Past gains in land reform could be undermined by this recent turn of events . The Philippine government has been implementing the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program for over one decade, but has yet to complete almost half of its targeted coverage area. DAR's balance of 1.8 million hectares is practically all composed of private agricultural lands, which are significantly harder to redistribute than public lands. An argument long used by opponents of Philippine agrarian reform is that agricultural yields decrease with the creation of small farms through land redistribution. This argument has been shown to be false, as is demonstrated below.
Evidence shows that productivity increases with smaller farms.
Finally, average Philippine sugarcane yields, with plantations accounting for much of the production, were less than two-thirds those of Indonesia. The average yield data for other countries in which tenant farmers and agricultural laborers predominate in the agricultural sector, notably Bangladesh and India, mirror the low productivity experience of the Philippines. By contrast, of the countries with predominantly owner-operated agriculture, only Thailand continues to experience low yields. Thailand, however, has the luxury of producing a significant grain surplus and is a major exporter of rice. However, evidence presented in other studies, particularly data on African agriculture, makes it clear that ownership alone is not sufficient to realize this potential.