A peasant is a pre-industrial agricultural laborer or a farmer with limited land-ownership, especially one living in the Middle Ages under feudalism and paying rent, tax, fees, or services to a landlord. In Europe, three classes of peasants existed: non-free slaves, semi-free serfs, and free tenants. Peasants might hold title to land outright, or by any of several forms of land tenure, among them socage, quit-rent, leasehold, and copyhold.
A tenant farmer is a person who resides on land owned by a landlord. Tenant farming is an agricultural production system in which landowners contribute their land and often a measure of operating capital and management, while tenant farmers contribute their labor along with at times varying amounts of capital and management. Depending on the contract, tenants can make payments to the owner either of a fixed portion of the product, in cash or in a combination. The rights the tenant has over the land, the form, and measures of payment vary across systems. In some systems, the tenant could be evicted at whim ; in others, the landowner and tenant sign a contract for a fixed number of years. In most developed countries today, at least some restrictions are placed on the rights of landlords to evict tenants under normal circumstances.
The Irish National Land League, also known as the Land League, was an Irish political organisation of the late 19th century which organised tenant farmers in their resistance to exactions of landowners. Its primary aim was to abolish landlordism in Ireland and enable tenant farmers to own the land they worked on. The period of the Land League's agitation is known as the Land War. Historian R. F. Foster argues that in the countryside the Land League "reinforced the politicization of rural Catholic nationalist Ireland, partly by defining that identity against urbanization, landlordism, Englishness and—implicitly—Protestantism." Foster adds that about a third of the activists were Catholic priests, and Archbishop Thomas Croke was one of its most influential champions.
Sharecropping is a legal arrangement in which a landowner allows a tenant (sharecropper) to use the land in return for a share of the crops produced on that land. Sharecropping is not to be conflated with tenant farming, providing the tenant a higher economic and social status.
Land reform in South Vietnam refers to reforms proposed by the United States and implemented by South Vietnam. Seeking to undermine the popularity of the communist Việt Minh's policies of land redistribution to poor peasants, the government of South Vietnam implemented their own land-redistribution policies during the Vietnam War.
Agriculture in the Empire of Japan was an important component of the pre-war Japanese economy. Although Japan had only 16% of its land area under cultivation before the Pacific War, over 45% of households made a living from farming. Japanese cultivated land was mostly dedicated to rice, which accounted for 15% of world rice production in 1937.
The Land War was a period of agrarian agitation in rural Ireland that began in 1879. It may refer specifically to the first and most intense period of agitation between 1879 and 1882, or include later outbreaks of agitation that periodically reignited until 1923, especially the 1886–1891 Plan of Campaign and the 1906–1909 Ranch War. The agitation was led by the Irish National Land League and its successors, the Irish National League and the United Irish League, and aimed to secure fair rent, free sale, and fixity of tenure for tenant farmers and ultimately peasant proprietorship of the land they worked.
Sino-American Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction is a commission established in 1948 in mainland China. After the Chinese Civil War, the JCRR then moved to Taiwan, where its work has been widely credited with laying the agricultural basis in the 1950s and 1960s for Taiwan's outstanding economic growth in the following decades by a coordinated program of economic, social, and technical development.
Agriculture is one of the main industries in Taiwan. It contributes to the food security, rural development and conservation of Taiwan. Around 24% of Taiwan's land is used for farming.
The recordkeeping and development of the economic history of Taiwan started in the Age of Discovery. In the 17th century, the Europeans realized that Taiwan is located on the strategic cusp between the Far East and Southeast Asia. Two main European empires that competed to colonize it were the Dutch and Spanish Empires. Taiwan also became an intermediate destination for trade between Western European empires and East Asia states. The history of Taiwan as a colony of the Dutch Empire, Kingdom of Tungning, Qing China, and Empire of Japan between 1630 and 1945 was based heavily on economics.
Operation Barga was a land reform movement, throughout rural West Bengal for recording the names of sharecroppers (bargadars) while avoiding the time-consuming method of recording through the settlement machinery. It bestowed on the bargadars, the legal protection against eviction by the landlords (jotedars), and entitled them to the due share of the produce. Operation Barga was launched in 1978 and concluded by the mid-1980s. Introduced in 1978, and given legal backing in 1979 and 1980, Operation Barga became a popular but controversial measure for land reforms. The ultimate aim of these land reforms was to facilitate the conversion of the state's bargadars into landowners, in line with the Directive Principles of State Policy of the Indian Constitution. To date, Op Barga has recorded the names of approximately 1.5 million bargadars. Since then, it has been marked as one of the most successful land reforms programs in India.
The problem of land reform in Ethiopia has hampered that country's economic development throughout the late 19th and 20th centuries. Attempts to modernize land ownership by giving title either to the peasants who till the soil, or to large-scale farming programs, have been tried under imperial rulers like Emperor Haile Selassie, and under Marxist regimes like the Derg, with mixed results. The present Constitution of Ethiopia, which was put into force January 1995, vests land ownership exclusively "in the State and in the peoples of Ethiopia." The relevant section continues, "Land is a common property of the Nations, Nationalities and Peoples of Ethiopia and shall not be subject to sale or to other means of exchange." Despite these different approaches to land reform, Ethiopia still faces issues of sustainable food self-sufficiency.
The Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program, more commonly known as CARP, is an agrarian reform law of the Philippines whose legal basis is the Republic Act No. 6657, otherwise known as the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law (CARL), signed under the administration of President Cory Aquino. It is the redistribution of private and public agricultural lands to help the beneficiaries survive as small independent farmers, regardless of the “tenurial” arrangement. Its goals are to provide landowners equality in terms of income and opportunities, empower land owner beneficiaries to have equitable land ownership, enhance agricultural production and productivity, provide employment to more agricultural workers, and put an end to conflicts regarding land ownership.
Thailand witnessed several uprisings by farmers from several central Thai provinces in the mid-1970s. Thailand, transitioning to democratic government after nearly forty years of dictatorship was beset by revolution involving several segments of the population. Farmers were one of several politicized groups that rioted on the streets. They implored Thai Prime Minister Thanom Kittikachorn to reduce their debt and ensure fair rice prices.
Agrarian reform and land reform have been a recurring theme of enormous consequence in world history. They are often highly political and have been achieved in many countries.
Land reform in the Philippines has long been a contentious issue rooted in the Spanish colonial period. Some efforts began during the American colonial period with renewed efforts during the Commonwealth, following independence, during martial law, and especially following the People Power Revolution in 1986. The current law, the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program, was passed following the revolution and extended until 2014.
Land reform in Vietnam began in the political turmoil following World War II in which a civil war pitted the communist Viet Minh against the French colonists and their supporters. At that time a large percentage of agricultural land was owned by large landowners and the majority of the rural population of Vietnam owned only small plots of land or was landless. The early success of the land reform program of the Viet Minh, gave the communists a strong base of support among the 80 percent of the Vietnamese people who lived in rural areas. The support of the communists by a large number of rural dwellers was an important factor in determining the outcome of the Vietnam War.
The Land Reform Movement, also known by the Chinese abbreviation Tǔgǎi (土改), was a mass movement led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Mao Zedong during the late phase of the Chinese Civil War after the Second Sino-Japanese War ended in 1945 and in the early People's Republic of China, which achieved land redistribution to the peasantry. Landlords – whose status was theoretically defined through the percentage of income derived from exploitation as opposed to labor – had their land confiscated and they were subjected to mass killing by the CCP and former tenants, with the estimated death toll ranging from hundreds of thousands to millions. The campaign resulted in hundreds of millions of peasants receiving a plot of land for the first time.
Concentration of land ownership refers to the ownership of land in a particular area by a small number of people or organizations. It is sometimes defined as additional concentration beyond that which produces optimally efficient land use.
The 37.5% Arable Rent Reduction Act is a law enacted by the Republic of China (Taiwan) on 25 May 1951. The act was proposed by Jiang Menglin of the JCRR on Apr 14 1949 to Chen Cheng, the Provincial Governor of Taiwan. The act was eventually passed by the Legislative Yuan on 25 May 1951.
