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Iraq
Land Tenure and Agrarian Reform
Iraq's system of land tenure and inefficient government implementation
of land reform contributed to the low productivity of farmers
and the slow growth of the agricultural sector. Land rights had
evolved over many centuries, incorporating laws of many cultures
and countries. The Ottoman Land Code of 1858 attempted to impose
order by establishing categories of land and by requiring surveys
and the registration of land holdings. By World War I, only limited
registration had been accomplished and land titles were insecure,
particularly under the system of tribal tenure through which the
state retained ownership of the land although tribes used it.
By the early 1930s, large landowners became more interested in
secure titles because a period of agricultural expansion was underway.
In the north, urban merchants were investing in land development,
and in the south tribes were installing pumps and were otherwise
improving land (see Rural Society , ch. 2). In response, the government
promulgated a law in 1932 empowering it to settle title to land
and to speed up the registration of titles. Under the law, a number
of tribal leaders and village headmen were granted title to the
land that had been worked by their communities. The effect, perhaps
unintended, was to replace the semicommunal system with a system
of ownership that increased the number of sharecroppers and tenants
dramatically. A 1933 law provided that a sharecropper could not
leave if he were indebted to the landowner. Because landowners
were usually the sole source of credit and almost no sharecropper
was free of debt, the law effectively bound many tenants to the
land.
The land tenure system under the Ottomans, and as modified by
subsequent Iraqi governments, provided little incentive to improve
productivity. Most farming was conducted by sharecroppers and
tenants who received only a portion--often only a small proportion--of
the crop. Any increase in production favored owners disproportionately,
which served as a disincentive to farmers to produce at more than
subsistence level. For their part, absentee owners preferred to
spend their money in acquiring more land, rather than to invest
in improving the land they had already accumulated.
On the eve of the 1958 revolution, more than two-thirds of Iraq's
cultivated land was concentrated in 2 percent of the holdings,
while at the other extreme, 86 percent of the holdings covered
less than 10 percent of the cultivated land. The prerevolutionary
government was aware of the inequalities in the countryside and
of the poor condition of most tenant farmers, but landlords constituted
a strong political force during the monarchical era, and they
were able to frustrate remedial legislation.
Because the promise of land reform kindled part of the popular
enthusiasm for the 1958 revolution and because the powerful landlords
posed a potential threat to the new regime, agrarian reform was
high on the agenda of the new government, which started the process
of land reform within three months of taking power. The 1958 law,
modeled after Egypt's law, limited the maximum amount of land
an individual owner could retain to 1,000 dunums (100 hectares)
of irrigated land or twice that amount of rain-fed land. Holdings
above the maximum were expropriated by the government. Compensation
was to be paid in state bonds, but in 1969 the government absolved
itself of all responsibility to recompense owners. The law provided
for the expropriation of 75 percent of all privately owned arable
land.
The expropriated land, in parcels of between seven and fifteen
hectares of irrigated land or double that amount of rainfed land,
was to be distributed to individuals. The recipient was to repay
the government over a twenty-year period, and he was required
to join a cooperative. The law also had temporary provisions maintaining
the sharecropping system in the interim between expropriation
and redistribution of the land. Landlords were required to continue
the management of the land and to supply customary inputs to maintain
production, but their share of the crop was reduced considerably.
This provision grew in importance as land became expropriated
much more rapidly than it was being distributed. By 1968, 10 years
after agrarian reform was instituted, 1.7 million hectares had
been expropriated, but fewer than 440,000 hectares of sequestered
land had been distributed. A total of 645,000 hectares had been
allocated to nearly 55,000 families, however, because several
hundred thousand hectares of government land were included in
the distribution. The situation in the countryside became chaotic
because the government lacked the personnel, funds, and expertise
to supply credit, seed, pumps, and marketing services--functions
that had previously been performed by landlords. Landlords tended
to cut their production, and even the best-intentioned landlords
found it difficult to act as they had before the land reform because
of hostility on all sides. Moreover, the farmers had little interest
in cooperatives and joined them slowly and unwillingly. Rural-to-
urban migration increased as agricultural production stagnated,
and a prolonged drought coincided with these upheavals. Agricultural
production fell steeply in the 1960s and never recovered fully.
In the 1970s, agrarian reform was carried further. Legislation
in 1970 reduced the maximum size of holdings to between 10 and
150 hectares of irrigated land (depending on the type of land
and crop) and to between 250 and 500 hectares of nonirrigated
land. Holdings above the maximum were expropriated with compensation
only for actual improvements such as buildings, pumps, and trees.
The government also reserved the right of eminent domain in regard
to lowering the holding ceiling and to dispossessing new or old
landholders for a variety of reasons. In 1975 an additional reform
law was enacted to break up the large estates of Kurdish tribal
landowners. Additional expropriations such as these exacerbated
the government's land management problems. Although Iraq claimed
to have distributed nearly 2 million hectares by the late 1970s,
independent observers regarded this figure as greatly exaggerated.
The government continued to hold a large proportion of arable
land, which, because it was not distributed, often lay fallow.
Rural flight increased, and by the late 1970s, farm labor shortages
had become so acute that Egyptian farmers were being invited into
the country.
The original purpose of the land reform had been to break up
the large estates and to establish many small owner-operated farms,
but fragmentation of the farms made extensive mechanization and
economies of scale difficult to achieve, despite the expansion
of the cooperative system. Therefore, in the 1970s, the government
turned to collectivization as a solution. By 1981 Iraq had established
twenty-eight collective state farms that employed 1,346 people
and cultivated about 180,000 hectares. In the 1980s, however,
the government expressed disappointment at the slow pace of agricultural
development, conceding that collectivized state farms were not
profitable. In 1983 the government enacted a new law encouraging
both local and foreign Arab companies or individuals to lease
larger plots of land from the government. By 1984, more than 1,000
leases had been granted. As a further incentive to productivity,
the government instituted a profit-sharing plan at state collective
farms. By 1987, the wheel appeared to have turned full circle
when the government announced plans to reprivatize agriculture
by leasing or selling state farms to the private sector.
Data as of May 1988
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