Agrarian Reform , Land Distribution , and Small - Farm Policy as Preventive of Humanitarian Emergencies

1 The term reform is used for a wide range of changes, including some which increase the concentration of land. Here the discussion is limited to cases in which an increase in the number of families with access to enough land to helo them avoid poverty is at least a reasonably likely result, since otherwise it would not be expected to contribute to prevention of agriculture-related emergencies. 1. Introduction Most humanitarian emergencies with mainly economic causes occur in quite poor countries. Most such emergencies involve land in some way. Famines are due to problems in the realm of production and distribution of food. Rural violence often revolves around land disputes and/or landlessness. And a bad distribution of land contributes to low incomes, poverty and maldistribution of income, all of which tend to go with poor infrastructure, poor health and educational services and other factors which make emergencies more likely than otherwise to occur. Accordingly it is argualbe that the strongest preventive of a wide range of types of humanitarian emergencies is a good land distribution, or more precisley as ystem of land rights which provides braod access to the popualtion, combined with policies strongly supportive of small-scale agriculture. When the initial land distribution differs markedly from the desired one, this will imply a need for agrarian reform. Ironically, though its potential for good is seldom tapped, those relatively few episodes where it has been have contributed positively to the welfare of tens of millions of people (perhaps hundreds of millions) of the most down-trodden people and made this type of reform one of the most welfare-increasing things that can happen in a country and one of the best forsm of insurance agains humanitarian emergiencies. Land distribuiton is of course only one of the many factors which afect the liklihood and severity of Complex Humanitarian Emrgencies (CHEs), as well as other types of social crises. But it is a prominent faccor. Ineuqlaity contributes to social tensions and land is in most soceities by far the most improtna of the assets which a consdierable ahre of families either have or aspeire to having. Uneuqla access to land is often asscated with and mutually reinforing of ehtnic differences, class diferecnes and political cleavages. When the gap between those with much land and those with little corresponds to the difference bewteen two ethnic groups and two clasees, the recipe i sin place for a …