Market-led agrarian reform: policies, performance and prospects

Abstract

Market-led agrarian reform ( mlar ) has gained prominence worldwide since the early 1990s as an alternative to the state-led approaches widely implemented over the course of the 20th century. This neoliberal policy framework advocates voluntary transactions between ‘willing sellers’ and ‘willing buyers’ and the removal of various ‘distortions’ from land and agricultural markets. Related policies aim to secure and formalise private property rights. Emerging evidence from across the developing world suggests that such policies are incapable of challenging the political and economic power of large landowners and are unlikely to meet the land needs of the rural poor and landless. In key areas such as land transfer, farmer development and programme financing, mlar is shown to be falling far short of its objectives. Meanwhile, it is being actively challenged by national and international peasant movements that are calling for more direct intervention by the state in order to restructure patterns of landholding and provide the necessary support for small-scale farmers, many of whom produce primarily for their own consumption. The future of agrarian reform, it is argued, lies not in a return to the top-down, statist models of the past but in new forms of partnerships between progressive political forces and peasant movements that go beyond the confines of the market to redistribute land and create sustainable livelihood opportunities for the rural poor and landless.

Notes

The origin of this collective project is traced to the workshop on the same theme during the International Conference on Land, Poverty, Social Justice and Development at the Institute of Social Studies (iss) in January 2006, where most of the contributors to this special issue presented preliminary versions of their papers. We would like to acknowledge the financial support extended by the Rural Development, Environment and Population Studies Group at iss through its ‘land project’ (and by implication the project's funders, namely, icco, Cordaid, Novib and the Belgian Coalition of the North – South Movements or 11.11.11) and the Ford Foundation, which enabled the guest editors to meet in The Hague in late 2006 where steps towards the framing of this project were taken. We would like to thank Saint Mary's University for its logistical support, which enabled us, among others things, to recruit Michael Grime as editorial assistant, to whom we also extend our thanks. Several scholars assisted us in various ways in ensuring high quality papers in this collection, and we would like to acknowledge and thank them without, of course, implicating them in the final analysis in this special issue: Henry Bernstein, James Boyce, Robin Broad, Ben Cousins, Jonathan Fox, Jim Handy, Eric Holt-Gimenez, Philip McMichael, Trevor Parfitt, Reem Saad and Wendy Wolford.

1 Cited in C Kay, ‘Solon L Barraclough: leading agrarian reform researcher and advocate’, Development and Change, 37 (6), 2006, p 1400.

2 K Deininger & H Binswanger, ‘The evolution of the World Bank's land policy: principles, experiences and future challenges’, World Bank Research Observer, 14 (2), 1999. But see also S Borras, ‘Questioning market-led agrarian reform: experiences from Brazil, Colombia and South Africa’, Journal of Agrarian Change, 3 (3), 2003, pp 367 – 394.

3 mlar is also the general land policy framework in most transition economies. However, it takes a significantly different context, and so we purposely do not include transition countries in this collection. For an overview of the mainstream position in this context, see K Deininger, ‘Agrarian reforms in Eastern European countries: lessons from international experience’, Journal of International Development, 14 (7), 2002, pp 987 – 1003. For a critical overview, see P Ho & M Spoor (guest eds), ‘Whose land? The political economy of land titling in transition economies’, Land Use Policy, 23 (4), 2006, pp 580 – 587; and M Spoor (ed), Contested Land in the ‘East’: Land and Rural Markets in Transition Economies, London: Routledge, forthcoming.

4 JM Riedinger, WY Yang & K Brook, ‘Market-based land reform: an imperfect solution’, in HR Morales & J Putzel (eds), Power in the Village: Agrarian Reform, Rural Politics, Institutional Change and Globalisation, Quezon City: Project Development Institute and University of the Philippines Press, 2001, pp 363 – 378; MR El-Ghonemy, ‘The political economy of market-based land reform’, in KB Ghimire (ed), Land Reform and Peasant Livelihoods: The Social Dynamics of Rural Poverty and Agrarian Reforms in Developing Countries, London: ITDG Publishing, 2001, pp 105 – 133; K Griffin, A Rahman Khan & A Ickowitz, ‘Poverty and the distribution of land’, Journal of Agrarian Change, 2 (3), 2003, pp 279 – 330; P Rosset, R Patel & M Courville (eds), Promised Land: Competing Visions of Agrarian Reform, Oakland, CA: Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy, 2006; F Barros, S Sauer & S Schwartzman (eds), The Negative Impacts of World Bank Market-Based Land Reform, Brazil: Comissao Pastoral da Terra, Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (mst) and Foodfirst Information and Action Network (fian), 2003; Borras ‘Questioning market-led agrarian reform’; S Borras, ‘Questioning the pro-market critique of state-led agrarian reform’, European Journal of Development Research, 15 (2), 2003, pp 105 – 128; E Lahiff, State, Market or The Worst of Both? Experimenting with Market-based Land Reform in South Africa, Occasional Paper 30, Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape, 2007; H Akram-Lodhi, S Borras & C Kay (eds), Land, Poverty and Livelihoods in the Era of Globalization: Perspectives from Developing and Transition Countries, London: Routledge, 2007; H Bernstein, ‘Land reform: taking a long(er) view’, Journal of Agrarian Change, 2 (4), 2002, pp 433 – 463; and R Herring, ‘The political impossibility theorem of agrarian reform: path dependence and terms of inclusion’, in M Moore & P Houtzager (eds), Changing Paths: The New Politics of Inclusion, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2003, pp 58 – 87.

5 H De Soto, The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else, New York: Basic Books, 2000.

6 H Bernstein, ‘Once were/still are peasants? Farming in a globalising “South”, New Political Economy, 11 (3), 2006, pp 399 – 406; P McMichael, ‘Peasant prospects in the neoliberal age’, New Political Economy, 11 (3), 2006, pp 407 – 418; J Boyce, P Rosset & E Stanton, ‘Land reform and sustainable development’, peri Working Paper 98, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 2005; and E Lahiff & I Scoones, ‘Sustainable livelihoods in southern Africa: institutions, governance and policy processes’, Sustainable Livelihood Southern Africa, (slsa) Research Paper 2, Brighton: Institute of Development Studies, 2000.

7 See the recent collection edited by Ghimire, Land Reform and Peasant Livelihoods; S Moyo & P Yeros, ‘The resurgence of rural movements under neoliberalism’, in Moyo & Yeros (eds), Reclaiming the Land: The Resurgence of Rural Movements in Africa, Asia and Latin America, London: Zed Books, 2005; and Rosset et al, Promised Land. See also S Borras Jr, ‘La Via Campesina: an evolving transnational social movement', tni Briefing Paper Series 2004/6, Amsterdam: Transnational Institute, 2004, available at www.tni.org

8 TJ Byres, ‘Neo-classical neo-populism 25 years on: déjà vu and déjà passé'—towards a critique’, Journal of Agrarian Change, 4 (1 – 2), 2004, p 20.

9 K Deininger, Making Negotiated Land Reform Work: Initial Experience from Brazil, Colombia and South Africa, Policy Research Working Paper 2040, World Bank, 1999; Deininger & Binswanger, ‘The evolution of the World Bank's land policy’; and World Bank, Land Policies for Growth and Poverty Reduction, Washington, DC: World Bank, 2003.

10 World Bank, Land Policies for Growth and Poverty Reduction.

11 See P Dorner, Latin American Land Reforms in Theory and Practice, Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992.

12 H Mondragon, ‘Colombia: either land markets or agrarian reform’, in Barros et al, The Negative Impacts of World Bank Market-based Land Reform, pp 103 – 169.

13 P Jacobs, E Lahiff & R Hall, Evaluating Land and Agrarian Reform in South Africa: Land Redistribution, Cape Town: Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape, 2003; L Ntsebeza & R Hall (eds), The Land Question in South Africa: The Challenge of Transformation and Redistribution, Cape Town: HSRC Press, 2006; and Lahiff, this issue.

14 Z Navarro, ‘The “Cédula da Terra” guiding project—comments on the social and political – institutional conditions of its recent development’, 1998, at www.dataetrra.org.br; S Sauer, ‘A ticket to land: the World Bank's market-based land reform in Brazil’, in Barros et al, The Negative Impacts of World Bank Market-based Land Reform, pp 45 – 102.

15 CD Deere & L de Medeiros, ‘Agrarian reform and poverty reduction: lessons from Brazil’, in Akram-Lodhi et al, Land, Poverty and Livelihoods in an Era of Neoliberal Globalization; W Wolford, ‘Land reform in the time of neoliberalism: a many-splendored thing’, Antipode, 39 (3), 2007, pp 550 – 570; JMM Pereira, ‘The World Bank's “market-assisted” land reform as a political issue: evidence from Brazil (1997 – 2006)’, European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, 82, 2007, pp 21 – 49; and Medeiros, this issue.

16 JK van Donge, G Eiseb & A Mosimane, ‘Land reform in Namibia: issues of equity and poverty,’ in Akram-Lodhi et al, Land, Poverty and Livelihoods in an Era of Neoliberal Globalization.

17 E Holt-Gimenez, ‘Territorial restructuring and the grounding of agrarian reform: indigenous communities, gold mining and the World Bank’, paper presented at the Canadian Association for the Study of International Development (casid) Congress, University of Saskatchewan, 31 May – 2 June 2007.

18 S Borras, ‘Can redistributive reform be achieved via market-based land transfer schemes? Lessons and evidence from the Philippines’, Journal of Development Studies, 41 (1), 2005, pp 90 – 134.

19 R Bhandari, ‘Searching for a weapon of mass production in Nepal: can market-assisted land reforms live up to their promise?’, Journal of Developing Societies, 22 (2), 2006, pp 111 – 143.

20 Deininger & Binswanger, ‘The evolution of the World Bank's land policy’; and Deininger, Making Negotiated Land Reform Work.

21 See S Borras, ‘La Via Campesina: an evolving transnational social movement’, tni Briefing Paper Series, 6, Amsterdam: Transnational Institute, 2004, available at www.tni.org.

22 For a comprehensive summary, refer to Borras, ‘Questioning the pro-market critique of state-led agrarian reform’.

23 Deininger & Binswanger, ‘The evolution of the World Bank's land policy’, p 263.

24 Deininger, Making Negotiated Land Reform Work, p 653.

25 See World Bank, Land Policies for Growth and Poverty Reduction. See also Borras, ‘Questioning the pro-market critique of state-led agrarian reform’.

26 H Binswanger & K Deininger, ‘South African land policy: the legacy of history and current options’, in J van Zyl, J Kirsten & HP Binswanger (eds), Agricultural Land Reform in South Africa: Policies, Markets and Mechanisms, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996, p 71.

27 See also A de Janvry & E Sadoulet, ‘A study in resistance to institutional change: the lost game of Latin American land reform’, World Development, 17 (9), 1989, pp 1397 – 1407.

28 Deininger, Making Negotiated Land Reform Work.

29 Deininger & Binswanger, ‘The evolution of the World Bank's land policy’, p 267. See also Borras ‘Questioning market-led agrarian reform’, p 368.

30 K Deininger & H Binswanger, ‘The evolution of the World Bank's land policy: principles, experiences and future challenges’, in A de Janvry, G Gordillo, JP Platteau & E Sadoulet (eds), Access to Land, Rural Poverty, and Public Action, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001, p 426.

31 Deininger & Binswanger, ‘The evolution of the World Bank's land policy’, 1999, p 269; Deininger & Binswanger, ‘The evolution of the World Bank's land policy’, 2001, pp 426 – 427; A Banerjee, ‘Land reforms: prospects and strategies’, paper presented at the Annual World Bank Conference on Development Economics, Washington, DC, April 1999; and de Janvry et al, Access to Land, Rural Poverty, and Public Action.

32 See, for example, B Moore, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Modern World, London: Penguin, 1967; E Tuma, Twenty-Six Centuries of Agrarian Reform: A Comparative Analysis, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1965; J Putzel, ‘Land reforms in Asia: lessons from the past for the 21st century’, LSE Working Paper Series, 00-04, London: London School of Economics, 2000; and C Kay, ‘Why East Asia overtook Latin America: agrarian reform, industrialisation and development’, Third World Quarterly, 23 (6), 2002, pp 1073 – 1102.

33 This volume. See also B Cousins, ‘More than socially embedded: the distinctive character of “communal tenure” regimes in South Africa and its implications for land policy’, Journal of Agrarian Change, 7 (3), 2007, pp 281 – 315.

34 This section draws from Borras, ‘Questioning market-led agrarian reform’; and Borras, ‘Questioning the pro-market critique of state-led agrarian reform’.

35 World Bank, Land Policies for Growth and Poverty Reduction, p 69.

36 World Bank, ‘The theory behind market-assisted land reform’, at http:///www.worldbank.org/landpolicy/, nd, p 3.

37 Deininger & Binswanger, ‘The evolution of the World Bank's land policy’, 1999; and MA Buainain, JM da Silveira, HM Souza & M Magalhães, ‘Community-based land reform implementation in Brazil: a new way of reaching out to the marginalized?' Paper presented at the GDN conference in Bonn, Germany, December 1999, available at www.gdnet.org/bonn99/confpapers.f1ml.

38 H Binswanger, ‘Rural development and poverty reduction’, in van Zyl et al, Agricultural Land Reform in South Africa, p 155.

39 J van Zyl, J Kirsten & H Binswanger, ‘Introduction’, in Zyl et al, Agricultural Land Reform in South Africa, p 9.

40 Binswanger, ‘Rural development and poverty reduction’, p 155.

41 H Binswanger, ‘The political implications of alternative models of land reform and compensation’, in van Zyl et al, Agricultural Land Reform in South Africa, p 143.

42 Deininger, Making Negotiated Land Reform Work.

43 The Philippine case also shows a variant of mlar that has been carried out since 1988 and to a larger scale. This is analysed in Borras, ‘Can redistributive reform be achieved via market-based land transfer schemes?’.

44 Borras et al, this issue.

45 Lahiff, this issue.

46 Gauster, this issue.

47 Medeiros, this issue.

48 de Bremond, this issue.

49 Bush, this issue.

50 Borras et al, this issue

51 Gauster & Isakson, this issue.

52 Lahiff, this issue.

53 Guaster & Isakson, this issue.

54 Navarro, ‘The “Cédula da Terra” guiding project’; and Sauer, ‘A ticket to land’.

55 Deininger, Making Negotiated Land Reform Work. But see also Mondragon, ‘Colombia’; and Borras, ‘Questioning market-led agrarian reform’.

56 World Bank, Land Policies for Growth and Poverty Reduction, p 69, emphasis in the original.

57 Deininger, Making Negotiated Land Reform Work, pp 666 – 667.

58 Deininger & Binswanger, ‘The evolution of the World Bank's land policy’, 1999, pp 267 – 268.

59 Ibid, p 265.

60 Medeiros, this issue.

61 Ibid.

62 R Van den Brink, G Thomas, H Binswanger, J Bruce & F Byamugisha, Consensus, Confusion, and Controversy: Selected Land Reforms Issues in Sub-Saharan Africa, World Bank Working Paper 71, Washington, DC: World Bank, 2006, emphasis added.

63 World Bank, ‘The theory behind market-assisted land reform’, p 1.

64 Buainain et al, 1999.

65 Deininger, Making Negotiated Land Reform Work, p 667.

66 J van Zyl & H Binswanger, ‘Market-assisted land reform: how will it work?’, in van Zyl et al, Agricultural Land Reform in South Africa, p 419.

67 See Deininger, Making Negotiated Land Reform Work.

68 R Hall, Land and Agrarian Reform in South Africa: A Status Report 2004, Cape Town: Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape, 2004.

69 F Zimmerman, ‘Barriers to participation of the poor in South Africa's land redistribution’, World Development, 28 (8), 2000, pp 1439 – 1460; Guaster & Isakson, this issue; and Medeiros, this issue.

70 Gauster & Isakson, this issue.

71 Medeiros, this issue.

72 de Bremond, this issue.

73 Ibid.

74 Lahiff, this issue.

75 de Bremond, this issue.

76 Akram-Lodhi et al, Land, Poverty and Livelihoods in the Era of Globalization.

77 J Fox, ‘The difficult transition from clientelism to citizenship: lessons from Mexico’, World Politics, 46 (2), 1994, pp 151 – 184.

78 C Kay, ‘Reflections on rural violence in Latin America’, Third World Quarterly, 22 (5), 2004, pp 741 – 775; C Cramer, ‘Does inequality cause conflict?’, Journal of International Development, 15 (4), 2003, pp 397 – 412; N Pons-Vignon & HB Solignac Lecomte, ‘Land, violent conflict and development’, oecd Development Centre Working Paper No 233, Paris: oecd, 2004; and S Baranyi & V Weitzer, ‘Transforming land-related conflict: policy practice and possibilities’, Policy Brief, North – South Institute, Ottawa, 2006.