Strengthening Land Tenure Security in the Philippines

“After I received the land title, I was relieved of my fear of losing the land we've been tilling for years,” says Meguias Equin, a farmer from Milagros in Masbate province. “With our land title now secure, we can better provide for our families because we no longer need to share the fruits of our labor with [the former landlord].”

Equin is one of the many agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBs) who recently received their individual land titles, under the Philippine government’s project called Support to Parcelization of Lands for Individual Titling Project (SPLIT). The project aims to accelerate the subdivision of collective Certificates of Land Ownership Award (CLOAs) and generate individual titles on lands awarded under the country’s Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP).

Voluntary participation

As of July 2025, a total of 163,176 individual electronic titles have been issued under the project, with 84 percent bearing female names. (When completed, around 750,000 agrarian reform beneficiaries are expected to gain improved land tenure security and stable property rights for over 1.3 million hectares of land granted under the CARP.)

Under Philippine law and SPLIT policy, land awarded to a married ARB is considered conjugal property, so both spouses’ names appear on the title. This protects women’s property rights, prevents unilateral transactions, strengthens decision-making power and household welfare.

An impact evaluation conducted by the East Asia Pacific Gender Innovation Lab, in collaboration with researchers from the University of Maryland and the University of the Philippines Los Baños, found that 93 percent of ARBs prefer individual titles over collective ownership. However, parcelization of CLOAs under the SPLIT Project remains voluntary.

The project respects ARBs’ choices and upholds legal and social safeguards. ARBs and their communities may retain their collective CLOAs if they prefer this arrangement. Only those who consent will proceed to individual titling. This approach protects Indigenous Peoples’ rights (including free, prior, and informed consent), avoids conflict, and recognizes that collective arrangements may be appropriate for some groups and areas.

Addressing land tenure inequality

The Philippines has a long history of inequitable land tenure. Beginning in the Spanish colonial period (1565–1898), large private estates dominated the rural landscape. Farmers cultivated the land under sharecropping arrangements, with neither the freedom to choose their crops nor the option to own the land they tilled.

By 1980, 60 percent of the agricultural population was landless, many of them poor. To address this pervasive inequality, the Philippine Congress passed the agrarian reform law in 1988 and implemented the CARP to improve the lives of small farmers by offering land tenure security and support services.

Over the past several decades, CARP has distributed 4.8 million hectares—about 16 percent of the nation’s land—to almost three million beneficiaries. However, only about 53 percent of the land distributed was titled to individuals. Especially in the 1990s, the government issued mostly collective land ownership awards to accelerate distribution, with the intention of subdividing and issuing individual titles later.

Hence, many farmers who received land under CARP have been waiting for individual titles, sometimes for decades. The SPLIT Project provides these farmers with legal proof and the security of individual land rights.

What a secure land title means for beneficiaries

The case of William Montino, 60 years old and an agrarian reform beneficiary in Tuba, Benguet typifies this experience. Montino has been working on his land granted by the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) for over three decades, enabling him to send all his five children through college. It’s only in July 2023 when he finally received the individual e-title — a long-overdue confirmation of ownership for the land he has been tilling for nearly 40 years.

In Pitogo, Zamboanga del Norte, Jomari Alios, a farmer in his 20s, says that although his grandfather did not live to personally receive his long-awaited land title, he is grateful to have inherited the land.

He adds, “My grandfather lovingly tended his farm. The way he cultivated it is the way I will care for it as well. I’ve promised myself to nurture the fruits and the coconut trees that he planted—and our family’s dream for a better future.”

SPLIT’s core objective is to strengthen tenure security and property rights for smallholder farmers, with the expectation that secure titles will spur greater investment, boost productivity, and reduce poverty.

Indeed, a report shows that agrarian reform beneficiaries with secure individual titles do exhibit higher productivity than those with less secure tenure (e.g., share tenants, landless). For example, rice yields among beneficiaries are about 580 kg higher than non-beneficiaries. In coconut farms, the shift from share tenancy to titled ownership resulted in a 47 percent increase in copra yield and greater cropping intensity, with farmers diversifying into bananas, pineapple, root crops, and vegetables.

Improved incomes have enabled many ARBs to invest in their children’s education and secure a better life for them.

“Agrarian reform has helped our family a great deal,” says Leonora Tamayo, 70, an ARB residing in Lux, Gutalac, Zamboanga del Norte. “Because we cultivated the land, we were able to send all four of our children to college. We planted coconut, and you can now see the abundance of our coconut farm.”