Land Reform

The History of the Islamic Revolution
Land Reform
Distribution of Pahlavi property ownership documents in Marble Palace 1950 and the kiss of the poor farmer on the feet of the Shah of Iran

Land reforms

 

Land reform is an expression used regarding changes in ownership and exploitation of farmland; it means to take land from large landowners and to distribute it between farmers. In the 1950s and 1960s, under the advice of the United States, land reforms and redistribution between farmers took place in many Latin American countries to prevent Communist revolutions.

 

Before the implementation of land reforms in Iran, farming took place in the form of the landlord-peasant system; farmers in each village worked on the landlord or landowner’s farms who owned large lands. At harvest time, the crop was divided between the landlord and peasant, where the landlord always took a larger share of the crop. The landlord was the ultimate power and the village was run according to his want. The farmers were considered his peasants and had to carry out all the orders of the village’s landlord.

 

After the Constitutional Revolution of Iran, unofficial efforts took place to do away with this system. During the Jangal (Forest) Movement under the leadership of Mirza Kuchak Khan, vast areas of land were taken from large property owners of Gilan and distributed between villagers. During his rule, Reza Shah began usurping the best agricultural lands in the country and in no time, became one of the largest landowners in Iran. When he left Iran in 1941, he owned two thousand villages and his annual income from these lands amounted to 42 million tomans. At the time of the movement to nationalize the Iranian oil industry, Dr. Mohammad Mosaddeq’s government passed a law according to which large landowners had to give ten percent of their ownership to villagers. Another 10 percent had to be paid to the village council-consisting of farmers and owners- to be spent for the development and growth of the village. With the fall of Mosaddeq’s government, this law was not enforced.

 

After the 1953 Iranian coup d’état (28 Mordad coup d’état) Mohammad-Reza Shah sold the lands he had inherited from his father to farmers in installments at his own desired price. He took the money from the government treasury and invested it in profitable lands inside the country and abroad, thus adding to his personal wealth.

 

In 1961, Shah and his American consultants saw it necessary to carry out a number of reform programs including land reforms. This was due to the popular movements in some third world countries such as Vietnam and Cuba. Western countries, especially the United States, has concluded that the growth of farmer movements can be prevented through carrying out reforms. Besides, Mohammad-Reza Shah’s western allies were worried that the traditional farming system in Iranian villages might cause the infiltration of the communists and the political breakthrough of the Soviets in Iran and increase the possibility of a revolution.

 

Another factor for the implementation of land reforms was that Mohammad-Reza Pahlavi wanted to turn Iran into an industrial and capitalistic country. The industrialization plan was faced with problems because 70 percent of the country’s population lived in villages and the landowners had invested their money in agriculture. Therefore, if land reforms were implemented and the lands were sold to farmers, landowners could provide the needed money for investment in the industrial and economic division while at the same time, the workforce for the factories would be supplied.

 

It was in such circumstances that Ali Amini was appointed prime minister on May 6th, 1961 with the advice of the American president, John F. Kennedy, to carry out the United States’ intended reforms. After forming his cabinet, Amini announced that his first step is to carry out land reforms across the country. Afterward, on January 9th, 1962, Hasan Arsanjani, the interior minister of Amini’s government, ratified the bill on land reforms in 8 sections and 38 articles.

 

The land reform law was enacted in three stages, starting in 1961 and continuing until 1972. During this time, 1.7 million rural families became landowners through the division of agricultural land.

 

Land reforms first started from the villages of Maragheh and East Azerbaijan province. This area was chosen because of Arsanjani’s acquaintance with the region and its people and also because of his awareness of the power of the landowners in the area. Arsanjani believed that if he was able to succeed in the struggle against Maragheh landowners, he would pave the way for implementing the land reform program in other parts of Iran. “The Land Reform Organization” was established to supervise the division of land between farmers. In 1967, this organization was changed into the “Ministry of Land Reform and Rural Cooperatives”; it continued its activity in 1971 under the title “Ministry of Cooperatives and Rural Affairs.”

 

A while after the program started, Shah dismissed Amini on July 20th, 1962, and appointed his old friend, Asadollah Alam, prime minister. Arsanjani also remained in Alam’s cabinet for a few months, in the same position he previously had. However, he was eventually forced to resign in February 1963 due to his disagreements with Asadollah Alam on how to divide the land. After Arsanjani, Colonel Abdolazim Valian became in charge of carrying out the program and remained in this position until 1972, when the division of land between farmers was finished.

 

The implementation of land reforms brought about important changes and transformations in Iran’s economic and social structure, the most important being:

  1. Many landlords and landowners transferred their capital from villages to cities and used them to build big and small industrial factories.
  2. Despite its disadvantages, the peasant-landlord system had kept up the farming system in Iran’s villages. After the collapse of this system, the villagers became needy of government aids. But such aids were not given and after a while, the farmers who had now become landowners were faced with problems such as the payment of installations, lack of sufficient seeds, unfair division of water, and lack of facilities to fight vegetable pests. On the other hand, the administrative affairs of villagers were centralized in Tehran and other large cities; the increasing attraction of cities following the economic boom and constructional activities and also the amusement and recreation centers caused an increase in immigration of villagers to cities. This caused a decrease in agricultural products such that after the implementation of land reforms, Iran was turned into one of the importers of food products.

 

In this way, after the implementation of land reforms, a country that was self-sufficient in producing various crops and livestock products was turned into a large importer of these products.

 

 

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