The “land-to-the-tiller” reform carried out in South Vietnam between 1970-73—on which we worked— paid large landlords in the Mekong Delta in eight-year bonds worth 2.5 times gross crop value for land redistributed to 1 million tenant farmers. Although implemented too late to halt the war, this “land-to-the-tiller” program boosted rice production by 30% (even in the midst of war), and cut indigenous Vietcong recruitment within the South by 80 percent. This reform proved to be so successful that it became a major reason why, during the 1980s, the communist government of Vietnam abandoned collective farming and adopted the family-farm model of the South for the whole country

Previous projects:

Consultant services on Vietnam’s land law.

Institute of State and Law, Ministry of Justice, Hanoi, Vietnam.

Landesa was invited to conduct field research and offer recommendations on that country’s rural land legislation, agricultural land tenure system, and implementation. September 1993 to January 1994.