In Myanmar where government and business leaders are now converging for the World Economic Forum on East Asia, over two-thirds of the entire population is still rural, and somewhere between 20-40% of are estimated to be landless; a large additional percentage lack any real legal security on the land they farm.
It is worth using the occasion of the Forum meeting to remind assembled leaders that in addressing this issue they need to keep well in mind the following four points:
How to confront the needs of the vast number of families who are trapped in land-related, generational poverty in Myanmar and throughout the region will have profound consequences for future development, investment and stability.
Look to the substantial existing successes. Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Vietnam and mainland China are all East Asian settings where sweeping land reforms have been carried out, reforms that played a key role in their overall development. The first three gave ownership to their tenant farmers, and the two latter broke up the collective farms, giving long-term individual rights.
Keep in mind that small farms – as in the five success stories just referred to – are almost always more productive and efficient than big, mechanized farms. This doesn’t change – and may not even then – until you reach the point in “development” of being long on land, long on capital and very short on labour.
Assure equal land rights to women where reforms are carried out. Each dollar or yuan of income controlled by a wife goes farther, as a general rule, to meet the basic needs of the household.
Don’t ignore the completely landless. Experience has demonstrated that ownership of even one-tenth of an acre (1/25th of a hectare) can provide a crucial supplement to a previously landless household’s nutrition and income, give them status in the community, provide empowerment for the wife (with her name on the title document) and yield multiple other benefits.
Author: Roy Prosterman is Founder and Chairman Emeritus of Landesa.