 1957, pp. 196–206Google Scholar: Erasmus, C.J.,‘Culture Structure and Process: the Occurrence and Disappearance of Reciprocal Farm Labour’, Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, 12, 4, 1956, pp. 444–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 Golay, F. and Goodstein, M., Rice and People in 1990 — Philippine Rice Needs to 1990: Output and Imput Requirements, Manila, 1967, pp. 3:59.Google Scholar

17 Castillo, G., ‘Propensity to Invest in Agriculture: Observations from a Developing Country — the Philippines’, International Journal of Agrarian Affairs, V, 4, 1968, p. 303.Google Scholar

18 See Penny, D. H., ‘Farm Credit Policy in the Early Stages of Agricultural Development’, Australian Journal of Agricultural Economics, XII, 1, 1968, pp. 32–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 Manggagawa, Bayanihang, Davao, 1968, Davao City, 1967, p.iii.Google Scholar

20 F. V. Field & E. B. Field, pp. 409–11; Anderson, J., ‘Some Aspects of Land and Society in a Pangasinan Community’, Philippine Sociological Review, X, 1962, pp. 52–3.Google Scholar

21 Raison, J. P., ‘La Colonisation Des Terres Neuves Intertropicales’, Etudies Rurales, 31, 1968, p. 102.Google Scholar

22 See Heeren, H. J., Het Land Aan De Overkaut: Transmigrate Van Java near Sumatra (with English translation), Meppel, Netherlands, 1967Google Scholar; Kampto, U., ‘Villages of Unplanned Resettlers in the Subdistrict Kaliredjo, Central Lampung’, in Koentjaraningrat, (ed), Villages in Indonesia, Ithaca, 1967.Google Scholar

23 Ho, Robert, ‘The Evolution of Agriculture and Land Ownership in Saiong Mukim’, Malayan Economic Review, 12, 2, 1968, pp. 81–102.Google Scholar

24 See Barnard, R. E., ‘Organisation of Production in a Kedah Rice-Farming Village’, unpublished Ph.D Thesis, Australian National University, 1969.Google Scholar

25 See Swift, M., ‘Economic Concentration and Malay Peasant Society’, in Freedman, M. (ed), Social Organisation, London, 1967.Google Scholar

26 Richter, H., “The Union of Burma’, in Shand, R. T. (ed.), Agricultural Development in Asia, Canberra, 1969, pp. 146–9.Google Scholar

27 Wijeyewardene, G., “Hydraulic Society in Contemporary Thailand?’, Paper presented at a Seminar on Contemporary Thailand, Australian National University, Canberra, 1971, p. 79; M. Moerman, p. 94.Google Scholar

28 G. Wijeyewardene, pp. 25–6.

29 Marx, Karl, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Moscow, 1852, p. 126.Google Scholar

30 Cited in Jacoby, E., Man and Land: the Fundamental Issue in Development, London, 1971, pp. 322–3.Google Scholar