This definition is somewhat complicated by the issue of state-owned Collective Farms . In various times and places, ''land reform'' has encompassed the transfer of land from ownership — even Peasant ownership in smallholdings — to government-owned collective farms; it has also, in other times and places, referred to the exact opposite, division of government-owned collective farms into smallholdings.
Agrarian or land reform has been a recurring theme of enormous consequence in world history — see, for example, the history of the Semproninan Law or ''Lex Sempronia agraria'' proposed by Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus and passed by the Roman Senate 133 B.C.E., which led to the social and political wars that ended the Roman Republic .
A historically important source of pressure for land reform has been the accumulation of significant properties by tax-exempt individuals or entities. In the Christian world, this has frequently been true of churches and monastaries. In the Moslem world, land reforms such as that organized in Spain by Al-Hurr in 718 have transferred property from Muslims to Christians, who were taxable.
In the modern world and in the aftermath of Colonialism and the Industrial Revolution , land reform has occurred around the world, from the Mexican Revolution ( 1917 ) to Communist China to Bolivia ( 1952 ) to Zimbabwe and Namibia . Land reform has been especially popular as part of Decolonization struggles in Africa and the Arab World , where it was part of the program for African Socialism and Arab Socialism . Cuba has seen one of the most complete agrarian reforms in Latin America. Land reform was an important step in achieving economic development in many Third World countries since the post- World War II period, especially in the East Asian Tigers and "Tiger Cubs" nations such as Taiwan , South Korea , and Malaysia .
Since Mainland China 's economic reforms led by Deng Xiaoping land reforms have also played a key role in the development of the People's Republic Of China .
''See main article Land Ownership And Tenure .''
The variety of land reform derives from the variety of land ownership and tenure. Among the possibilities are:
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 s, government ownership of most agricultural land has combined in various ways with tenure for farming collectives.
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 ).
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, Serf s, even Slave s or effectively enslaved by Debt Bondage .
Philosophically there are strong arguments to justify land reform: Multiple legal titles to the same land decrease its usefulness, some of the titles may have been obtained through theft (sometimes aided by control of the legal system), The Greatest Good For The Most People , a right to Dignity , or a simple belief that justice requires a policy of "land to the tiller". However, many of these arguments conflict with prevailing notions of property rights in most societies and states. Except to Minarchists , state facilitation of "willing seller, willing buyer" transactions is relatively unproblematic, but other forms of land reform generally raise questions about a society's conception of rights and of the proper role of government.
These questions include:
- Is private property of any sort legitimate?
- If so, is land ownership legitimate?
- If so, are historic property rights in this particular state and society legitimate?
- Even if property rights are legitimate, do they protect absolutely against expropriation, or do they merely entitle the property owner to partial or complete compensation?
- How should property rights be weighed against rights to life and liberty?
- Who should adjudicate land ownership disputes?
- At what level of government is common land owned?
- What constitutes fair land reform?
Access to land is a crucial factor in the eradication of Food Insecurity and rural Poverty . The world's poorest people are usually land-poor; improved access to land provides shelter and food — allowing a household to increase food consumption — and may increase household income if surplus food is produced and sold. {Link without Title}
- . Emiliano Zapata was strongly identified with land reform, as are the present-day Zapatista Army Of National Liberation .
- , 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
- , 1944 – 1954 under the governments of Juan José Arévalo and Jacobo Arbenz .
- was followed by a land reform law, but in 1970 only 45% of peasant families had received title to land.
- 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 ''.
- . Almost all large holdings were seized by the National Institute For Agrarian 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.
- 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.
- ( 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.
- 's government enacted Plan Zamora to redistribute government and unused private land to ''campesinos'' in need.
''Land reform is discussed in the article on Arab Socialism ''
- essentially abolished the political influence of major land owners. However, land reform only resulted in the redistribution of about 15% of Egypt's land under cultivation, and by the early 1980s, the effects of land reform in Egypt drew to a halt as the population of Egypt moved away from agriculture. The Egyptian land reform laws were greatly curtailed under Anwar Sadat and eventually abolished.
- Syria (1963, largely reversed since)
- 's so-called White Revolution of 1963 . Almost 90% of Iranian Share-croppers became land owners.
- Iraq (1970)
- , Finland fought a Civil War resulting in a series of land reforms.
- during the latter phases of the French Revolution .
- – 1919 , they expropriate the large estates of Baltic German landowners, much of which became smallholdings.
- Hungary : In 1945 every estate bigger than 142 acres was expropriated without compensation and distributed among the peasants. In the 1950s collective ownership was introduced according to the Soviet model, but after 1990 co-ops were dissolved and the land was redistributed among private smallholders.
- , 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.
- in the Second Polish Republic (1919, 1921, 1923, 1925 and 1928) and Land Reform (1944) in the People's Republic Of Poland .
- in the years immediately after Romanian unification in 1863 , a major land reform finally occurred in 1921.
- Russia
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- 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.
- ; legislation passed in September 1994, with a "willing seller, willing buyer" approach.
- government announced that it will start to make use of Expropriation in the process, although according to the country's chief land-claims commissioner, Tozi Gwanya, unlike Zimbabwe there will be compensation to those whose land is expropriated, "but it must be a just amount, not inflated sums." {Link without Title}
- 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.
- , at the time of Independence , India inherited a semi-feudal agrarian system, with ownership of land concentrated with a few individual landlords ( Zamindar s, 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.
- ---However, this success was not replicated in other areas like Kerala - the only other state where communists came to power - and the states of Andhra and Madhya Pradesh , where the more radical wing of the CPI, the PWG (People's War Group) or Naxalite s resorted to violence as it failed to secure power. Even in West Bengal , the economy suffered for a long time as a result of the communist economic policies that did little to encourage heavy industries. In the state of Bihar , tensions between land owners militia, villagers and Maoist s have resulted in numerous massacres.
- ---All in all, land reforms have been successful only in pockets of the country, as people have often found loopholes in the laws setting limits on the maximum area of land held by any one person.
- , the U.S. occupying forces conducted a land reform in Japan.
- , 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.
- ese leader Ho Chi Minh , especially when contrasted with attempts at land reform in South Vietnam under Ngo Dinh Diem . South Vietnam made several further attempts 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 individuals 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. {Link without Title}
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