Land Redistribution to reduce poverty

According to International Fund for Agricultural Development land reform policies that reduce the inequality in land ownership and create small farms can be a cost effective way of reducing rural poverty. When peasants and farmers own their own land, farming is often more productive, agriculture is more labor intensive (which creates more farm jobs), and small farmers and peasants are able to keep more of the profits themselves.


Land redistribution has been tried in many countries but depending on how it was carried out it has had mixed success. It worked in Japan, but only because the devastation of World War II put the U.S. occupation forces in charge, and General MacArthur was willing to push land reform on a willing Japanese population. During the 1970s the United States under President Carter attempted to impose land reform in Central America.


The idea was to give incentives and payments to wealthy landowners, and loans to peasants so they could buy land taken from big haciendas. What seemed like a good idea resulted in political violence and revolution throughout most of Central America. Landowners resisted, peasants who had their hopes raised became angry, and political violence spiraled upward as both sides attacked the other.


The results were even more right-wing military coups throughout the region. There was one brief revolutionary government emerging in Nicaragua, but the Reagan administration quickly activitated the CIA to aid the "Contras" who brought down the Sandinista government.