Land reform (also known as agrarian reform) refers to the process of changing who owns agricultural land and who has the right to use these lands. Land reform concerns the laws, regulations, or customs regarding land ownership, land use, land economics, and land transfers.Batty, Fodei Joseph. "Pressures from Above, Below and Both Directions: The Politics of Land Reform in South Africa, Brazil and Zimbabwe". Western Michigan University. Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association. Chicago, Illinois. April 7–10, 2005. p. 3. Redistributive land reform refers to the narrower concept of transferring agricultural land ownership from large private landowners to small farmers and people without any landholdings. It involves the redistribution of wealth and political power that comes from owning large swathes of land.
Reforming the ownership of land may be initiated by governments or market forces, and at times have been sparked by revolution. In the 20th century, both capitalist and communist governments have enacted land reforms.
Land reform is a political process. It is often considered a contentious issue, as land is a key driver of a wide range of social, political and economic inequalities. The structure and distribution of land rights has been linked to state formation, economic growth, inequality, political violence, and identity politics, making land reform highly consequential for the long-term structures of society.
Overview Land reform refers to the transfer of ownership from the more powerful to the less powerful, such as from a relatively small number of wealthy or noble owners with extensive land holdings (e.g., plantations, large ranches, or agribusiness plots) to individual ownership by those who work the land. Such transfers can be government-initiated or government-backed. The transfer of ownership may be with or without compensation. Compensation can vary from token amounts to the full value of the land.Adams, Martin and J. Howell. "Redistributive Land Reform in Southern Africa". Overseas Development Institute. DFID. Natural Resources Perspectives No. 64. January 2001.
Land reform may entail the transfer of land from individual ownership—even peasant ownership in smallholdings—to government-owned collective farms. The term has also been used to refer to the exact opposite: the division of government-owned collective farms into smallholdings.Adams, Martin and J. Howell. "Redistributive Land Reform in Southern Africa". Overseas Development Institute. DFID. Natural Resources Perspectives No. 64. January 2001. The common characteristic of all land reforms is modification or replacement of existing institutional arrangements governing possession and use of land. While land reform may be radical in nature, such as large-scale transfers of land from one group to another, it can also be less dramatic, such as regulatory reforms aimed at improving land administration.Ghana's Land Administration Project
Land usage and tenure
Land ownership can be seen as controversial in part because the ideas about what it means to access or control land can vary considerably across regions and even within countries.La Croix, Sumner. "Land Tenure: An Introduction". Working Paper no. 02-13. May 2002. University_of_Hawaiʻi. Land reforms, which change what it means to control land, therefore create tensions and conflicts between those who lose and those who gain from these redefinitions.
Western conceptions of land have evolved over the past several centuries to place greater emphasis on individual land ownership. The formal processes that developed historically also reinforce this view of land, for example through issuing official documents like land titles.Locke, John. Two Treatises of Government. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1991. and Smith, Adam. The Wealth of Nations. Books 1—III. London: Penguin Books. 1999. However, control over land may also be perceived less in terms of individual ownership and more in terms of land use, or through what is known as land tenure."What is land tenure?" Food and Agriculture Organization. Historically, in many parts of Africa for example, land was not owned by an individual, but rather used by an extended family or a village community. Different people in a family or community had different rights to access this land for different purposes and at different times. Such rights were often conveyed through oral history and not formally documented.Dekker, Henri A.L. The Invisible Line: Land Reform, Land Tenure Security and Land Registration. Ashgate: Burlington, 2003. p. 2. Today, groups of people who practice communal land use include, for example, the traditional peoples and communities in Brazil such as fundos de pasto and faxinais.
The terms which dictate control over and use of land can take many forms, and their choice reflects these different ideas of land ownership and tenure. For example, "formal" or "statutory" land systems refer to ideas of land control more closely affiliated with individual land ownership. "Informal" or "customary" land systems refer to ideas of land control more closely affiliated with land tenure."Land Law." Law and Development. The World_Bank. February 23, 2007. ,
Formal and informal land ownership come in a wide range of forms both historically and in the present day. Some of the different systems include:
Traditional land tenure, as practiced by the indigenous tribes of Pre-Columbian North America. 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 common Sharecropping Run rig and rundale Well-field system Easements Kibbutz and moshav Satoyama Agricultural labor – under which someone works the land in exchange for money, payment in kind, or some combination of the two Collective ownership Access to land through a 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). Collective farms, such as those that might be found in communist states, whereby government ownership of most agricultural land is combined in various ways with tenure for farming collectives. Agrarian settlements, such as those implemented in Brazil since the middle of the 20th century.
Motivations
Land reform is a deeply political process so the arguments around it concern ruling powers, political ideologies and economic systems. Historically, there have been a range of different social, political, and economic motivations and imperatives that led to land reform initiatives in various countries.
In the 19th century in colonized states, a colonial government may have changed the laws dictating land ownership to better consolidate political power or to support its colonial economy.Berry, Sata. "Debating the land question in Africa." Johns Hopkins University. N.d.
For much of the 20th century, nation states sponsored land reform for two broad agendas: gaining political legitimacy and providing conditions for development. Land reform has been widely recognized as a social justice measure to correct historical injustices and as an economic intervention that can break established patterns like landlordism and lead to structural transformation. 20th-century land reform initiatives have been driven by both capitalist and communist ideologies, and have at times been advanced through armed revolutions. But since the emergence of neoliberalism in the 1980s, the general trend globally has been to roll back, contain, and block land reform while promoting market-oriented land policies.
Starting in the 1990s, voter mobilization and the use of land for providing political favors to supporters have also become possible motivations for land reform efforts, such as the extensive redistributive land reforms of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe.
Today, land reform efforts are increasingly understood as integral to broader struggles for food sovereignty, climate justice, and decolonization.
Outcomes and challenges Arguments in support of land reform focus on its potential social, economic and environmental benefits, particularly in developing countries, that may emerge from reforms focused on greater land formalization. Such benefits may include eradicating food insecurity, reducing gas emissions and alleviating rural poverty.Meinzen-Dick, Ruth, Markelova, Helen and Moore, Kelsey. "The Role of Collective Action and Property Rights in Climate Change Strategies." International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), 2010. and Economic Commission for Africa. "Land Tenure Systems and their Impacts on Food security and Sustainable Development in Africa." 2009. Yet, land reform is an intensely political process and because of this many of those opposed to land reform are nervous as to the underlying motivations of those initiating the reform. For example, some may fear that they will be disadvantaged or victimized as a result of the reforms. Others may fear that they will lose out in the economic and political power struggles (especially in developing countries) that underlie many land reforms."A chance to improve how Kenya is run." The Economist. July 29, 2010
Contemporary support for such reforms gained particular momentum after the publication of The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else by Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto in 2000. In his book, De Soto argues that the poor are often unable to secure formal property rights, such as land titles, to the land on which they live or farm because of poor governance, corruption and overly complex bureaucracies. Without land titles or other formal documentation of their land assets, they are less able to access formal credit. According to de Soto, political and legal reforms within countries will help to include the poor in formal legal and economic systems, increasing the poor's ability to access credit, and contributing to economic growth and poverty reduction.De Soto, Hernando. The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else. New York: Basic Books. 2000.
Many international development organizations, such as the World Bank, have embraced de Soto's and others' ideas about the benefits of formalizing land rights.Deininger, Klaus W. Land Policies for Growth and Poverty Reduction. The World Bank. 2003. This has translated into a number of development programs that work with governments and civil society organizations to initiate and implement land reforms.World Bank. "Regional Study on Land Administration, Land Markets, and Collateralized Lending." 2003. However, opinions are divided about whether formalizing land rights is one-size-fits-all strategy that necessarily empowers the poor. For example, in Sub-Saharan Africa, where land registration and titling are advocated by various groups as a pro-poor strategy, there are often multiple, conflicting claims to the same land by different individuals or groups. This means that formalizing land rights would benefit some groups more than others and create tensions.