Explanation:

Farmers in the sunset

By: Narciso M. Reyes Jr. - 6 years ago

Like Don Quixote tilting at windmills, we are fighting an agrarian reform battle in a futile fashion, almost comical were it not so tragic. And we are doing it more than four decades late, in a world where high technology and bigness hold sway.

While our prosperous neighbors like Japan, South Korea and Taiwan initiated their genuine agrarian reform programs immediately after World War II, under the driving force of authoritarian regimes backstopped by Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s directives, Philippine land reform (in the 1950s) was emasculated from the start by a landlord-dominated ruling class. Even the final product, the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) and the CARP Extension Reforms (Carper), is a case of a good medicine given too late to an ailing patient.