The literature paints a fairly common scenario for developing countries. It is one in which land is an increasingly scarce resource; where distribution is perceived to be unequal; where compensation for land required for infrastructure is unfair; where revenue through taxes is low and disproportionately shared; where land transactions are expensive and bureaucratic and where the levels of dispu...

Report on a desktop study commissioned by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) This paper was prepared under contract with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). The positions and opinions presented are those of the author alone, and are not intended to represent the views of FAO. 2 CONTENTS List of Tables 4 Abbreviations used in the text 4 Acknowledgements 4 ...

There are two either explicitly or implicitly and widely accepted ideas about the distribution of land in Ethiopia after the reform of 1975. First, land distribution in rural Ethiopia is highly equitable, for example compared to other African countries where private ownership exists. Second, the land distribution pattern currently observed is basically explained by what happened after the refor...

Empirical evidence from a set of land reform beneficiaries suggests that Zimbabwe’s land reform was successful: the internal rate of return to the land reform project is high, settlers accumulated substantial amounts of assets, and they increased their agricultural productivity substantially over time. This evidence contradicts the general notion that land reform was a failure, a notion support...

Redistributive land reform may promote both equity and efficiency. Implementing such reform can be costly, however, and may not be the best way to achieve redistribution. If land redistribution is to be implemented, it should be based on a uniform land ceiling that can be exceeded if landowners are willing to pay a high enough price to do so. Owners of redistributed land should be permitted to ...

Land and wealth are closely related in rural Brazil, a country characterized by high levels of inequality in terms of income or landholdings. After presenting a historical retrospective of land concentration and land reform in Brazil, this study evaluates the impact of the land reform programme undertaken in the 1990s on land ownership and land distribution. It is shown that the programme incre...

Land reform usually refers to redistribution of land from the rich to the poor. More broadly, it includes regulation of ownership, operation, leasing, sales, and inheritance of land (indeed, the redistribution of land itself requires legal changes). In an agrarian economy like India with great scarcity, and an unequal distribution, of land, coupled with a large mass of the rural population belo...

This paper examines the factors affecting the participation of farm households in farm land rental markets with particular focus on the impact of the land reform. The operational outcomes of such market participation are also analysed. The study used a panel dataset of farm households surveyed before and after the land reform with Random Effect Tobit model. The analysis showed that the land ref...

Land reform, after a long period of being considered irrelevant or passé, has now emerged into the media and political limelight. To some extent, this is due to the well-publicised land invasions in Zimbabwe. However, the Brazilian MST's mobilizations in the 1990s have attracted attention and land invasions have also occurred in South Africa in the recent period (Merten and wa ka Ngobeni, 2001;...

This paper provides an overview of land reform in South Africa since the advent of democratic government in 1994, with a particular emphasis on land redistribution. It begins with a brief sketch of the historical background before outlining the main aspects and achievements of the land reform programme to date. The final sections of the paper briefly discuss some new policy proposals and the ke...