[4] Other countries with high land concentration include the United States, Venezuela, Paraguay, South Africa, and Namibia.
[14][15] High interest rates or lack of access to credit can block poorer farmers from buying land, while debt can force them to sell to larger landholders.
[19] Critics argue that concentrated land ownership gives the landowner too much power over local communities, reduces opportunities, and impedes economic growth.
[21] In Central America, an economic boom in coffee production led to vastly different results in different countries: Costa Rica and Colombia were dominated by smallholdings and experienced democratization and surging literacy rates, while in El Salvador and Guatemala, rural laborers earned bare subsistence.
Israeli economist Oded Galor writes the mediating factor for this effect was that large landholdings gave the landowning elites political power to stop reforms aimed at improving education rates and therefore human capital, which in turn facilitated the divergence.
He attributes the greater success and entrepreneurial spirit of the United States to its Homestead Acts giving land to prospective smallholders.