3. The "Traps" Inherent in Land Market Policies

Maria Luisa Mendonça and Luciano Wolff*

Photo: Maria Luisa Mendonça

So-called "market assisted land reform"-a phrase that has been
strongly criticized by social movements because it doesn't do justice to "land reform"-is based on promoting the sale of land by large landowners to landless or near landless families. This policy is being pushed or implemented by the Bank in some 30 developing countries, ostensibly to "alleviate rural poverty." Nevertheless, the findings of various researchers and the concrete experiences of countries like Colombia, Brazil, South Africa, Guatemala and Thailand, reveal many problems associated with so-called "land market" policies, including a tendency toward greater poverty.

This Bank program runs counter the age old struggles, demands and proposals of rural social movements for comprehensive and broad genuine agrarian reforms. In these Bank projects, many rural workers, hoping to realize their dream of someday owning their on piece of land, are induced with promises of a better life to take out large bank loans with market-rate interest to purchase land. But instead of achieving that better life, they soon find themselves enmeshed in a nightmare of debt and frequently end up losing title to their new land and being expelled all over again.

These programs end up generating greater land concentration, and benefit large landowners who are able to sell their worst plots of land at heavily inflated prices, receiving full payment up front. Furthermore, experience has shown that "market assisted land reform" is an invitation to corruption and clientelism, as control over the land sale and transfer process is placed squarely in the hands of rural elites.

In Brazil, for example, projects like the Cédula da Terra ('A ticket to land'), Land Bank, Land Credit and Combating Poverty programs, all have the Bank seal of approval and financial support. These projects run counter to the Brazilian legal tenet by which expropriation of idle land (with financial compensation) should be the principle instrument used to obtain land. The Brazilian constitution establishes that private farm land must fulfill a 'social function,' which means that it should be used to produce food and other goods, and that all relevant environmental and labor laws must be respected. If any of these criteria are not met on a particular parcel, then the government should "desapropriate" (confiscate the land with financial compensation), and use it for land reform and for settling landless families.

By adopting the World Bank model the Brazilian State is failing to comply with a constitutional obligation. Instead of penalizing those who have landholdings that far exceed what they can actually use productively, the World Bank programs reward them, as they are now the ones who can decide to sell or not any given plot of land. In addition, this expansion of land markets has in many cases led landlords to jack up land prices, thus further benefiting them.

In dozens of countries, the Bank's structural adjustment policies have led to the privatization of lands once held by indigenous and minority peoples (such as the descendents of African slaves in some parts of the Americas), and the privatization of water and forests, leading to growing social inequality. Land market policies are now being inserted into this context.

The incredible similarity of the Bank policies and their impacts being imposed across a wide range of diverse countries, is what has generated an international movement of opposition to "market assisted land reform." Many organizations-like Via Campesina, FIAN, and the Land Research Action Network (LRAN), have come together to synthesize these experiences and disseminate information about both these World Bank policies and about alternatives put forth by grassroots organizations.

These organizations demand an immediate suspension of land market programs and call for the democratization of access to land via expropriation, with broad participation by grassroots rural social movements in policy formulation and implementation. Social movements want to guarantee the right to land for rural peoples through genuine agrarian reform, accompanied by complementary agricultural policies, which together would guarantee the food sovereignty of their nations.

The "Traps" Inherent in Land Market Policies, article by Maria Luisa Mendonça and Luciano Wolff, published in Jornal do Brasil

4. Brazil

5. Colombia

6. Guatemala

7. India

8. Mexico

9. South Africa

10. Thailand

11. Zimbabwe

12. Positions of Via Campesina

13. Bibliography

14. Table of Contents