Land reform

Land reform (also agrarian reform although that can have a broader meaning) is the government-initiated or government-backed redistribution of — i.e. transfer of ownership of (or tenure in) — agricultural land. The term most often refers to transfer from ownership by a relatively small number of wealthy (or noble) owners with extensive land holdings (e.g. plantations, large ranches, or agribusiness plots) to individual or collective ownership by those who work the land. Such transfer of ownership may be with or without consent or compensation; compensation may vary from token amounts to the full value of the land. The land value tax is a moderate version of land reform.

Land ownership and tenure

See main article Land ownership and tenure.

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The variety of land reform derives from the variety of land ownership and tenure. Among the possibilities are:

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• Traditional land tenure, as in the indigenous nations or tribes of North America in the Pre-Columbian era.
• Feudal land ownership, through fiefdoms
• Life estate, interest in real property that ends at death.
• Fee tail, hereditary, non-transferable ownership of real property.
• Fee simple. Under common law, this is the most complete ownership interest one can have in real property.
• Leasehold or rental
• Rights to use a commons
• Sharecropping
• Easements

In addition, there is paid agricultural labor — under which someone works the land in exchange for money, payment in kind, or some combination of the two — and various forms of collective ownership. The latter typically takes the form of membership in a cooperative, or shares in a corporation, which owns the land (typically by fee simple or its equivalent, but possibly under other arrangements). There are also various hybrids: in many communist states, government ownership of most agricultural land has combined in various ways with tenure for farming collectives.

Related Topics:
Cooperative - Corporation - Communist state

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Additionally there are, and have been, well-defined systems where neither land nor the houses people live in are their personal property (Statare, as defined in Scandinavia).

Related Topics:
Statare - Scandinavia

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The peasants or rural agricultural workers who are usually the intended primary beneficiaries of a land reform may be, prior to the reform, members of failing collectives, owners of inadequate small plots of land, paid laborers, sharecroppers, serfs, even slaves or effectively enslaved by debt bondage.

Related Topics:
Serf - Slave - Debt bondage

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