Presidential Decree No. 27

Also known as: P.D. No. 27 · The Tenant Emancipation Decree · The rice-and-corn land transfer decree

Definition

Presidential Decree No. 27 is the martial-law decree signed by President Ferdinand E. Marcos on October 21, 1972, under the long title “Decreeing the Emancipation of Tenants from the Bondage of the Soil, Transferring to Them the Ownership of the Land They Till and Providing the Instruments and Mechanism Therefor.” (LawPhil — PD 27) Its operative command decreed and ordered “the emancipation of all tenant farmers as of this day, October 21, 1972,” applying to “tenant farmers of private agricultural lands primarily devoted to rice and corn under a system of sharecrop or lease-tenancy, whether classified as landed estate or not,” and declaring each such tenant “deemed owner of a portion constituting a family-size farm of five (5) hectares if not irrigated and three (3) hectares if irrigated,” with the landowner entitled to “retain an area of not more than seven (7) hectares if such landowner is cultivating such area or will now cultivate it.” (LawPhil — PD 27)

The decree is the hinge between the two great agrarian-reform statutes. It carried forward the “economic family-size farm” that Republic Act No. 3844, the Agricultural Land Reform Code of 1963, had made the declared basis of Philippine agriculture (Sec. 2), and its rice-and-corn coverage was in turn swallowed by Republic Act No. 6657, the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law of June 10, 1988, which covered “regardless of tenurial arrangement and commodity produced, all public and private agricultural lands” (Sec. 4). (LawPhil — RA 3844, LawPhil — RA 6657) Its title machinery — the Land Transfer Certificate and the Emancipation Patent — came from Presidential Decree No. 266 (August 4, 1973). (LawPhil — PD 266)

Identities

Source Type	Identity
Wikipedia	N/A — no standalone article (existence check verified this session); the decree is covered within Land reform in the Philippines
Wikidata	N/A — no item located this session
DBpedia	N/A — resource lookup returns an empty record
ProductOntology	N/A
Wiktionary	N/A
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH)	N/A
MeSH	N/A
NCBI Taxonomy	N/A
AGROVOC	N/A — no concept verified for the statute this session
Google Scholar	Presidential Decree 27 October 21 1972 tenant emancipation bondage of the soil rice corn land transfer certificate emancipation patent Marcos martial law agrarian reform retention seven hectares
ConceptNet	N/A — ConceptNet API unreachable this session
OpenCyc	N/A

Also Known As

P.D. No. 27
The Tenant Emancipation Decree
The rice-and-corn land transfer decree

Examples and Analogies

A family-size farm fixed by formula: PD 27 gave RA 3844’s economic family-size farm hard numbers and priced the transfer at “two and one-half (2 1/2) times the average harvest of three normal crop years.” (LawPhil — PD 27, LawPhil — RA 3844)
Verified statutory data:
Date and authority: October 21, 1972; issued under Commander-in-Chief powers “pursuant to Proclamation No. 1081, dated September 21, 1972, and General Order No. 1 dated September 22, 1972, as amended” (LawPhil — PD 27)
Coverage and award: rice and corn lands under sharecrop or lease-tenancy, “whether classified as landed estate or not”; 5 hectares if not irrigated, 3 if irrigated; retention of not more than 7 hectares, conditioned on the owner’s cultivating it (LawPhil — PD 27)
Payment: cost plus 6% annual interest in “fifteen (15) years of fifteen (15) equal annual amortizations”; on default the farmers’ cooperative pays with right of recourse; the government guarantees amortizations “with shares of stock in government-owned and government-controlled corporations” (LawPhil — PD 27)
Title conditions: no title issued until the tenant is “a full-fledged member of a duly recognized farmer’s cooperative”; titles non-transferable “except by hereditary succession or to the Government” (LawPhil — PD 27)
Implementation and registration: the Department of Agrarian Reform through its Secretary promulgates the rules; Land Transfer Certificates are recorded with the Land Registration Commission, and the Emancipation Patent and/or Grant is issued by DAR upon full compliance, registered without fees (PD 266, August 4, 1973) (LawPhil — PD 27, LawPhil — PD 266)

Usage Scenarios

1. Issuing Land Transfer Certificates and Emancipation Patents

PD 27 authorized the transfer; PD 266 built its paperwork — the Land Transfer Certificate recorded without the owner’s surrender of title, the Emancipation Patent issued after full compliance as “conclusive authority” for a new title. (LawPhil — PD 266)

2. Teaching the Martial-Law Agrarian Program

The decree is the standard classroom text for land reform under martial law — issued five weeks after Proclamation 1081, phrased as emancipation, confined to rice and corn. (LawPhil — PD 27, Wikipedia — Land reform in the Philippines)

3. Reading the Statute Chain

RA 3844 (1963) abolished share tenancy; the Code of Agrarian Reform of September 10, 1971 created the Department of Agrarian Reform, as this wiki’s National Land Reform Council entry records; PD 27 (1972) transferred ownership on rice and corn lands; RA 6657 (1988) covered all agricultural lands. (LawPhil — RA 3844, LawPhil — PD 27, LawPhil — RA 6657)

4. Resolving Title Questions on Emancipated Land

Lawyers tracing rice-and-corn titles apply the non-transferability rule — succession or reversion to the Government only — and PD 266’s Torrens registration provisions. (LawPhil — PD 27, LawPhil — PD 266)

Strategies

Legislate by decree at the regime’s start: the authority recital placed land reform among the founding acts of the “New Society,” timed when Congress could not contest it. (LawPhil — PD 27)
Strike at one crop first: rice and corn only made the program administrable where tenancy grievances were sharpest — a narrow precedent for RA 6657’s comprehensive coverage. (LawPhil — PD 27, LawPhil — RA 6657)
Price by formula, pay over time: the 2 1/2-times-harvest valuation and fifteen-year, 6-percent amortization converted confiscation into a financed purchase. (LawPhil — PD 27)
Bind title to organization and anti-speculation: no title until cooperative membership, no transfer except by succession or to the Government. (LawPhil — PD 27)

Security and Safety Measures

Tenure by deemed ownership: the central safeguard is grammatical — the tenant “shall be deemed owner” from October 21, 1972. (LawPhil — PD 27)
Anti-speculation lock: the non-transferability rule protects the beneficiary class against buyers. (LawPhil — PD 27)
Clean title machinery: PD 266’s chain — recordation, annotation without surrender of the owner’s duplicate, cancellation after thirty days’ notice, freedom from fees — cleared the conveyance path. (LawPhil — PD 266)
For researchers: the LawPhil text is an unnumbered sequence of paragraphs, not “Sections 1–2”; it does not cite RA 3844 by number; award, retention, and valuation figures should be quoted from the decree itself. (LawPhil — PD 27)

Historical Context

The decree joined two histories. The first was the reform lineage: RA 3844 (August 8, 1963) had declared share tenancy contrary to public policy, installed leasehold at a capped rent, and made the economic family-size farm the basis of Philippine agriculture — machinery this wiki’s National Land Reform Council entry records as chronically lagging. (LawPhil — RA 3844) The second was the crisis of 1972: Proclamation 1081 of September 21 and General Order No. 1 of September 22 placed lawmaking in the President’s hands, and the emancipation decree followed on October 21 — the land-to-the-tiller promise of 1963 executed by decree, with the Department of Agrarian Reform, created the year before by the Code of Agrarian Reform, as its implementing arm. (LawPhil — PD 27)

PD 266 (August 4, 1973) then supplied the registration mechanics — Land Transfer Certificates, then Emancipation Patents — under which transfers took Torrens form; the standard assessment is that “many landowners were not paid because of martial law.” (LawPhil — PD 266, Wikipedia — Land reform in the Philippines) RA 6657 (June 10, 1988) later extended coverage to all agricultural lands, and the decree today governs chiefly the titles and transfers of the lands it had already emancipated. (LawPhil — RA 6657)

Challenges and Controversies

Rice and Corn Only

The decree’s defining limitation is its crop line: sugar, coconut, and other plantation lands lay outside a program confined to the two staples, untouched until RA 6657’s comprehensive coverage sixteen years later. (LawPhil — PD 27, LawPhil — RA 6657)

The Unpaid Landowners

The decree promised owners a 2 1/2-times-harvest valuation amortized through the tenants, but the standard account is that many were never paid. (LawPhil — PD 27, Wikipedia — Land reform in the Philippines)

Title Delay and the Cooperative Condition

Because no title could issue until the grantee was a cooperative member, and patents awaited PD 266’s machinery, many beneficiaries held deemed ownership for years without paper. (LawPhil — PD 27, LawPhil — PD 266)

Reform or Legitimation?

Issued five weeks into martial law, the decree has been read both ways — as the program the 1963 Code promised but never funded, and as the new regime’s claim to revolutionary legitimacy. (LawPhil — PD 27, Wikipedia — Land reform in the Philippines)