Friday, September 19, 2008

Lie of the land (BBC discusses the land issue)

from the BBC

....In his opinion, the land audit will weed out those who are not serious about farming and the security of tenure will spur growth.

Mr Smith agrees the leases will be a good compromise to allow farmers to raise cash - and it is money that the agricultural sector desperately needs.

"I'm on the ground and basically everything has been laid to waste - buildings and barns - all the boreholes need to refitted, dams need to be repaired," he says.

'Once bitten, twice shy'

The deal calls on the international community to support land reform, and in particular it asks the UK to pay compensation to white farmers who lost their land.....

As I have written before, land reform similar to other countries could have been done...it allowed those working on the land to get their share, and give long term mortgages to pay compensation to the owner (which frequently were never paid...but never mind)...at the same time, the owner was allowed to keep so many acres...with a maximum number of acres per person. This allows some large families to own quite a bit of land, but not the huge farms of the past...

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