Land reform in South Vietnam
During the 1960s, such programs were rendered defunct and unenforceable due to the South Vietnamese army's inability to control farmland territories against the Viet Cong.
Following the unification, the government of Vietnam attempted to carry out further land reform in the southern part of the country in order to develop its transformation to a socialist economy.
[1] The early success of the land reform program under the Viet Minh gave the communists a strong base of support among the 80% of the Vietnamese people who lived in rural areas.
The Viet Minh had confiscated large private landholdings, reduced rents and debts, and leased communal lands, mostly to poorer peasants.
Young wrote that "The divisions within villages reproduced those that had existed against the French: 75% support for the NLF, 20% trying to remain neutral and only 5% firmly pro-Saigon government".
[10]: 73 Ordinance 57 resulted in the reverse of what was the objective of land reform advocates: large landowners and landlords increased their influence, especially in the important rice-growing area of the Mekong Delta.
[13] Drawing on experiences in other countries (particularly in Latin America), Prosterman proposed a "land-to-the-tiller" program to compete with the Viet Cong for the allegiance of the peasants.
[14] On 26 March 1970, with the war still underway, the government of South Vietnam began implementation of the Land-to-the-Tiller program following Prosterman's model.
Legal titles were extended to peasants in areas under control of the South Vietnamese government to whom land had previously been distributed by the Viet Cong.
[17] Andrew Biggs, at researcher at the University of Washington argues that the "Land to the Tiller" program of the early 1970s was too little, too late to swing the war in the favour of the US.
[19] According to Trung Dinh Dang, a scholar at the Cornell School of Government and Politics Of Asia and The Pacific, the Vietnamese Communist Party struggled to carry out the socialist transformation of agriculture in the south of Vietnam following the unification of the country.
