Land redistribution, technological improvement, employment generation: an analysis with Bangladesh data

In 1972, the Bangladesh government ordered all farm families owning more than 33.3 acres of land to surrender the excess land for redistribution among families owning less than 1.5 acres of land. The basis of choosing these figures are not known. Since there are very few farms above the declared maximum size, the redistributive effect of these measures are not likely to be more than marginal. In a sample of 300 farms in three districts – Mymensingh, Rangpur, Dinajpur- major maladjustment existed between land and labour: some farms owned more land per unit of available labour than they could cultivate themselves thereby opening the way for making sharecropping arrangements; others owned less land per man-unit than was necessary to provide full employment.The need for land redistribution arose because of the necessity to alleviate the adverse effects of this maladjustment on production efficiency, income distribution and technological improvement. In this study, linear programming was a applied to determine optimal and minimum size of farms in the given situation to promote owner-operated farms to improve production efficiency, and maximize family labour use under different technological assumptions.