Market-led agrarian reform: policies, performance and prospects

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.