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Land Reform: The Answer to Latin American Agricultural Development?*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Raul Branco
Raul Branco*
Affiliation:
Centre for Development Planning, Projections and Policies, United Nations, New York
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Extract

The great concern with the economic and social development in Latin America has made the issue of land reform a very fashionable subject of discussion. The importance of land reform has been officially acknowledged in South America as well as in North America by the signing of the Charter of Punta del Este, which established as one of the objectives of the Alliance for Progress the ; change in land tenure patterns wherever necessary in Latin America. The widespread acknowledgment of the importance of land reform has not led, though, to general agreement on the consequences of land reform for the process of economic development in Latin America. It would thus seem appropriate to re-examine the effects of large landholdings on economic development.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Inter-American Studies , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , April 1967 , pp. 225 - 235
Copyright
Copyright © University of Miami 1967

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Footnotes

*

The author is indebted to his colleagues, Forest G. Hill and Vernon M. Briggs, for helpful suggestions. This paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Southern Economic Association in November 1965, at Miami Beach.

References

1 See Warriner, Doreen, “Land Reform and Economic Development,” in Eicher, C. K. and Witt, L. W. (ed.), Agriculture in Economic Development (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1964), pp. 275–280.Google Scholar

2 For a comprehensive list of the possible contributions of agriculture to economic development see Johnston, B. F. and Mellor, J. W., “The Role of Agriculture in Economic Development,” American Economic Review, September 1961, pp. 571–581.Google Scholar

3 Carroll, T. F., “The Land Reform Issue in Latin America,” in Hirschman, A. O. (ed.), Latin American Issues (New York: The Twentieth Century Fund, 1961), p. 164.Google Scholar

4 NAFINSA, NAF1NSA en el Desarrollo Económico de México, 1934-1964, Mexico, 1965, p. 39.

5 Carroll, op. cit., pp. 177-178.

6 See Ohkawa, Kazushi and Rosovsky, Henry, “The Role of Agriculture in Modern Japanese Economic Development,” Economic Development and Cultural Change, October 1960, pp. 43 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 “In the State of Sao Paulo alone, we know of the existence of about 2,200,000 hectares of unused public domain … Therefore, we cannot help concluding that, with respect to Brazil's agrarian structure, the greatest feudal lord is the public itself, including the State of Sao Paulo.” Freitas Marcondes, J. V., “Salient Features of Agrarian Reform Proposals in Brazil,” in Lynn Smith, T. (ed.), Agrarian Reform in Latin America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965), p. 109.Google Scholar

8 Robock, Stefan H., Brazil's Developing Northeast (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1963), p. 34.Google Scholar

9 See Paglin, Morton, “ ‘Surplus’ Agricultural Labor and Development: Facts and Figures,” The American Economic Review, LV, September 1965, 815 ff.Google Scholar

10 See the Inter-American Committee for Agricultural Development, “Some Basic Aspects of Agrarian Reform in Latin America,” in T. L. Smith (ed.), op. cit., p. 184.

11 Hirschman suggests, however, that rigid social stratification could provide in certain cases some stimulus to economic development. See Hirschman, Albert O., “Obstacles to Development: A Classification and a Quasi-Vanishing Act,” Economic Development and Cultural Change, XIII, July 1965.Google Scholar

12 The Inter-American Committee for Agricultural Development, loc. cit., p. 182.