Farzaneh Babaei

Land Reform program was founded to keep the country stable against social, economic and political crises in 1950s. Due to the importance of agriculture in the country; property holding was the main factor in this program. Landlord- peasant relationship was always criticized strongly. The cabinet, different parties and social groups pointed to the necessity of carrying changes. In late 1959, the land reform bill was prepared and was ratified by a Majlis whose members were mostly landowners. However, this act of parliament was mainly a pro landowner one and hindered the execution of land reform program. Therefore, the law of land reform was enacted in Jan. 10^th 1963.

According to the available records of 1959, Rural Cooperation and Construction Bank offered some suggestions to modify the related legislations so that it would encourage the peasants to work harder. But the cabinet members were concerned with the method it was going to be carried out; landowners and tribes' heads were also pessimistic about it. In May 25^th 1960, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi issued a decree for executing the land reform bill and ordered for the sale of government owned plants' shares as a backing for this. However it led to more disputes between landowners and peasants.

Land reform project which was carried out in many Asian and South American countries did not match Iranian agriculture. This politically based program did not help the agricultural development, and Iran which was for a time a main producer of wheat, now turned to be an importer of it.