INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW The Resurgence of Agrarian Reform in the Twenty-first Century

INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW
The Resurgence of Agrarian Reform
in the Twenty-first Century

Michael Courville and Raj Patel

We have a real problem with land tenancy; land distribution—
mucho tierra en pocos manos (much land in few hands)—not
everyone has land and everyone needs some!
—Honduran small-scale farmer
3
Although more people now live in cities than in rural areas, a significant proportion
of the world’s poor still live in the countryside. For them, no less than
for their homeless counterparts in towns and cities, landlessness remains a
pervasive social problem. From the dawn of modern capitalism in sixteenthcentury
Britain (Wood 2000) to contemporary land claims in Zimbabwe
(Moyo 2000; Moyo and Yeros 2005) land has been, and continues to be, at the
center of rural conflict.1
A constant theme in conflicts over land is control, both of the land itself and
of material resources and uses associated with it, such as water, wood, minerals,
grazing and gathering. This control hinges on property rights. The ability
to own and transfer possession of land through private property, in turn,
has invariably been predicated on other forms of economic, social, and cultural
power. At the same time, the development and concentration of private property
rights have typically been mechanisms for entrenching and consolidating
the power of some groups over others. Perhaps the starkest example of the
inequities propagated through the privatization of property is seen through the
lens of gender: while they produce the majority of the world’s food, for example,
women in the Global South2 own only 1 percent of the land. The dominance
of the private property model has allowed landownership to become
increasingly concentrated along existing lines of power in the hands of fewer
and fewer people, usually men. Exceptions to this rule are hard won.
Private property ignores need in favor of the demands of rule and order. As
Wood notes (2000), the instantiation of such property rights has involved nothing
less than the birth of our modern capitalist world. The transformation of
the relationship that farmers, producers, and, indeed, landlords had with the
land, turning it into an entity that can be traded and mediated by the market,
changed the character of rural life forever. The expansion of land markets had
the e¤ect of dislocating the peasantry economically, physically, and socially, first
in England and then, within an astonishingly short period of time, in the rest
of the world.
This pattern would be reproduced in the colonies, and indeed in post-
Independence America, where the independent small farmers who were
supposed to be the backbone of a free republic faced, from the beginning,
the stark choice of agrarian capitalism: at best, intense self-exploitation,
and at worst, dispossession and displacement by larger, more productive
enterprises. (Wood 2000)
The inequality resulting from this dislocation brought radical social change
across the world (Polanyi 1944; Williams 1994, 41–103). Thousands of peasants
and smallholders were pushed o¤ the land toward new cities and towns.
Once there, they became integrated into a new set of social relations that no
longer depended upon a primary relationship to the land (Brown 1988, 28–
31). During the early colonial period in the United States, in a nation that had
little actual peasantry3 and that championed free market liberalism, the swift
and uneven concentration of land was widely thought to foment social unrest.
Led by Thomas Paine, a demand for “agrarian justice” was advanced, calling
for an equal distribution of land or for just compensation to small farmers, to
avoid the ill e¤ects observed during England’s feverish land grab of the eighteenth
century (Paine 1925). This call for justice fell on deaf ears as the United
States moved toward industrial expansion and did not look back.
The increased concentration into fewer hands of agricultural land around the
world continues to this day, with little regard for the overwhelming evidence of
the landlessness4 and inequality it has caused (Herring 2000; Thiesenhusen
1995, 159–62; Umehara and Bautista 2004, 3–18). The extent of this concentration
of control undoubtedly would be more severe were it not for persistent
and ongoing resistance, with new agrarian struggles commanding the attention
of millions worldwide. The struggles of the landless in Africa, Asia, and Latin
America have brought a renewed demand for agrarian and land reform around
the world. This book provides an overview of these struggles, the issues and
policies they confront, and the links that bind them together.
4 land and agrarian reform: historical perspectives
The Shifting Demands for Agrarian Change
Early nineteenth-century land tenure reforms were often taken up, particularly
in Latin America, by fledgling states as they struggled to break free from their
colonial past. More often than not, the catalyst for land tenure reform and early
agrarian change during this era was the liberation of a new merchant class and
the emancipation of national elites from the vestiges of colonial power and religious
rule. The consideration of the small farmer rarely, if ever, figured into
this burgeoning expansion of colonial relations. The importance of the small
farmer, however, would come to the fore as national development projects of
the late nineteenth century began to confront the obstacle posed by feudal land
relations.
The agrarian question of the late nineteenth century pivoted on the role of
the small-farm sector and the pace of capitalism’s movement into agricultural
production. By the early twentieth century, a now-classic debate emerged in the
Soviet Union, between those who championed the inevitability of large-farm
dominance and efficiency, as argued by Karl Kautsky (1988, reprint), and the
family farm economy as a viable alternative path to development, championed
by Alexander Chayanov (1966). The former positioned the small farmer as
transitory, a shrinking class in the transition to capitalist development in the
countryside. The latter viewed the small producer as a central actor in the economic
activity of the countryside, destined to maintain an integral position
within the rural class structure. Kautsky’s analysis and argument for a more
efficient, modernized agricultural sector helped move the peasantry o¤ the
land and toward industrialized cities. The Kautskian view of agrarian change
shared much of the optimism found in classic theories of industrialization and
capitalist transition at the turn of the twentieth century; it was a vision that captured
the imaginations of most world leaders struggling for independence, and
it shaped the policies of revolutionary nations aiming for rapid, large-scale conversion
of the agricultural sector. The small-farm path to development was,
conversely, often viewed as reactionary, anachronistic, and romantic.
Twentieth-century industrial production biases directed the practice of
most national rural development schemes toward input-intensive, monocultural
production that, crucially, required large contiguous areas of land in order
to be successful. Sowing the seeds of a new “national agriculture” along these
lines, governments turned away from the rural poor, who had their own vision
for agrarian change. The Chayanovian view of a di¤erent rural vision, based
The Resurgence of Agrarian Reform in the Twenty-first Century 5
on family farms and peasant cooperatives, has its echoes today in peasant
movement struggles for agrarian reform (see the conclusion in this volume).
The national reorganization of the countryside in favor of industrial agriculture
was made possible, paradoxically, by struggles for national liberation,
which drew heavily on ideas of land being for the people. From the end of the
Second World War until the fall of the Berlin Wall, e¤orts for independence
from colonialization were su¤used with the rhetoric of democracy, equality,
and rights, while they bore di¤ering visions of land and agrarian reform for
national change. The extent to which this rhetoric matched reality depended
on a complex amalgam of domestic and international circumstances and
choices, with highly variable outcomes in di¤erent countries (as we detail
below). With the end of the Cold War, however, the debate over land redistribution
has narrowed dramatically. Formerly a central point in a program of
postcolonial independence, agrarian and land reform programs are now
framed by considerations of equity and production efficiency arbitrated by the
World Bank, with the full support of international finance institutions and
their network of local elites.
This shift in focus di¤ers dramatically from the original understanding of
agrarian reform as a means to a range of outcomes including dignity, justice,
and sovereignty, and as a platform in a broader process of national enfranchisement
and democracy. Today, it is possible to see a convergence of agrarian
policies in di¤erent countries, shaped by each nation’s domestic political
considerations but tending toward a common set of features: property, scale,
technology, and the market. This is the neoliberalization of agrarian policy—
a process that has its analogues across a range of other domains, from trade
to the role of the state (Magdo¤, Foster, and Buttel 2000).
Neoliberal agrarian reforms diagnose, and prescribe policies for, rural
areas in ways that di¤er significantly from the national liberation projects of
the twentieth century. Through this analytical paradigm shift, the policies to
which the term “land reform” refers have altered beyond recognition from
their mid–twentieth century counterparts. Most centrally, redistributive stateled
agrarian reform is unthinkable within this new paradigm. Instead, policy
discussions now highlight considerations of efficiency, making issues of
equality and distributive justice secondary, if they are considered at all. Many
of the most prominent and recent arguments for and against land reform
since the Cold War have come to pivot on economic questions (de Janvry and
Sadoulet 1989; de Janvry et al. eds. 2001; Kay 2002a; Deininger et al. 2003;
Griffin, Khan, and Ickowitz 2002). Along the way, an interest in small farmer
6 land and agrarian reform: historical perspectives
efficiency has reemerged as a legitimate debate and policy concern. Many World
Bank development economists have come around to the view that the redistribution
of land to small farmers would lead to greater overall productivity and economic
dynamism (Deininger 1999; Binswanger, Deininger, and Feder 1995), a
view long since arrived at by others (see Barret 1993; Berry and Cline 1979;
Cornia 1985; Ellis 1993; Feder 1985; Lappé et al. 1998; Prosterman and Riedinger
1987; Rosset 1999; Sobhan 1993; Tomich, Kilby, and Johnston 1995).
It is a measure of the success of this neoliberal reframing of policy that even
those scholars and policy makers who side with arguments for redistributive
land reform find themselves doing so on terms of economic growth—as
increased Gross Domestic Product (GDP)—and not on terms of justice, food
sovereignty,5 equality, or rural transformation. Nonetheless, it is useful to see,
for example, as Griffin, Khan, and Ickowitz (2002) have demonstrated, using
what they term a “heterodox economic framework” (though see Byres 2004a,
b), that without a redistribution of land in the Global South, economic growth
will continue to evade the best e¤orts at top-down development, and the chasm
between poverty and wealth will continue to deepen. Griffin, Khan, and
Ickowitz (2004, 362–63) o¤er a theoretical model that allows for consideration
of the political dimensions of resource distribution—land in this case—
by considering the socially sanctioned dimensions of property law and the
ways in which property rights change over time.
When and how property is defined and regulated reflects the struggle for
power in any given place and is subject to change usually in alignment with
the needs of large property owners and the goals of the state (Kerkvliet and
Selden 1998, 50–53). The case of Guatemala is helpful for illustrating this
process (see chapter 1 in this volume). The definition of public lands, or
economiendas, in colonial Guatemala was sufficient to maintain the colonial
lords’ power and access to land, but it stood in the way of the desires of the new
merchant class upon independence. Land law was reconfigured to facilitate
land seizure from the Church and taxes were brought upon the old latifundistas
who left so much land idle (Scofield 1990, 161–65; Williams 1994, 58–60).
Agrarian reform can be and has always been a political as well as an economic
demand, and it is the political aspect of redistributive reform—who calls for
the reforms and on what terms—that has been so caustic throughout the
twentieth century, and even more so in the beginning of the twenty-first century.
While it has become somewhat less controversial to call for land reform
on economic grounds (as Griffin, Khan, and Ickowitz [2002] have done), economically
based arguments for land alone will not be sufficient to change the
The Resurgence of Agrarian Reform in the Twenty-first Century 7
structured inequalities of the rural sector. As the logic of neoliberalism continues
to unfold across the globe, a su¤ocating economism6 continues to choke
o¤ any demands for increased resource equality (Amin 2004).
The rise of neoliberalism has come to be associated with an antiauthoritarianism
that exacerbates the decline of an already weakened state and a concomitant
promise of “democratization.” Many liberal scholars, citizens, and
activists currently celebrate the opportunity they see for marginalized groups
to now mobilize, and for civil society, more generally, to flourish. The declining
ability of the state to regulate and direct a domestic development project
has, to some eyes, created this welcome opportunity for resistance and grassroots
empowerment. Yet, most grassroots movements find themselves struggling
to be e¤ective political forces in an age of free-market politics in which
access to the state is now mediated by direct economic power.
While it is true that the marginalized are increasingly allowed to make
demands and to organize within civil society, the reconfigured neoliberal state
stops them short of bringing their demands to fruition through government.
Through a combination of decentralization and an increased privatization of
public services, the state comes to function as an organizational tool for market
expansion, and less a vehicle for representative democracy or resource distribution.
Thus neoliberal populism creates a force that empowers people to
act without ever providing any actual mechanism to help movements realize
their goals: it has led to an era of both more political voices and increasing state
quiescence (Petras and Veltmeyer 2003; Teichman 1995). This reorganization
of the state thus forces any current demand for agrarian reform firmly within
the parameters of a depoliticized (market-oriented) project. In this way, an
emphasis on land reform alone as a means to boost agricultural productivity
avoids addressing the other dimensions of power and historical inequity that
in the current agenda have marginalized both the rural sector and the rural
poor. Similarly, a populist struggle for land that does not take into consideration
power, social rights, and the historical struggle of small farmers7 and the
landless could quickly become part of the neoliberal project and lead to
increased political exclusiveness.
A Call for Agrarian Reform from Below:
The Small Farmer and the Landless
In many nations rural dwellers still rely on the land to grow their own food and
to provide sustenance for their families (Ghimire 2001b, 17–18). Land in rural
8 land and agrarian reform: historical perspectives
communities is the central component ensuring the well-being and longevity
of families, much as Chayanov saw it. In this context land is not a commodity,
it is a source of life and society. Yet this foundation of life for the world’s poorest
is systematically denied to them. The exclusion from this life-giving resource
is what drives the call for land and agrarian reform from below. Basic statistics
on landholding and farm size from around the world can help to underscore
this point. In Honduras, for example, the rural population was 64 percent in
2002. A 2003 agricultural census calculated that 2.4 million hectares, or 62 percent
of the nation’s agricultural land, were under the ownership of the largest
farmers (those with 50 or more hectares), yet these farms made up only 10 percent
of the total number of farms (Courville 2005, 62–63). The total landholding
of the smallest farmers (those with less than 5 hectares) accounted for
a little more than 3.5 thousand hectares, or 9 percent of the total farmland in
the nation. It is the smallest farmers, however, who account for over 72 percent
of the total farms in the nation (Courville 2005, 62–63). The most recent data
also show a 28 percent increase in landholding concentration for the largest
farmers since the implementation of neoliberal reforms, while the smallest
farmers faced a 4 percent decline in overall landholding area.8
This is by no means a Latin American phenomenon. Uneven land concentration
has created persistent landlessness in the Philippines. Population
statistics from 2000 show that 48 percent of the Philippine population live in
rural areas and that three-quarters of the rural poor depend on farming and
agriculture for their livelihood (Balisacan 2002; Economist Intelligence Unit
[EIU] 2004, 16). Yet at the same time, official estimates during the preceding
decade report that between 58 and 65 percent of all agricultural workers were
considered to be landless at any given time (Riedinger 1990, 17–18).
Landholding in the Philippines has favored the largest landholders, who are
often linked to positions of political power and prominence, as in the case of
former president (1986–1992) Corazon Aquino. Aquino’s administration
endorsed land reform policy during her presidential tenure, but it e¤ectively
avoided major confiscations that would have dismantled the largest landholdings,
including her own family’s 6,000-hectare estate (de Guzman,
Garrido, and Manahan 2004). The 2002 Philippine agricultural census found
that while the total number of farms since the 1991 census had increased by
4.6 percent, the average landholding of small farmers fell from 2.5 to 2
hectares. The limited data on land tenure makes this change hard to interpret,
but the ine¤ectiveness of past reforms and the questionable actions of past
administrations suggest a continued trend toward the erosion of small-farm
The Resurgence of Agrarian Reform in the Twenty-first Century 9
landholdings. This, in part, has mobilized small farmers across the nation to
call for agrarian reform that is more transparent and that is designed not by
the landed and political elites, but by those who seek land for subsistence
(Borras 2003a; Llanto and Ballesteros 2003, 3–5).
The trend of land concentration and exclusion has also shaped the fate of
small producers and indigenous people in Africa. Take, for instance, the case
of Tanzania, which struggled to escape a colonial legacy of large co¤ee farms
and plantation agriculture established under German and English rule. In the
late 1960s, shortly after independence, the Tanzanian government removed
the Masai people from their ancestral territory in an e¤ort to collectivize agriculture,
dismantle colonial land-tenure patterns, and abolish plantation agriculture
(Hyden 1980). The reform relied on the invocation of a fictive Masai
collectivity, which was supposed to provide the necessary dynamism for
socialized village agriculture. The reform e¤ort failed in large part. A decline
in agricultural production followed. This brought increased private investment
and a voracious land grab from foreign developers that continued to keep the
Masai from their ancestral lands (Williams 1996, 218). Forty years after
Tanzanian independence, food security is still elusive, and the country’s agricultural
export production remains under the control of foreign investors
(Mihayo 2003; Ponte 2004, 622–25; Skarstein 2005, 334). Furthermore, 48
percent of Tanzania has been designated as wildlife preserve, even though as
recently as 2001, 63 percent of the population still relied on agriculture and
fishing for subsistence (Economist Intelligence Unit 2004, 15). The land
squeeze has increased the number of Masai employed in the newly established
safari tourist industry, which continues to funnel the lion’s share of GDP into
foreign pockets (ole Ndaskoi 2003a, 2003b). Many landless Masai struggle to
survive, earning meager wages while trying to maintain some of their traditional
hunting and gathering rights on state lands, to feed themselves and their
families (ole Ndaskoi 2003a).
How such uneven land concentration arises—whether in Honduras, the
Philippines, or Tanzania—is no mystery. Though varied, the agents that
account for these examples of uneven land concentration are invariably acting
within a broad macroeconomic climate that privileges large-scale industry.
Modern production schemes such as logging, dam construction, tourism,
large-scale agricultural export, and cattle ranching are hungry for land, and
their land consumption pushes rural communities to the margins in almost
every case (Williams 1986). Rather than being protected by the state, small
farmers, indigenous communities, and peasants have been forced by govern-
10 land and agrarian reform: historical perspectives
ments, under the banner of “broad-based rural development,” to work within
the demands of the market. The agricultural modernization championed by
governments and other global elites does not necessarily lead to new opportunities
for rural people, who are, if they were not already, marginal to the
increased GDP of national development (Bryceson 2001; Carter and Barham
1996; Kay 1997). International financing of the agricultural sector builds a very
uneven playing field that is tilted against small producers, and the net economic
gains of world competition invariably involve vast gain for a few and
devastating loss for many.
Though part of a profoundly political project, neoliberal land policy tries to
smother its own politics, couching its interventions as purely “technical” or
expedient (Ferguson 1990). Through this “technicalized” policy, small producers
and the rural poor around the world continue to be squeezed out of
national development schemes. The landless have, however, fought back.
Indeed, despite e¤orts to depoliticize the claims of landless people for agrarian
reform, there is ample evidence that the failure of the neoliberal project is
what has fueled the repoliticization of the very people it has excluded (Patel
2006). They have fought back not by adopting the language of technical
efficiency or expediency, but by means of political struggle, direct action, or
strategic linkages with international support systems or nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs).
Demonstrating that neoliberalism will fail in theory is one thing; showing
how it fails in fact is quite another. Listening to the experiences of those who
have endured the onslaught of modern agrarian reform policies, not only do
we see the theoretical deficiencies of the agrarian reform program, we learn
how this program, at best, willfully ignores existing power relations, thus compounding
them and exacerbating the inequalities that result. This is important
because, although the attempt to paper over historical inequalities has been
successful—to the extent that a range of government policies in the Global
South are premised on their irrelevance—the on-the-ground experience of
power persists and, with it, the possibility of other approaches to agrarian politics.
At the time this book goes to press, for example, the South African government
has taken a stern line in opposing any further expansion of its land
program on the grounds that such a move would endanger “investor
confidence.” Yet even within the ruling African National Congress (ANC),
many grassroots party members remain convinced of the necessity for broader
powers of land confiscation and of their wider implementation. Still, the belief
that land reform should happen within a paradigm of “willing buyer–willing
The Resurgence of Agrarian Reform in the Twenty-first Century 11
seller” is pervasive within most development circles. Indeed, South Africa is
one of many “success stories” that the World Bank has attempted to spin in
the Global South, with the explicit aim of furthering its policies. In this book,
we consider these policy experiments and their failings—the Bank’s “success”
stories are demonstrably inefficient, failing on the Bank’s own terms (see chapter
5 in this volume). But the issue of the success or failure of a land reform
policy is even subtler than just World Bank policy failure, and has to do with
the fact that the terms for understanding land reform success and failure have
shifted over the last few decades.
There are currently at least two competing frameworks for establishing “success”
in agrarian reform. The first, rooted in the World Bank, sees efficiency and
e¤ectiveness9 as the defining characteristics of successful land reform. This
framework holds much of the politics, and the allocation of resources having
to do with agriculture, as a constant. Over the past decade, during which land
reform has existed under these parameters, this mode of agrarian reform has
established itself as, at best, a palliative approach, maintaining the status quo
while tinkering on the margins in order to address the most prominent and
acute symptoms of rural dispossession. Before the (as yet incomplete) capture
of policy options by neoliberalism, land reform was, to a greater or lesser extent,
part of a broader series of interventions in agrarian and national reform projects,
encompassing considerations of nationhood, identity, employment, history,
the Cold War, decolonization, and the provision of food. In these circumstances,
metrics of success were far more ambiguous and varied.
A second contemporary framework for posing “the land question” is
o¤ered by La Via Campesina, the international peasant movement,10 whose
framework is inherently plural. It demands a democratic process in which a
range of people not only “participate,” that is, play a central role in setting the
agenda, but also shape and dictate the contours of agrarian policy (Patel 2006).
The terms of reference for this kind of land reform are not written in
Washington, but in the fields—and defining its success or failure is in itself
a democratic project, informed by a history of struggle. Successful land
reform, under this rubric, depends on the political and historical context at the
time reform is implemented, but it invariably involves a mass democratic
engagement and will result in systemic, widespread redistribution, requiring
a deep commitment from the state. In most cases, though not all, the poorest
need the state to protect them, to fund their projects, and to engage in the radical
redistribution that will ensure that the reform involves more than simply
a cosmetic change. Successful land reform will be, in a word, political. The
12 land and agrarian reform: historical perspectives
emphasis on the political is important to bear in mind, when contrasting it
with the current crop of supposed Bank successes.
Land and Agrarian Reform after World War II
A first step toward understanding the neoliberalization of agrarian reform and
the World Bank model is to look more closely at the historical variance of agrarian
reforms worldwide since World War II. This period (1945–2000) covers
the process of decolonization and a reconfiguration of the international trading
system. This reconfiguration (Friedmann 1982) had the e¤ect, after their
nominal independence, of leaving many nations in the Global South shackled
to their preindependence economic roles as producers of agricultural exports
and natural resources for their former colonizers. The entrenchment of colonial
economic relations, within the emerging nation-states of the thendesignated
“third world,” was a design feature of the postwar settlement
(Hobsbawm 1994). Toward the end of the Second World War, the Allied powers
held a landmark conference at Bretton Woods in New Hampshire, at which
the architecture for many of today’s international financial institutions was laid
out. The web of world markets became more binding through these organizations
as lending and credit became new carrots for shaping the development
policies of the emergent nations, and these nations assumed mostly dependent
positions within this nexus.
A major outcome of this conference was the establishment and development
of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB).
These international financial institutions were developed by the victors of the
war in an attempt to maintain international economic stability. In many
ways, these institutions have worked to shape the function of land within
developing nations, and they have a longstanding relationship to national
banking systems that have continued to finance large-scale agricultural modernization
and expansion in the Global South (Bello 1994). Indeed, it is possible
to view the considerable resources—political and military, as well as
financial—invested in these institutions’ success as a sign of the threat posed
by agrarian reform to the core nations after World War II. To understand this
situation, it is essential to explore how the meaning of land reform has
changed through the latter half of the twentieth century up to now. A brief look
at a few nations from the Global South will help illustrate the variance in the
conceptualization of land reform.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, four nations had already engaged
The Resurgence of Agrarian Reform in the Twenty-first Century 13
in varying degrees of land reform e¤orts as part of their plans for independence,
national development, and change. As early as 1910 Mexico, China,
Guatemala, and the former Soviet Union all made direct e¤orts to alter the
relationship between land and peasantry. Di¤erent assumptions about the role
of the peasantry in these four nations became the impetus for the redistribution
of land and the reorganization of relationships in the agricultural sector
(Enríquez 2003, 2004; Kerkvliet and Selden 1998; Lewin 1968; Thiesenhusen
1995). These early e¤orts ranged from the peasant revolution–driven land
reforms in China and the rather more anti-peasant transformations of the
Soviet Union, to the reorganization of export agriculture coupled with the rise
of popular struggle in Guatemala11 and the radical agrarian struggle of Mexico.
Each of these nations successfully moved land into the hands of the landless,
but that alone did not correct persistent, uneven distribution of wealth and
power in the countryside.
In the case of Mexico, peasants have fought and struggled for land both
before and after the implementation of larger revolutionary movements for
independence. The hacienda system was weakened through the revolutionary
transitions, and land was redistributed to campesinos, but securing social
equality for campesinos has been an ongoing and increasingly frustrated project
(Henriques and Patel 2003; Thiesenhusen 1995, 29–49). In the Soviet
Union, peasants reluctantly participated in land reform e¤orts, and in most
instances faced violence, murder, and increased rural conflict throughout the
process (Lewin 1968, 107–31). Land tenure in the Soviet Union was mostly
reshaped through e¤orts at collectivization and the establishment of large state
farms, changes driven primarily not by the needs of rural producers, but by
urban demands for cheap food, a Kautskian view of the peasantry, and an inaccurate
analysis of rural society by party elites.12 In China, by contrast, the needs
of rural populations were foremost, and many of the beneficiaries of land
reform participated in the revolutionary transformation of power relations in
rural areas (Hinton 1996).
On the other end of the distributive continuum is the case of Guatemala.
Early colonial relationships to export markets brought about some limited,
but notable, land tenure reforms prior to the twentieth century (Williams
1994, 61 – 69). This early demand for land tenure reform emerged in
response to the conflicting interests of indigenous communities, political
elites, and large-scale domestic co¤ee producers. The latter saw some
benefit in extending the small producers’ tenure—allowing them to grow
food for their own consumption, thusrequiring less income to sustain their
14 land and agrarian reform: historical perspectives
families—while maintaining reliance on seasonal peasant labor at very low
wages on large coffee haciendas. It wasn’t until the period from 1944 to 1952,
however, that the nation pursued an official program of land and agrarian
reform. With this formal state commitment to agrarian reform came much
social upheaval that, on first glance, would suggest a redistributive success—
a case of increased smallholder beneficiaries and the reorganization of rural
social relations. Yet, despite the upheaval and international attention brought
about by these official e¤orts at reform, the impact of the land redistribution
that occurred during the period was quickly reversed. (see chapter 1 this
volume)
This brief consideration of the four countries that saw significant land
reform before World War II point to the implications of the larger structural
(i.e., political, economic, historical) dimensions of agrarian change. These
cases also helped to stamp in the minds of policy elites elsewhere the very real
possibility of radical land reform implementation through violence, carried out
perhaps by those most oppressed under current regimes. Following the interruption
of World War II, these examples informed the thinking of those on
both sides of the Cold War. Communism, or the Cold War fear of its expansion,
fueled a number of post–World War II land reform e¤orts promoted by the
United States and its allies to deter unwieldy revolutions from below. And
behind these ideologically charged e¤orts remained the questions—summed
up in the refrain with which we began the chapter—of who controls the land,
who is entitled to use it, and for what ends. It would be an exaggeration to say
that land reform shaped the Cold War, but it is useful to see the struggle for
land as part of a broader struggle over the meaning of and limits to property.
While the contours of power and the mechanisms through which land reform
was e¤ected shaped the ultimate success or failure of land reform e¤orts in
every country experiencing such reforms after World War II, the question of
property burned at the heart of agrarian reform.
With the above framework in mind, a team of researchers13 from the Land
Research Action Network (LRAN) compared historical data on formal land
reform e¤orts14 in twenty countries since World War II (see figure 1).15 Though
varied, the impetus for land redistribution in these nations often reflected
significant e¤orts to address economic stagnation, to acquire independence,
to build political solidarity, and/or to “develop” national agricultural export production.
Figure 1 lists the twenty countries chronologically by date of land
reform implementation and by period of comparison.16 From these historical
experiences, the authors identified four distinct categories of land reform
The Resurgence of Agrarian Reform in the Twenty-first Century 15
implementation: Cold War proxy, endogenous social revolution, postwar allied
consolidation, and endogenous political compromise.
Group 1: Cold War Proxies (Cases: El Salvador, Honduras, Philippines, South
Vietnam). Reforms in these countries were pursued in the e¤ort to quell
peasant unrest, stave o¤ larger revolutionary action, and/or comply with the
US and/or Eastern Bloc foreign and economic policies. Formal land reform
polices were a mix of expropriation and redistribution of public lands.
Group 2: Endogenous Social Revolution (Cases: China, Cuba, Mexico, North
Vietnam, former Soviet Union, Kerala state [India]). These reforms emerged
in response to social pressures and revolutionary platforms or national struggles
for independence. In these cases land reform was implemented along
with more comprehensive agrarian reforms aiming to address longstanding
inequalities regarding access to land and to reduce persistent rural poverty.
Here the state played an active role in instituting and carrying out reform
policies. Large amounts of land were expropriated from large landholders
and redistributed to landless beneficiaries.
Group 3: Postwar Allied Consolidation (Cases: South Korea, Japan, Taiwan,
Germany). These land reforms were carried out in concert with industrial
expansion and other economic reforms by the state, with the support of the
major post–World War II political players, and aimed to avoid persistent
inequality in land tenure before engaging in industrial expansion. Land was
expropriated from large landholders and redistributed to landless beneficiaries
by fiat.
Group 4: Endogenous Political Compromise (Cases: Brazil, Guatemala, India,
South Africa, Zimbabwe). These reforms emerged largely in response to a
combination of pressures exerted by large social movements, landless organizing
and government policy making that aimed to meet new demands of
export-oriented agricultural production. Limited amounts of land were
expropriated from large landholders and redistributed to a limited number
of landless beneficiaries.
While these typologies are not hard and fast—many countries fell simultaneously
under the categories of Cold War proxies and post–World War II allied
consolidation e¤orts in the attempt to build bulwarks against communism—
they reveal that among the most sweeping land reforms (i.e., swift, statebacked
reforms, involving a large number of families and leaving little quar-
16 land and agrarian reform: historical perspectives
ter for existing elites) were those preemptively imposed by capitalists—
notably under the postwar allied consolidation category. A measure of the success
of these land reforms has been the extent to which all the countries that
experienced them have developed strong and robust internationally linked
economies (though only after a prolonged period of growth fueled by domestic
industrial protection) (Hart 2002). A little less robust have been the compromises
forged through endogenous social revolution, and more fissiparous
still have been the settlements agreed through endogenous political compromise,
with the most extreme cases of land injustice residing in those states that
were Cold War battle grounds. Yet the Cold War a¤ected all land reforms,
The Resurgence of Agrarian Reform in the Twenty-first Century 17
1945
1950
1955
1960
1965
1970
1975
1980
1985
1990
2000
2004
FIGURE 1 Periods of land reform in select countries, 1945–2004
Reform periods Country
1945–20041 Mexico
1945–19892 Russia**
1945–20043* Guatemala
1945–19704 China
1945–1955 Japan
1945–1990 Germany
1945–1953 Taiwan
1948–1974 South Korea
1949–1993 India
1953–1974 North Vietnam
1959–1965 Cuba
1962–1973 Chile
1962–1992 Honduras
1969–2004* Brazil
1970–1973 South Vietnam
1975–2004* Thailand
1980–2004* Zimbabwe
1980–2004* El Salvador
1988–2004* Philippines
1993–2004* South Africa
*ongoing
**former Soviet Union
1 (1917); 2 (1923); 3 (1944); 4 (1910).
whether directly, through endogenous struggles between capitalism and communism,
or by the perceived threat of communism in “frontline states.”
The end of the Cold War heralded at least the temporary end of the possibility
of radical land reform programs. While it was inconceivable that land
could be redistributed through a willing buyer–willing seller approach at the
beginning of the Cold War, by the Cold War’s end it was inconceivable that it
could be done any other way. By the early 1970s land reform policy making had
already began to shift to a “one-size-fits-all” market-assisted land reform
(MALR) imposed by the IMF, the United States Agency for International
Development (USAID), and the World Bank. A general shift from the stateled
agrarian reforms of the earlier part of the century to a demand-driven,
MALR process ensued (Borras, chapter 5 in this volume; Kay 2002a). The proponents
of this kind of reform claimed that the state-led reforms failed to distribute
land adequately to the landless and resulted, for the most part, in a distortion
of land markets, and they argued that this prevented efficient producers
from acquiring land and encouraged inefficient farmers to continue farming.
Borras (chapter 5) provides an exemplary treatment of the substance of these
arguments. The issue of whether or not there was any truth to these arguments
was almost irrelevant to their reception. As Kelsey (1995) notes in a
di¤erent context, a great part of the successful adoption of the neoliberal
regime comes through its ability to claim that “there is no alternative.” In
many instances, it certainly feels as if there is none. Under neoliberal agrarian
reform, there has been a concerted e¤ort to disparage people living in rural
areas, de-skill farmers, and demobilize their organizations to remove the possibility
of an alternative. Yet the alternative persists.
The tragedy of neoliberal land policy, as each of the chapters in this book
shows, is that it prevents successful land reform—reform that lifts people out
of poverty, increases levels of resource equality, raises living standards, ensures
the subsistence of the rural dweller, and, in some cases, even increases agricultural
export production (de Janvry and Sadoulet 1989; Herring 2000;
Sobhan 1993). Successful land reform can also result in the improved environmental
protection of land when stewardship is granted to those who depend
directly on the land for their own well-being and survival (Holt-Giménez 2002;
Ghimire 2001b). Land reform programs, however, are necessary but not
sufficient to accomplish these goals. They require integration into a broader
strategy for rural development that also considers the landless and the small
producer as the focus of several coordinated e¤orts (Patel 2003).
The promarket argument fails to acknowledge not only the noncommod-
18 land and agrarian reform: historical perspectives
ity nature of food production, but also the falsity of the assumption that rising
GDP inevitably leads to decreased poverty for rural dwellers. Conceptualizing
agriculture as a commodity-oriented system of production, the World
Bank’s MALR models and the neoliberal economic models that spawned it
avoid any direct consideration of the relationship between the land and the
majority of the world’s poor.
About the Cases in Part I
The first part of this book consists of four case studies representing nations
from each region in which LRAN has focused its e¤orts. Guatemala,
Zimbabwe, South Africa, and India serve as exemplars of reform e¤orts categorized
as endogenous political compromise in group 4, above. Regardless
of the specifics in each case, all four countries have experienced one or more
historical periods of land reform that fell short of the hopes and demands of
the most resource-poor agents in each nation. These shortcomings are not surprising,
of course, given that compromise was required for the implementation
of any land reform policy at all. As such, compromise is one of the few
attributes common to all these national cases. The African cases share some
regional similarities as well, but even with the regional overlap there is quite
a bit of variance among these countries. Yet, despite the national di¤erences
described by each of the authors of these four studies, all four nations have
strangely found themselves facing similar policy options at the turn of the
twenty-first century.
It is this common point of arrival that leads these four authors to take stock
and raise important research and policy questions with regard to the homogenized
land and agrarian reform policy being imposed upon their nations.
Through brief historical review, demographic comparison, and general policy
analysis, the four cases in this section begin to highlight failures and problems
associated with the received neoliberal model that has unfolded before them.
The remainder of the book will explore in more depth and with greater analysis
the themes, criticisms, and alternatives introduced throughout part I. A
brief overview of each chapter in part I will help to direct the reader toward
some of the more salient challenges now facing these nations, on their path
toward implementing a land reform that will more directly benefit the landless
and resource poor.
The first chapter, by Wittman and Saldivar-Tanaka, focuses on the long, contradictory
agrarian reform policies of Guatemala. The Guatemala case high-
The Resurgence of Agrarian Reform in the Twenty-first Century 19
lights the changing role of the state with regard to the land question in general,
and the implementation of agrarian reform policy, in particular. The state
played a crucial role in shaping land policy both before and after the World War
II era, while it has also implemented formal policies of repression—enlisting
military force when necessary—to stop any demands that have threatened the
power of landed elites tied to export production. The history of agrarian
reform in Guatemala is a violent one. Past and present e¤orts at agrarian
change have been accompanied by much hardship and loss throughout the
countryside. The authors delve into the outcomes of earlier attempts at land
reform and find them mostly hollow. A brief review of landholding shows that
the beneficiaries of past e¤orts have largely been those who sought compromise,
via the state, with landless peasants and indigenous peoples: the landed
elite and agribusiness holders. Wittman and Saldivar-Tanaka emphasize the
limitations of these earlier gains and briefly explore the ways that peace and
human rights movements in the 1990s began to impact the breadth and depth
of popular political participation. The role of the 1996 peace accords is considered
in this chapter, as is the ongoing impact of a century of agricultural
export on the nation’s land tenure system. Finally, the author highlights the
ways in which political and landed elites—often one and the same—continue
to use the rhetoric of land reform to appease foreign interests, both political
and economic, as new land market conversions have become the emphasis of
state policy.
In chapter 2 Tom Lebert chronicles the Zimbabwe case, one of the most
recent cases of high-profile land seizure. Lebert provides a brief historical
sketch of the ways colonial rule and the issue of race have shaped a struggle
for land that is tied to the need for both productive resources and political
power. The relationship of Africa to its former colonial powers (Britain in this
case) has not dissolved easily. The Zimbabwe case points to the significant
ways in which legislation and legal codes play a part in determining who is
considered landless at any point in history, and, further, who is deserving of
land and full land tenure at any time. Zimbabwe poses critical questions about
race and power that are often overlooked in general discussions of economic
or technical reform programs. Lebert’s contribution to this section provides
some new vantage points from which to reassess the struggle for land and
agrarian reform in that nation and across Africa more generally, even as the
situation deteriorates for an increasing numbers of Zimbabweans.17
Positing an interesting regional comparison, South Africa is considered in
chapter 3. Though close to Zimbabwe geographically, it shares a quite di¤erent
20 land and agrarian reform: historical perspectives
historical and post-colonial relationship. Wellington Thwala’s consideration of
South Africa examines the legacy of apartheid on the nation through codified
legal mandates, which used categories of race to determine definitions of property,
citizenship, and personhood. Thwala argues that this practice has left an
indelible mark on the agrarian question in South Africa, and he discusses how
the legacy of racialized land policy persists well into the twenty-first century
under new World Bank–directed reform programs.
Increasingly, the political landscape of South Africa is being shaped by an
ongoing struggle between rural and urban dwellers for land and resource allocation.
This demographic split between urban and rural dwellers in South
Africa has presented new dilemmas for political organizing around questions
of land distribution. Shifts toward industrial expansion, increased direct foreign
investment in agriculture, and national policies of modernization have
further marginalized the rural sector, with poverty rates in rural areas systematically
higher, and human development indicators systematically lower,
than in urban areas (United Nations Development Programme 2003). This
gap between the needs of rural dwellers and the dictates of an urban policy bias
is considered with relation to both national land redistribution policies and
recent land market conversion e¤orts in South Africa. Thwala closes the chapter
by exploring alternatives to the World Bank’s national agenda, calling for
a “people-centered land reform” and discussing the necessary components of
a successful alternative to land privatization in South Africa.
The case of India, Manpreet Sethi explains, is a history of broken promises
and of encroachment on many resources fundamental to farming communities
and ecological preservation: water, forests, and common property. India is
the only case that o¤ers a compelling regional example of expropriative land
reform within a larger comprehensive national reform policy. The Kerala state
reforms would easily fit in group 2 (endogenous social revolution), as landless
farmers and poor rural dwellers in that region persisted in their e¤orts to elect
a socialist government in their state and then to press for agrarian reform. Yet
most Indian states have not seen large-scale, comprehensive agrarian reforms
that have benefited large numbers of landless dwellers. In this way, India
serves as a persuasive example of why land reform alone, without a comprehensive
agrarian reform project, can quickly become part of the popular
neoliberal project to accommodate market expansion under the guise of
poverty reduction, which use the poor as justification for, but not a direct
beneficiary of, neoliberal policy making.
A recent period of urban migration in India has also posed several new
The Resurgence of Agrarian Reform in the Twenty-first Century 21
challenges for rural households, and Sethi draws attention to the question of
gender and the historical relationship of women to land and agrarian social
structure. This final chapter of part I leaves us to consider not only the issues
of historical variance, regional di¤erences, race, gender, and property relations,
but also the appeal of neoliberal populism to mobilize support for projects that
ultimately confound e¤orts for equitable resource distribution, food sovereignty,
and self-sufficiency.
Together these cases paint a varied historical picture of land reform. While
each nation has been brought closer to world markets by neoliberal interventions,
their trajectories are still deeply weighed down by the ghosts of their
pasts. In part II, we analyze the themes of these di¤erent histories, and in part
III, we investigate the alternative trajectories that, as ever, continue to be fought
for in the parliaments, policy rooms, streets, and fields of the Global South.
22 land and agrarian reform: historical perspectives