Britanica Land Reform

8/2/2019 Britanica Land Reform

1/10

Land Reform

Modern European reforms

The French Revolution brought a new era in the history of land reform.Reform meantdealing with survivals of the medieval tenures that had left a common heritage in mostEuropean countries and, through them, in the colonies. The measures and approachesvaried from place to place and period to period.

On the eve of the Revolution, French society was polarized, with the nobility and clergy onone side and the rising business class on the other. The middle class was relatively small,especially in the rural areas. The majority of the peasants were hereditary tenants, eithercensiers, who paid a fixed money rent, or mainmortables, or serfs, who paid rent in theform of labour services, corve, of about three days a week. The peasants paid various

other feudal dues and taxes, from which the nobility and clergy were exempted. TheRevolution overthrew the ancien rgime and the feudal order and introduced land reform.

The reform repealed feudal tenures, freed all persons from serfdom, abolished feudalcourts, and cancelled all payments not based on real property, including tithes. Rents basedon real property were redeemable. Once the law had been passed, however, the peasantsseized the land and refused to pay any rents or redemption fees; in 1792 all payments werefinally cancelled. Land of the clergy and political emigrants was confiscated and sold atauction, together with common land. The terms of sale, however, often favoured thewealthy, which may explain the rise of a new class of large landowners among thesupporters of Napoleon.

The social and political objectives of the reformers were fully realized. The censiersandserfs became owners. Feudalism was destroyed, and the new regime won peasant support.The economic effects, however, were limited. Incentives could not be increased substantiallysince the peasants already had full security of tenure prior to the reform. The scale ofoperations was not changed; and no facilities for credit, marketing, or capital formationwere created. The major achievements were the reinforcement of private, individualownership and perpetuation of the small family farm as a basis of democracy. The smallfamily farm has characterized French agriculture ever since.

There were other reforms in most European countries. England resolved its land problemsby the enclosure movement, which drove the small peasants into the towns, consolidatedlandholdings, and promoted large-scale operation and private ownership. Sweden andDenmark pioneered between 1827 and 1830 by peacefully abolishing village compulsion, or

imposed labour service, and the strip system of cultivation, by consolidating the land, andby dividing the commons among the peasants. Though influenced by the French Revolution,only after the 1848 revolutions did Germany, Italy, and Spain free the peasants andredistribute the land. Reform in Ireland took a whole century before substantive resultswere achieved, in the mid-1930s, after Ireland was divided into Northern Ireland and theIrish Free State. The tenants were converted into owners by subsidized purchase of theland.

The first major Russian reform was the emancipation of the serfs in 1861. At the time ofemancipation about 45 percent of the land was private property and the remainder was heldas allotment land, cultivated in units averaging 9.5 acres (3.8 hectares) by the peasantserfs against rent in kind and labour, payable to feudal lords. In contrast, fewer than 1,000


2/10

noble families owned about 175,000,000 acres (70,000,000 hectares) and received renttherefrom. Conflict between such extremes of poverty and wealth caused restlessnessamong the peasants and rendered reform inevitable. As Tsar Alexander II put it: "It is

better to abolish serfdom from above than to await the day when it will begin to abolishitself from below."

The Emancipation Act of 1861 abolished serfdom and distributed allotment land among thepeasants. The homestead became hereditary property of the individual, but the field landwas vested in the village mir as a whole. The peasant paid redemption through the villageauthority, while the landlord received state bonds as compensation equal to 75 to 80percent of the land market value. Though legally freed, the private serf had to ransom hisfreedom by surrendering a part of the allotment land. In contrast, serfs belonging to theimperial family were emancipated in 1863 and received the maximum amount of land fixedby law. Serfs of the state were emancipated in 1866 and allowed to keep the land theyoccupied against money rent. The Cossacks received two-thirds of the land, to be held incommon, but in lieu of redemption payments they had to serve 20 years in the army. Theserfs in mines and households were freed but received no economic assets.

Redemption payments, however, soon proved too burdensome, village restrictions weretight, and the allotment land area declined, all of which led to renewed restlessness anddisturbances. Following the revolt of 1905, the government, under Pyotr Stolypin, tried tocreate middle-class, independent farmers by replacing the village tenure with privateownership, consolidating holdings, and encouraging land purchase by individuals; but thetime was too short for effective implementation. The Soviet Revolution overthrew the tsaristregime and introduced the concepts of public ownership and collectivization.

By decree in 1918, the Soviets abolished private ownership of land, made farming the solebasis of landholding, and declared collectivization a major objective of policy. Marketing of

agricultural products became a state monopoly. In 1929 Stalin embarked on a full course ofcollectivization, and by 1938 collective farms occupied 85.6 percent of the land and statefarms 9.1 percent. Credit facilities and tractor stations supplemented collectivization, whileagricultural production was integrated in the national plan for industrialization anddevelopment.

The costs of Soviet reform included the destruction of capital and the death of largenumbers of kulaks, or rich peasants. Total output and productivity increased, however, andcapital formation was made possible through forced saving, taxes, and regulated prices. Thepeasant received extensive social services such as health care, and education and betterworking conditions. The objectives of the decree of 1918 have been fully realized.

Reform in eastern Europe was complicated by the fact that most of the eastern Europeancountries remained under foreign rule until the middle of the 19th century or later. InHungary, the Decree of 1853 abolished the robot, or forced labour and feudal dues, freedthe serfs, liberalized land transaction, and encouraged consolidation. The Romanian reformof 1864 freed the serfs and distributed both the land and the redemption payments inproportion to the number of cows or oxen each peasant had. Formal emancipation inBulgaria was introduced by the Turkish government in the 1850s, but actual reform came in1880, after independence. Each peasant, including sharecroppers and wage workers, whohad worked the land for 10 years without interruption, was entitled to the land he hadcultivated. With the exception of Bulgaria, the distribution of ownership throughout most ofeastern Europe remained highly uneven. Political instability reached a dangerous pointbetween the two world wars. Following World War II, the eastern European countries


3/10

established Communist governments with a strong tendency toward collective, cooperative,and mechanized agriculture.

Mexico

The Mexican reform of 1915 followed a revolution and dealt mainly with lands of Indianvillages that had been illegally absorbed by neighbouring haciendas (plantations). Legallythere was no serfdom; but the Indian wage workers, or peons, were reduced to virtualserfdom through indebtedness. Thus, the landlords were masters of the land and of thepeons. The immediate aim of reform was to restore the land to its legal owners, settle thetitle, and use public land to reconstruct Indian villages. The motives were mainly to reducepoverty and inequality and to secure political stability, which was then in the balance. Adecree of 1915 voided all land alienations that had taken place illegally since 1856 andprovided for extracting land from haciendas to reestablish the collective Indian villages, orejidos. The 1917 constitution reaffirmed those provisions but also guaranteed protection of

private property, including haciendas. Nevertheless, a combination of loopholes, litigation,and reactionary forces slowed implementation, and effective reform came only afterpassage of the Agrarian Code of 1934 and the sympathetic efforts of Pres. Lzaro Crdenas.

The reform restored many villages and freed the peons, but land concentration and povertycontinued. In 1950, more than 31 percent of the private cropland was owned by fewer than0.5 percent of the owners. Small-scale operation was retained or encouraged, a factexplaining the decline of output in the early years. More recently, efficiently run farms havebeen exempted from distribution.

The social and political impact was more positive. The peasants acquired more land andliberty, and control by landlords was reduced, although it was replaced by village

restrictions. At least legally, farming became the basis of landholding. Some have seen inland reform the reason for Mexico's political stability, although there have been sporadicpeasant uprisings and other violent encounters.

Reforms since World War II

Recent decades have witnessed widespread, comprehensive reform programs, but theconcept has undergone major changes. The eastern European countries and China originallyfollowed the Soviet model, with different modifications in the individual countries. A fewother countries have continued to follow that model, with major emphasis on "land to thetiller," cooperation, collective ownership, large-scale operation, and mechanization, and witheconomic development as the common denominator. In capitalist-oriented reforms, privateownership, family farming, and dual tenures have remained basic objectives with the aim ofpromoting democracy, equality, stability, and development. Under the influence and withthe guidance of the United Nations, nonsocialist reforms of the 1950s were equated withcommunity development and emphasized institutional and rural self-help in addition to landredistribution. In the 1960s the emphasis shifted to agricultural productivity and economicdevelopment by means of large-scale operation, new technology, and cooperation. The1970s witnessed the advent of "integrated rural development" as the focus of reform and asa way of combining productive activities with improvements in the social and physicalinfrastructure. The integrated approach, however, soon proved to be unmanageable, andthe emphasis shifted to the "target" group as the focus of reform. The most recentconception of reform has been to satisfy "basic needs," with or without land distribution,although no policymaker in the capitalist countries would openly question the idea of landredistribution or the creation of small family farms. These experiments with the concept of


4/10

reform have been accompanied by attempts to broaden the concept to incorporate womenas equal beneficiaries of reform in their own right. The results have been mixed.

Japan

The Japanese reform came immediately after World War II at the insistence of the AlliedOccupation Army. The reform was designed to fit the uniquely high literacy rate andadvanced industrial level of the country. Although the Meiji government had formallyabolished feudalism and declared the land to be the property of the peasants, usurpation ofland by the rich and by moneylenders had created classes of perpetual tenants andabsentee landlords. In 1943, 66 percent of the land was operated by tenants against rent inkind that averaged 48 percent of the farmers' product, while population pressure resulted infragmentation of holdings. The social class structure was closely tied to tenure, the ownersin each village being at the top of the structure. Conflict between landlords and peasantswas widespread.

After the war, the crisis was revived by food shortages, the breakdown of the urbaneconomy, and the return of absentee landlords to the land. The Occupation Army insistedon reform, presumably to democratize the society and rehabilitate the economy. The reformlaw of 1946 established a ceiling on individual holdings and provided for expropriation andresale of excess land to the tenants against long-term payments. The governmentcompensated the landlords in cash and bonds redeemable in 30 years. Tenants wereprotected by contract, and rents were reduced to a maximum of 25 percent of the product.The redistributed land was made inalienable, though this restriction was relaxed four yearslater. The program also provided for marketing and credit cooperatives. An importantsupplementary measure was the Local Autonomy Law of 1947, which decentralized thepower structure and put village affairs in the hands of the villagers.

Within two years tenancy declined by more than 80 percent. Rent control and landdistribution helped to equalize incomes in the villages and rehabilitate the sociopoliticalstatus of the peasants. Crop yields per unit of land increased, but despite improvedtechniques the output per worker declined. In general the reform seemed to realize theobjectives of the reformers and the peasants, although smallness of scale, low per capitaincomes, underemployment, and insufficient mechanization have persisted. Even blackmarket rents developed. These problems were tolerable because their effects weremitigated by the upsurge of the urban economy and the ability of the Japanese farmer tosupplement the family income from nonagricultural employment. Even so, the farmerscontinue to depend on government subsidy to stay in farming.

Egypt

The Egyptian reform of 1952 followed the revolution that overthrew the monarchy andbrought young middle-class leaders to the helm. Though affecting only about 12 percent ofthe arable land, it was applied thoroughly and touched all aspects of rural life. Egypt hadtwo main forms of tenure: private ownership and waqf, or land held in trust and dedicatedto charitable or educational purposes. Waqf land was inalienable, but private land wassubject to speculation and concentration. In 1950, 1 percent of the owners had more than20 percent of the private land, and 7 percent had more than two-thirds. The operating unitwas small, with 77 percent of all the holdings occupying less than one acre each. Tenancywas widespread and rents were exorbitant. The peasants were exploited by middlemen whosublet the land to tenants, mediated between them and the market, and extended credit athigh rates of interest.


5/10

The revolutionary reformers aimed at abolishing feudalism, recruiting peasant support,promoting economic development, and bringing the villagers back into the stream ofnational life. The Agrarian Reform Law of 1952 put a ceiling on individual holdings at 200

faddans (one faddan= 1.038 acres), later reduced to 100 faddans, with special allowancefor male children. The excess land was expropriated and distributed to the peasants inparcels not exceeding five faddans. Compensation was given in bonds, while land recipientshad to repay in annual installments. The new owners were obligated to join cooperatives forproduction, marketing, and credit. Tenancy conditions were also regulated, with contractreplacing traditional terms; rent could not exceed 50 percent of the product, nor could atenant hold more than 50 acres, to avoid subletting. An interesting feature of the reformwas the special attention given to college graduates by allowing them up to 20-faddanparcels.

The reform was enforced quickly and had a great impact on the morale of the peasants. Theeconomic effects, however, were minor since agriculture was intensive and land yield high.Producer cooperatives served only to offset the impact of distribution on the scale ofoperation. Some increases in yield have been claimed, but the evidence is still inconclusive.Furthermore, little capital was redirected into productive investment since the compensationbonds were not negotiable. Peasant savings remained limited, income increments beingspent mostly on consumption. Finally, underemployment in agriculture has remainedwidespread. The defects of the agrarian structure continue to prevail, and relatively largeownerships exist, while certain groups in Egypt are calling for reversal of the reform.

The social and political effects, however, were far reaching. Redistribution and regulation ofrent raised the incomes of small owners and tenants. Cooperatives replaced the middlemanand captured his share for the farmer. The peasant gained social status and enjoyed ahigher level of political participation, mostly in support of the revolutionary regime. Theseeffects, however, can be easily exaggerated. The peasants became dependent on the

cooperatives whether they liked them or not. Great differences in landholding continued toexist, and peasant incomes remained low. Black market rents appeared. The example ofEgypt suggests that successful reform in densely populated countries requires an upsurge inthe industrial sector to relieve population pressure and permit technical advance and higherproductivity in agriculture.

Southeast Asia

The model of Japan's reform has been attempted in Southeast Asia, especially in Taiwan,South Korea, and South Vietnam, all influenced by American experts and by the anti-Communism of the respective governments. The objectives were to sustain the politicalorder, raise living standards, and promote some degree of economic development. The

reforms began with regulation of tenancy, restriction of rent, and the institution of writtencontract for leases, following which tenants were to be transformed into owners. Taiwan'sreform was implemented between 1949 and 1953, in three stages. First, rents, which hadsometimes reached 70 percent of the product, were reduced to 37.5 percent. Next, tenant-farmed public land was sold to the tenants. Finally, tenant-farmed private land was boughtby the government and resold to the tenants.

The Vietnamese reform was introduced in 1955. Rents were reduced to a maximum of 25percent of the product. A ceiling of 247 acres (100 hectares) was put on individual holdings,however, and only the excess land was subject to redistribution in parcels of 7.4 to 12.4acres (three to five hectares) to the tenants. The collapse of the South Vietnamese regime


6/10

and the unification of South and North Vietnam ended that reform and replaced it with thesocialist model of North Vietnam.

The reform in Taiwan, as in South Vietnam prior to unification, was supplemented by othermeasures described as community development, such as adult education, credit facilities,improved technology, and other social services. Though land consolidation was attempted,the scale of operation was little affected. The main effect seems to have been the regulationof tenancy and the redistribution of rent incomes. An innovation of Taiwan's reform was thepartial compensation of landlords with industrial shares in public enterprises, which helpedthem and helped industry.

Taiwan's reform has been hailed as a major success, in both economic and political terms.Some observers, however, are unwilling to reach such a conclusion until restrictions areremoved and the peasants have a free choice of tenure and farm organization.

South Korea's land reform (under the Land Reform Law of June 1949) roughly followed theJapanese model by removing tenancy, creating small ownerships, implementing the lawthoroughly and promptly, and depending heavily on nonagricultural (basically industrial)employment to absorb labour and supplement rural income. Like the Japanese andTaiwanese reforms, Korea's successful reform was generously supported by foreign aid.

The Philippines introduced a reform program in 1963, which aimed primarily at replacingshare tenancy with lease contracts and eventually with ownership, and at revitalizingagriculture through extension services. By the mid-1980s the program had given titles toabout 400,000 tenants and secure leases to another 600,000, but the economic viability ofthe new units has been uncertain because of their small scale and the lack of supplementaryfacilities. The main effects initially were seed improvement, greater use of fertilizers, and anincrease in contractual tenancy. To combat the negative effects of small-scale farming, thePhilippine government has resorted to what it calls the "compact farm," which is a voluntarygrouping of small farms to be operated under one management as one consolidated farm.The problem of surplus labour, however, remains to be solved.

Various other reforms have been introduced in Southeast Asia, but the only innovativeprogram has been that of Malaysia. The program in Malaysia has been highly organized anddevelopment oriented. It tries to promote social and economic objectives by emphasizingthe production of rubber and palm oil for export and gradually transforming the landlessinto hereditary tenants on newly reclaimed and settled plantations. A typical plantationcovers 4,500 to 5,000 acres (1,800 to 2,000 hectares) of jungle land and absorbs about 400families. The land is cleared and planted by contract, and a village is constructed, with allthe necessary services, before the settlers arrive. Each house has a quarter of an acre for a

household garden. Cropland is divided in blocks of 120 to 200 acres (48 to 80 hectares), tobe worked by a team of 15 to 25 people until the plants have matured. Upon maturation,each settler receives a share by lottery and a lease title for 99 years. This tenurearrangement precludes alienation, subdivision, or subleasing; it thus protects the tenantfarmer and sidesteps the Islamic laws of inheritance, which tend toward fragmentation ofthe land.

The settler is responsible for the cost of clearing and planting, but the government pays theadministrative costs. The settler is guaranteed supplementary employment to earnsubsistence income pending maturity of the plants, and cultivation is guided by experts. Therate of settlement is determined by the overall economic plan. It is clear that landholdinghas become tied to cultivation; fragmentation and diseconomies of scale have been avoided,


7/10

and cultivation has become a rational economic operation. The Malaysian program has muchin common with the cooperative settlements of Israel and the Gezira Scheme in The Sudan.

Latin America

Except for the early example of Mexico, reform in Latin America has been recent andappears to have come only in response to the threat of social and political instability andmounting international pressures. Reform in Latin America after World War II must be seenagainst a background of rapidly increasing population and of extreme contrasts betweenplantation economies and small units; high concentration of land ownership, income, andpower and dire poverty; modern farming and relatively backward cultivation methods; andnationalism and extensive foreign ownership of land. In addition, Latin-American society iscomplicated by its ethnic mixtures and by dependence on staple trade items such as sugar,tobacco, cocoa, coffee, and beef cattle.

Reform in Latin America has reflected the ideologies and objectives of the regime in power.Brazil has had several attempts at reform. The measures have been indirect and relativelymild, the most important being taxation of idle land and large plantations and reclamationand settlement of the Amazon region, with provisions for credit and tenancy protection. Theresults have been modest, however, largely because of the physical and biological hardshipsfaced by settlers in the tropical Amazon environment.Peru has deviated by creatingcollective administrations of the nationalized feudal estates. The title resides in the nation,and the estates are run by the Agricultural Societies of Social Interest (sais) , a mechanismdevised to avoid breaking up economically efficient enterprises rather than to modify thetenure institutions.

At the other end of the Latin-American spectrum is theCuban reform that followed therevolution of 1958. Cuba retained private ownership but reduced it substantially in favour ofthe public sector. As proclaimed a few months before the overthrow of the old regime, thereform aimed at the elimination oflatifundia tenure, expropriation of land owned by foreigncompanies, higher standards of living for the peasantry, and national economicdevelopment. It began by setting a ceiling of 30 caballeras (one caballera= 33 acres, or13.4 hectares) on individual holdings, with a maximum of 100 caballeras if economicoperations required such a scale. All foreign-owned land was nationalized. Public land onwhich rice and cattle were raised was converted into state farms, and the peasants becamepermanent wage workers on these farms. Sugar plantations were converted intocooperatives to avoid their subdivision into small uneconomic units. Before long the ceilingon individual holdings was lowered to five caballeras, and all such holdings became privatefamily farms. The rest were nationalized, and the expropriated owners were compensatedwith a pension for life. The reform was supplemented by the organization of national farmer

associations; people's stores; credit, housing, and educational facilities; and the productionof machinery and fertilizers. In 1963 a major reorganization of state farms took place; theywere subdivided on the basis of crop specialization into smaller operational units of about469 caballeras.

Effects of the reform were comprehensive and immediate. The tenure institutions wereradically changed in favour of public ownership, while minifundia and tenancies wereabolished. Socially and politically, the reform realized the objectives of the reformers.Economically, the government claimed higher yields of sugarcane, vegetables, and fruit, butthis claim has been disputed by foreign observers.


8/10

Other Latin-American reforms fall between those of Brazil and Cuba, though closer to theformer than to the latter in comprehensiveness and thoroughness. For example, the reformin Costa Rica has overlooked land concentration and income inequality and concentrated on

the squatters, or parsitos, who in 1961 numbered between 12,000 and 16,000 people. Thereform aimed at legalizing existing squatter holdings, preventing further squatting, andconserving virgin land. Even this modest program was implemented very slowly. As late as1973, 7.3 percent of the landholdings comprised 67 percent of the total agricultural land.Colombia has had reform programs for at least 30 years, but concentration of ownership,fragmented holdings, backward methods of cultivation, inequality of income distribution,and widespread poverty have remained characteristic; in 1970, 4.3 percent of the holdingscontained 67.4 percent of the total area.

Chile undertook various reform programs before achieving concrete results. In 1962 aprogram was enacted to encourage settlement of new land, but only about 1,000 familieswere settled. A comprehensive reform was introduced in 1965 with three main objectives:to make the agricultural workers owners of the land they had cultivated previously, toincrease agricultural and livestock production, and to facilitate social mobility and peasantparticipation in political life. The Chilean reform was unique in its method of implementation.Once the plantation had been designated for expropriation and the prospective ownersselected, they were organized into asentamientos, or settlement groups. The group electeda committee to take charge of settlement. The members cultivated the land as a team forthree to five years. Meanwhile they received training and guidance in social participation,decision making, and modern farming. Upon completion of the transition period, the landwas divided among those who had shown promise, to be held outright and withoutrestriction. All new owners were obligated to join cooperatives, the form of these beingdetermined by the members. The socialist regime that came into office in 1970 expeditedthe expropriation process and the creation of settlement groups or cooperative farms underpeasant committees. By 1972 all the potential land, which had been in farms larger than

200 acres (80 hectares), had been expropriated and reallocated. The new regime that tookover in 1973 decided, however, to privatize the land and reverse much of the reform byreturning large areas to the former owners, dissolving the cooperatives, and creatingprivate ownerships in their place. Most of the reverse changes had been completed by 1979.Nevertheless, most of the excess land in farms of more than 200 acres remained in thehands of the reform beneficiaries. Owners of less than 12 acres (five hectares) were hardlyaffected; those who owned between 12 and 50 acres (five and 20 hectares) benefittedmost. In the final analysis, less than 15 percent of the agricultural land was affected by thereform between 1965 and 1979 under three regimes.

Observers of the Latin-American scene have been pessimistic regarding the adequacy ofthese land reform programs. With the exception of Cuba, capital formation in agriculturehas not increased substantially; the pattern of land distribution has undergone little change;social and political stability have remained in question; and the agrarian structure is stillconsidered defective.

Other recent reforms

Attempts to reform the agrarian structure have been made in most other countries, withvarying degrees of seriousness. India and Pakistan have concentrated on abolishingintermediaries who prevailed as survivals of traditional and feudal tenures. In India thetenants have become hereditary holders, with the title vested in the state. India has leftreform to the states and emphasized peaceful and compensatory methods; hence theresults have varied from one state to another. Pakistan, following the revolution of 1958,


9/10

enacted a reform that made most of the tenants owners. In both countries, however, small-scale farming has persisted, while Pakistan has continued to tolerate and protect owners ofup to 500 acres (200 hectares). In neither country has fragmentation been effectively

reduced or have capital formation and cultivation methods significantly advanced.

In contrast, after the Communists came to power in China, private ownership waseliminated and the peasants were organized in village communes. Extensive supplementarymeasures have been tried, and the role and organization of the commune have variedaccording to the pressures on the economy. The most recent innovation in China'sagriculture has been the "production responsibility system," which allows the commune tocontract with its members for quotas of output; the members are free to sell the surplus onthe open market. The change is seen as an incentive generator, but land cannot be rented,bought, sold, or used except as authorized by the commune. The effects of China's agrarianpolicy on peasant living conditions and the Chinese economy have been generally acceptedas positive, genuine, and impressive.

In 1962 Iran made owners of most of the former sharecroppers, in the classic tradition ofWestern-type reform, mainly to create political stability. Given Iran's revolution of 1979,however, the reform evidently was not sufficient to sustain the old social order. Reform wasalso introduced in Syria, Iraq, Algeria, Libya, and other countries of the Middle East andNorth Africa following independence or revolution. Most of these reforms were influenced bythe Egyptian example, with the state playing a major role. In all cases emphasis has beenplaced on farm cooperatives, although they have been largely ineffective.

In contrast, tropical Africa has witnessed a wave of innovative reform in recent years.Reform has sometimes come in "packages," which combine tenure reform and othermeasures affecting cultivation and productivity. Among the innovations is the "villagization,"or ujamaa, program of Tanzania, according to which a group of families lives, works, and

makes decisions together and shares the costs and benefits of farming the land. Theprogram began as a voluntary movement in 1967, but by 1977 it had become almostmandatory. At the same time, "block farming" and individual holdings had becomeacceptable forms of cooperation. The Ujamaa Villages Act of 1975 made the village the mainrural administration and development unit. The most radical reforms in Africa, however,have been those of Ethiopia in 1975 and of Mozambique in 1979. Both vested the land titlein the nation and abolished rent, sale, and absentee control of the land. The land was placedin the hands of the tillers, who have guaranteed right of use for themselves and for theirdescendants. Except in the public sector, farming is a small, family operation with a highdegree of equality of landholding but of uncertain efficiency.

Conclusions

Land reform and agrarian reforms have become synonymous, indicating that reformprograms have become more comprehensive and encompass much more than the reform ofland tenure or land distribution. Reform movements have recurred throughout history, ashave the crises they are intended to deal with, because reform has rarely dealt with theroots of the crises. Reform has served as a problem-solving mechanism and therefore hasonly been extensive enough to cope with the immediate crisis. Reformers have often facedhard choices: to promote and sustain private ownership with inequality or to institute publicor collective ownership with equality but with restrictions on the individuals' privateinterests; to spread employment by supporting labour-intensive, low-productivitytechniques or to promote high productivity through capital-intensive, efficient methods; topursue gradual "repair and maintenance" reform that is basically ineffective or to promote


10/10

revolutionary, comprehensive, effective but disruptive reform. In capitalist reforms thesecontradictions have usually been resolved in favour of the first set of options; in socialistreforms, in favour of the second. Land tenure reform seems to have been of little

significance in creating substantive economic change, although it has been important forimproving the status of peasants and maintaining social and political stability. Most reformshave narrowed the gap between reform beneficiaries and other farmers through landredistribution and tenancy control, but only the comprehensive socialist reforms havenarrowed the gap between agriculture and other sectors of the economy.

Land redistribution programs have had limited success for several reasons. They often havedeprived the farm of the former landlord's contributions without providing a substitute. Theyhave inhibited mobility of labour by giving the peasant a stake in the land, though only inthe form of an inefficient minifarm. They frequently have threatened large, efficiently runfarms and therefore have had to be compromised. They have provided compensation for theexpropriated land and hence left wealth and income distribution largely unaffected. Theyhave been conditional upon peasant participation in social and political activity andcooperative organization, even though the peasant was unprepared for these activities.Moreover, the redistribution of land has rarely been fortified by protective measures thatcould prevent reconcentration of ownership and the recurrence of crises. Nevertheless,major efforts have been expended by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UnitedNations and other international bodies and by governments to devise viable frameworks forsolving agricultural and rural problems emanating from defective agrarian structures.

Documents

Britanica Land Reform