Redistributive Land Reform: No April Rose. The Poverty of Berry and Cline and GKI on the Inverse Relationship

At the theoretical heart of the Griffin, Khan and Ickowitz (GKI) case for redistributive land reform ('a many-splendoured thing') lies the highly influential study by Albert Berry and William Cline, Agrarian Structure and Productivity in Developing Countries, published for the ILO in 1979. That study is regarded by many as the definitive work on the inverse relationship between farm size and land productivity. This paper subjects Berry and Cline, and by extension GKI, to critical scrutiny with respect to their policy implications, theoretical framework and empirical evidence. It also provides an alternative class-theoretic approach to understanding the inverse relationship which undermines the use of the latter as the central rationale for redistributive land reform. If the approach of Berry and Cline can be shown to be theoretically, methodologically and empirically flawed, then perforce the argument and policy recommendations of GKI, who replicate that approach, can be shown to be fundamentally defective.