Albania Albania ( ; sq, Shqipëri or ), or , also or . officially the Republic of Albania ( sq, Republika e Shqipërisë), is a country in Southeastern Europe. It is located on the Adriatic and Ionian Seas within the Mediterranean Sea and shares ...

has gone through three waves of the land reform since the end of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

: * In 1946, the land in estates and large farms was expropriated by the communist government and redistributed among small peasants; * In the 1950s, the land was reorganized into large-scale collective farms; * After 1991, the land was again redistributed among private smallholders.

Background

At the end of World War II, the farm structure in Albania was characterized by high concentration of land in large farms. In 1945, farms larger than , representing numerically a mere 3% of all farms in the country, managed 27% of agricultural land and just seven large estates (out of 155,000 farms) controlled 4% of agricultural land, averaging more than each, compared to the average farm size of at that time.''Statistical Yearbook of the Popular Republic of Albania 1963'', Department of Statistics, Tirana, 1964

Land-to-the-tiller reform

The first post-war constitution of independent Albania (March 1946) declared that land belonged to the tiller and that large estates under no circumstances could be owned by private individuals (article 10). The post-war land reform of 1946 redistributed 155,000 hectares (40% of the land stock) from 19,355 relatively large farms (typically larger than 5 hectares) to 70,211 small farms and landless households. As a result, the share of large farms with more than 10 hectares declined from 27% of agricultural land in 1945 to 3% in 1954. By 1954, more than 90% of land was held in small and mid-sized farms of between 1 hectare and 10 hectares.

Collectivization reform

The distributive effects of the post-war land reform were eliminated by the collectivization drive of the late 1950s-early 1960s, and by 1962 less than 18% of agricultural land had remained in

family farms A family farm is generally understood to be a farm owned and/or operated by a family; it is sometimes considered to be an estate passed down by inheritance. Although a recurring conceptual and archetypal distinction is that of a family farm ...

and household plots, while the rest had shifted to Soviet-style collective and state farms). By 1971, independent family farms had virtually disappeared and individual farming survived only in household plots cultivated part-time by cooperative members (approximately 6% of agricultural land).

Privatization reform

The post-communist land reform begun in 1991 as part of the transition to the market was in effect a replay of the 1946 land reform, and the arable land held in cooperatives and state farms was equally distributed among all rural households without regard to pre-communist ownership rights. Contrary to other transition countries in Central and Eastern Europe, Albania adopted a distributive land reform (like the CIS) and did not restitute land to former owners. The post-communist land reform of the 1990s was accompanied by special land privatization legislation, as Albania was the only country outside the former

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

that had nationalized all agricultural land (in stages between 1946 and 1976).Z. Lerman, C. Csaki, and G. Feder, ''Agriculture in Transition: Land Policies and Evolving Farm Structures in Post-Soviet Countries'', Lexington Books, Lanham, MD, 2004.

References

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Agriculture in Albania Social history of Albania 20th century in Albania Reform in Albania