Land Reform

This chapter traces how land policies and particularly land reform have gained, lost, and regained prominence in development strategies and debates since the Second World War. The authors begin with definitions and summarize the experience of land and agrarian reforms during the Cold War period. The next section traces the decline and resurgence of land policies following the Cold War, and the sometimes fierce debates between advocates of state-led redistributive land reforms and market-led reforms. The final section introduces contemporary issues and debates on gender and generational issues in land policy, as well as the contemporary “rush” involving large corporate land deals, and concludes with reflections on the new ideas of food and land sovereignty driving today’s agrarian movements. Redistributive land reform for the twentyfirst century is argued to be one that is linked to broader visions of development, as were land reforms during the 1920s to 1970s.