Agrarian reform
Agrarian reform changes land ownership, tenure, or agricultural institutions to alter access to farmland and the distribution of agricultural power.
Land redistribution: The transfer of land from large owners or the state to cultivators or other beneficiaries. It changes ownership directly by reallocating farmland to new holders.
Mexican land reform: The redistribution and communal organization of land in Mexico, especially through the ejido system. It shows how revolutionary reform created communal holdings alongside private property.
Smallholding: A small farm, typically operated by a household or individual cultivator. Redistribution often replaces large estates with smaller family-run farms.
Latifundium: A large landed estate, especially one associated with historic Roman or Latin American agriculture. Concentrated estates have often become targets of agrarian reform.
Agricultural modernization: The adoption of technologies, infrastructure, and institutions intended to increase agricultural efficiency or output. Modernization can raise production without redistributing land or changing ownership.
Land tenure: The legal and customary arrangements that determine how people hold, use, and transfer land. Reform can change tenure rights without transferring ownership.
Japanese land reform: The postwar program that transferred much tenanted farmland in Japan to its cultivating tenants. It is a prominent case of state-led redistribution that weakened landlordism.
Collective farming: Agricultural production organized through shared ownership or coordinated work by a group. Some reforms replace private holdings with collective production rather than individual farms.
Enclosure: The conversion of shared or customary land into bounded, privately controlled holdings. It represents a historical consolidation of land rights, often opposite reform’s redistributive aims.
Collectivization: The consolidation of individual farms into state-controlled or collective agricultural units. It changes the organization of production, often more radically than redistributive reform.