Rural land reform in Brazil revisited: the policy implications of regional planning strategies

• In Event: Past, Present, and Future Land Reforms

Abstract

We discuss the policy implications of combining aspects of both state-led and market-based approaches to rural land reallocation through regional planning. We focus on land reform settlements in Northeast Brazil, where the effects of both approaches on the socioeconomic growth of a sample of rural territories were identified through panel data analysis, cross-section regressions and field-based analysis. The work concludes that: 1) Plan-led strategies towards sustainable development in the reallocated areas were not part of the schemes; 2) There is not clear evidence that the market-based approach leads to higher socioeconomic growth regionally than does the state-led approach, or vice versa; 3) Securing both higher access to land rights and better living conditions through land reform requires an approach that combines both state-led and market-based elements; 4) Securing measurable positive impacts on the regional economy requires a land reform strategy that has a regional scope. As a policy implication, the work suggests the adoption of a plan-led land reform strategy that is coordinated at all government levels and between the public and private sectors, and one that involves establishing strategic portfolios of potentially sustainable areas, defining spending priorities for those areas along with funding possibilities through regional planning. Differently from the commonsense literature on land reform in developing countries, this work demonstrates that regional planning has an essential part to play in land reform through proposing a plan-led strategy that combines elements of both market-based and state-led approaches to the benefit of the rural social economy.

Author

• Saulo S Souza, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco