Agrarian Reform in Ethiopia was essential to improve the overall condition of the country’s agricultural sector. Despite equal allocation of agricultural land among native farmers, the rural regions of Ethiopia continued to suffer from income problems in the agrarian sector.
Agrarian Reform in Ethiopia: its necessity
In Ethiopia, productivity in the agricultural sector suffered a lot, owing to the dry desert climate of the surrounding regions. Drought and famine were common climatic features in Ethiopia, continuously affecting agrarian productivity of the nation. In fact, the country has undergone as many as seven severe famines. Deficiency of food crops in Ethiopia culminated into poverty among the rural peasant families. It was due to lack of rainfall that the fertility of arable land was completely destroyed, and crop production became next to impossible unless their fertility were recovered.
Restoring the fertility of agricultural land was the primary objective of the land reform programs initiated in Ethiopia. However in the initial stages, the land reform programs introduced on governmental level proved to be ineffective in solving the persisting agrarian problems. Despite successive trials made by different Ethiopian governments to enhance the agricultural productivity, those initiatives failed repeatedly.
Land Reform Program in Ethiopia: the backdrop
Till the Revolution of 1974, the land occupancy system of Ethiopia was highly complicated in nature. In the Welo Province of Ethiopia, there was prevalence of 111 different types of land tenure systems. Together with dearth of true information about the conditions of the land, the presence of a number of land occupancy system made it complex to make an accurate estimation about the ownership of agrarian land in the country. However, to some extents, the method of occupying agricultural land in Ethiopia could be understood in a simple way. This was possible only when the occupancy method was closely scrutinized in the light of the fundamental differences prevailing between the pattern of land ownership in the northern and southern parts of Ethiopia.
Ethiopian Agrarian Reform Program: the process
With the existing pattern of land ownership system existing in Ethiopia, the improvement of the agricultural sector in terms of increase in productivity and development of the overall condition of the peasants was almost impossible. This situation gradually culminated into a stage where formulation and implementation of land reform program became indispensable for the economic growth of the nation. Towards the middle of the 1960s, different sections of Ethiopian society became in favor of land reform and encouraged it highly. This awareness spread equally among the University students as well. Under their initiatives, campaigns began on the land reform programs. These students not only campaigned for the initiation of reform programs in Ethiopian agrarian sector, they provided leaderships to land reform movements in the country as well. In fact by 1974, these land reform movements made it clear that presence of outdated land occupancy system was responsible for the underdeveloped conditions of the Ethiopian agricultural sector.
Inspired by the land reform movements undertaken by the students in Ethiopia, commencement of land reform program was declared in the rural sector of the country on 4th March 1974. Under this program, the government nationalized all the land in the rural sector. It was under the initiative of the national government that the system of land tenancy was completely eliminated and hiring labors in lieu of wages on private farmland was forbade too. Moreover, the government passed an order to ensure that all commercial farmland would strictly remain under the control of the state. Further, the land reform measures also allowed the peasant families to be owners of maximum ten hectares of land.
Effects of Land Reform Programs in Ethiopia:
The land reform programs had altogether different impact in the northern and southern parts of Ethiopia. While the southern Ethiopian tenant peasants welcomed the reform measures, it did not receive much appreciation in the northern parts of the country, which was dominated by the communal landlords. Farmers living in the southern parts appreciated the reform measures, as the rate of rents they used to pay to the landowners was as high as 55%. Besides, they were highly oppressed by the landowners. So the initiation and implementation of land reform programs brought immense relief to them. Since the same reform measures did not suit the interests of the northern landlords, so it received high disapprovals among the landlords of Northern Ethiopia.