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 reform efforts

Latin America

• Mexico: a certain degree of land reform was introduced, albeit unevenly, as part of the Mexican Revolution. Emiliano Zapata was strongly identified with land reform, as are the present-day Zapatista Army of National Liberation.
• Brazil: In the 1930s, Getúlio Vargas reneged on a promised land reform. Strong campaign including direct action by the Landless Workers' Movement throughout the 1990s. Current efforts under Lula da Silva, Brazil's first elected leftwing president, inaugurated January 1, 2003
• Guatemala: land reform occurred during the "Ten Years of Spring", 1944–1954 under the governments of Juan José Arévalo and Jacobo Arbenz.
• Bolivia: The revolution of 1952 was followed by a land reform law, but in 1970 only 45% of peasant families had received title to land.
• Peru: land reform in the 1950s largely eliminated a centuries-old system of debt peonage. Further land reform occurred after the 1968 coup by left-wing colonel Juan Velasco Alvarado, and again as part of a counterterrorism effort against the Shining Path roughly 1988–1995, led by Hernando de Soto and the Institute for Liberty and Democracy during the early years of the government of Alberto Fujimori, before the latter's auto-coup.
• Cuba: Land reform was among the chief planks of the revolutionary platform of 1959. Almost all large holdings were seized by the National Institute for Land Reform (INRA), which dealt with all areas of agricultural policy. A ceiling of 166 acres (67 hectares) was established, and tenants were given full ownership rights.
• Chile: Attempts at land reform began under the government of Jorge Alessandri in 1960, were accelerated during the government of Eduardo Frei Montalva (1964-1970), and reached its climax during the 1970-1973 presidency of Salvador Allende. Farms of more than 198 acres (80 hectares) were expropriated. After the 1973 coup the process was halted, and up to a point reversed by the market forces.
• Colombia: Alfonso López Pumarejo (1934-1938) passed the Law 200 of 1936, which allowed for the expropriation of private properties, in order to promote "social interest". Later attempts declined, until the National Front presidencies of Alberto Lleras Camargo (1958-1962) and Carlos Lleras Restrepo (1966-1970), which respectively created the Colombian Institute for Agrarian Reform (INCORA) and further developed land entitlement. In 1968 and 1969 alone, the INCORA issued more than 60,000 land titles to farmers and workers. Despite this, the process was then halted and the situation began to reverse itself, as the subsequent violent actions of drug lords, paramilitaries, guerrillas and opportunistic large landowners severely contributed to a renewed concentration of land and to the displacement of small landowners. In the early 21st century, tentative government plans to use the land legally expropriated from drug lords and/or the properties given back by demobilized paramilitary groups have not caused much practical improvement yet.
• Venezuela: Hugo Chávez's government enacted Plan Zamora to redistribute government and unused private land to campesinos in need.

Middle East

Land reform is discussed in the article on Arab Socialism

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• Egypt: (1952, largely reversed since)
• Syria (1963, largely reversed since)
• Iran: a significant land reform was part of Muhammad Reza Shah's so-called White Revolution of 1963. Almost 90% of Iranian share-croppers became land owners.
• Iraq (1970)

Europe

• Finland: In 1918, Finland fought a civil war resulting in a series of land reforms.
• France: a major and lasting land reform took place under the Directory during the latter phases of the French Revolution.
• Estonia and Latvia: at their founding as states in 1918–1919, they expropriate the large estates of Baltic German landowners, much of which became smallholdings.
• Ireland: after the Irish Famine, land reform became the dominant issue in Ireland, where almost all of the land was owned by the English aristocracy. The Irish Parliamentary Party campaigned for this in a largely indifferent British House of Commons. Reform began tentatively in 1870 and continued for fifty years.
• Poland: there have been several land reforms in Poland. The most important include Land reforms in the Second Polish Republic (1919, 1921, 1923, 1925 and 1928) and Land reform (1944) in the People's Republic of Poland.
• Romania: After failed attempts at land reform by Mihail Kogalniceanu in the years immediately after Romanian unification in 1863, a major land reform finally occurred in 1921.
• Russia
• Imperial Russia: Stolypin reform
• Soviet Russia: Decree on Land
• Scotland the Land Reform Act (Scotland) was passed in 2003, it ends the historic legacy of feudal law and creates a framework for rural or croft communities right to buy land in their area.
• Sweden, almost non-violently, arrived at regulating the length minimum of tenant farming contracts at 25 years.

Sub-Saharan Africa

• Namibia: A limited land reform has been a hallmark of the regime of Sam Nujoma; legislation passed in September 1994, with a "willing seller, willing buyer" approach.
• South Africa: Land reform was one of the promises made by the African National Congress when it came to power in South Africa in 1994. The system is based on fair price system, land is bought from its owners (willing seller) by the government (willing-buyer) and redistributed.
• Zimbabwe: Very controversial efforts at land reform in Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe has moved steadily from a "willing seller, willing buyer" approach toward outright expropriation, often for the benefit of people close to the government.

North America

• Canada: A land reform was carried out as part of Prince Edward Island's agreement to join the Canadian confederation in the 1870s. Most of the land was owned by absentee landlords in England, and as part of the deal Canada was to buy all the land and give them to the farmers.

Asia

• China has been through a series of land reforms:
• The thorough land reform launched by the Communist Party of China in 1946, three years before the foundation of the People's Republic of China (PRC), won the party millions of supporters among the poor and middle peasantry. The land and other property of landlords were expropriated and redistributed so that each household in a rural village would have a comparable holding. This agrarian revolution was made famous in the West by William Hinton's book Fanshen.
• In the mid-1950s, a second land reform compelled individual farmers to join collectives, which, in turn, were grouped into People's Communes with centrally controlled property rights and an egalitarian principle of distribution. This policy was generally a failure in terms of production. http://www.fao.org/sd/LTdirect/LTan0031.htm There is evidence that the PRC began to reverse this policy even in the 1960s.
• A third land reform beginning in the late 1970s re-introduced family-based contract system called the household responsibility system, which had enormous initial success, followed by a period of relative stagnation. Chen, Wang, and Davis suggest that the later stagnation was due, in part, to a system of periodic redistribution that encouraged over-exploitation rather than capital investment in future productivity. http://www.fao.org/sd/LTdirect/LTan0031.htm
• India: Due the taxation and regulation under the British Raj, at the time of independence, India inherited a semi-feudal agrarian system, with ownership of land concentrated with a few individual landlords (Zamindars, Zamindari System). Since independence, there has been voluntary and state initiated/mediated land reforms in several states. The most notable and successful example of land reforms is in the state of West Bengal. After promising land reforms and elected to power, the Communist Party of India kept their word and initiated gradual land reforms. The result was a more equitable distribution of land among the landless farmers. This has ensured an almost life long loyalty from the farmers and the communists have been in power ever since.
• But such a success in the state could not be replicated in other areas like Kerala - the only other state where communists swept to power. The reason lies in corruption and lackadaisical administration. The more radical wing of the CPI, the PWG (People's War Group) or Naxalites resorted to violence as it failed to secure any power in the states of Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. Even in West Bengal, the economy suffered as a result of the communist economic policies that did little to encourage industries. In the state of Bihar, tensions between land owners militia and the villagers, Maoists have resulted in numerous massacres.
• In the overall analysis, land reforms have been successful only in pockets of the country, as people have often found ways to subvert any ceilings on the maximum area of land held by any one individuals.
• Japan: After World War II, the U.S. occupying forces conducted a land reform in Japan.
• Taiwan: In the years after World War II, Chiang Kai-shek conducted land reform at the insistence of the U.S. This course of action was made possible, in part, by the fact that many of the large landowners were Japanese who had fled and also by the fact that the Kuomintang were mostly from the mainland and had few ties to the remaining indigenous landowners.
• Vietnam: In the years after World War II, even before the formal division of Vietnam, generally successful and popular land reform boosted the popularity of North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh, especially when contrasted with failed attempts at land reform in South Vietnam under Ngo Dinh Diem. South Vietnam made several further attempts at land reform in the post-Diem years, the most ambitious being the Land to the Tiller program instituted in 1970 by President Nguyen Van Thieu. This limited individual to 15 hectares, compensated the owners of expropriated tracts, and extended legal title to peasants who in areas under control of the South Vietnamese government to whom had land had previously been distributed by the Viet Cong. Mark Moyar asserts that while it was effectively implemented only in some parts of the country, "In the Mekong Delta and the provinces around Saigon, the program worked extremely well... It reduced the percentage of total cropland cultivated by tenants from sixty percent to ten percent in three years." http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/vietnamcenter/events/1996_Symposium/96papers/moyar.htm
• South Korea: In 1945–1950, United States and South Korean authorities carried out a land reform that retained the institution of private property. They confiscated and redistributed all land held by the Japanese colonial government, Japanese companies, and individual Japanese colonists. The Korean government carried out a reform whereby Koreans with large landholdings were obliged to divest most of their land. A new class of independent, family proprietors was created. http://countrystudies.us/south-korea/36.htm