Agrarian reform

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Agrarian reform can refer either, narrowly, to government-initiated or government-backed redistribution of agricultural land (see land reform) or can refer more broadly to an overall redirection of the agrarian system of the country, which often includes land reform measures. Agrarian reform can include credit measures, training, land consolidations, etc.

Ben Cousins defines the difference between agrarian reform and land reform as follows:

Land reform… is concerned with rights in land, and their character, strength and distribution, while… [agrarian reform] focuses not only on these but also a broader set of issues: the class character of the relations of production and distribution in farming and related enterprises, and how these connect to the wider class structure. It is thus concerned economic and political power and the relations between them…^[1]

Along similar lines, the a 2003 World Bank report states,

…A key precondition for land reform to be feasible and effective in improving beneficiaries' livelihoods is that such programs fit into a broader policy aimed at reducing poverty and establishing a favourable environment for the development of productive smallholder agriculture by beneficiaries^[2]

Examples of other issues include "tenure security" for "farm workers, labour tenants, … farm dwellers… [and] tenant peasants", which makes these workers and tenants better prospects for receiving private-sector loans;^[3] "infrastructure and support services";^[4] government support of "forms of rural enterprise" that are "complementary" to agriculture;^[5] and increased community participation in government decisions in rural areas.^[6]

[edit] Notes

1. ^ Ben Cousins, Agrarian reform and the 'two economies': transforming South Africa's countrysidePDF, Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS), School of Government, the University of the Western Cape, South Africa, 2005, p.10. Accessed online 16 August 2006.
2. ^ World Bank, Land Policies for Growth and Poverty Reduction, World Bank and Oxford University Press, 2003. Quoted in Cousins, op. cit., p. 11.
3. ^ Cousins, op. cit., p.4–5, 7, 10–11
4. ^ Cousins, op. cit., p.12
5. ^ Cousins, op. cit., p.14
6. ^ Cousins, op. cit., p.14

[edit] See also

• Land reform