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Opportunities in the oil fields and on the large and small farms and ranches in the pioneer zone of Venezuela along the Llanos-Andes border attract tens of thousands of "undocumented" Colombian migrants. Many replace Venezuelans fleeing from the country to the urban areas. Residents of the higher "cold country" elevations move into the lower ones, whose residents move into the now healthier "hot" lowlands. The affluent are moving from the lowlands to the "cold country," the reverse direction. Sites for hydroelectric dams, noted in 1932, are being exploited, and significant progress is marked by erection of schools and universities, libraries and other cultural institutions. Political reform made possible agrarian land reform, but new latifundistas are appearing as lawyers, physicians and businessmen use wealth acquired in their professions to become large landowners seeking to profit from their holdings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Observations in the Llanos-Andes border area of Venezuela were summarized by the writer in the Geographical Review in 1932 and again in 1956. After further field investigations in 1982, he chronicles some of the changes that have taken place during the last quarter century, collates observations made over the last half century, and places this major physiographic boundary zone in a broader national context. Several coactive factors are in large measure responsible for the rapid thrust westward of the pioneer zone along the Llanos-Andes border: highway construction has proceeded apace, public education and health services have been introduced, and large government credits and subsidies have been made available to farmers and ranchers with large holdings. Many colonists have been provided with titles to small holdings on frontier land. New technologies are being introduced in agriculture and animal husbandry as well as in mining and industry. From this position of strength, the country should gradually be able to supply the domestic demand for staple foodstuffs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a discussion on land tenure and land use in Turkey. For Turkey as a whole it would certainly be safe to say that 90 per cent of the farms have less than 100 acres, and the remaining have less than 15 acres, depending on the location of the farm and the nature of the crop. Probably nearly one-half of the peasants are still landless or are poor sharecroppers. Further, the country is called upon to absorb a quarter of a million refugees of Turkish origin expelled in recent years from Bulgaria. Hence the land distribution program must continue, preferably at an accelerated rate. Some 7000000 acres of land are available for settlement in eastern and central Anatolia. Agricultural techniques are for the most part rudimentary, and will probably remain so as long as an extremely cheap labor force can successfully compete with expensive machines. Manorial conditions exist in many of the villages throughout the country, where the peasant is exploited by the middlemen to whom he becomes bound by debt.

The article focuses on the land use in the Near East. In Lebanon, one can see in a relatively circumscribed area a kind of recapitulation of several millennia of agricultural development, and practices which make use of the most modern as well as of age-old techniques. A caterpillar tractor is used to pull gang plows within a stone's throw of a farmer who is still driving oxen round an ancient threshing floor to trample out the grain, just as his forefathers did for ages past There are curious blends of primitive and modern techniques. At Zahle, in the Bequaa plain of Lebanon, the old threshing sleds were still in use on the threshing floors but they were pulled not by oxen but by a tractor. Farming of these mountain slopes is a perpetual battle against the elements. Unless infinite care is taken, the rain and snow storms of winter will remove every trace of soil, which can be held in place only by a complex system of terraces. Many mountain slopes are completely made over. For thousands of vertical feet, every horizontal field a yard wide has its equivalent yard or more of perpendicular wall. The entire mountainside has been so completely made over that it is hard to imagine what the original landscape was like. This is indeed a mature cultural landscape.

The article focuses on land use in the Near East. The simple cultivator of the soil is a victim of the conflicting claims, upon him and upon his land, of the State, of the Mosque, of the landlord, and of the money lender. The various claimants disagree among themselves as to the division to be made of the peasants' produce. The social, political and economic status of the proprietor of a given piece of land counts for far more than the actual juridical status. For instance, a certain piece of property occupied by a poor peasant might be classified as abandoned, whereas the government official will consider the same piece of land cultivated once it is securely in the hands of a powerful landlord. The procedures vary whereby the village common lands become property owned in fee simple by perhaps only one person. Some plots may be purchased outright, for cash, others may be seized for indebtedness, and still others may be occupied by force, on the part of a landlord, a powerful official, or a tribe of fierce nomads. The system of holding and working of land in common is a natural response on the part of a group of people intent on preserving their meal ticket by a show of cohesive strength in an area where the physical and social odds against survival have been great. It is significant that the village has been able to live on, no matter whether it was 'owned" by a government official or by a great landlord, by a money lender or by a Bedouin band.

The article focuses on the land tenure problems in Venezuela. Venezuela, like other Spanish conquests, was granted by royal decree to the Conquistadores for two or three generations, in huge manorial holdings, or encomiendas. Those whites who were not government officials, clerics, or army officers, were usually merchant-landowners. The actual work on the hacienda was done by the oppressed serfs and slaves, who were in no position to change traditional agricultural techniques. All persons coming to Coro with something to sell had to have it appraised just outside of town and had to pay the sales tax in advance. On many an hacienda throughout the country, people are living outside the modern money economy. They do the routine chores of the hacienda. The surplus rural population must be absorbed by local industries that should be developed along with mechanized agriculture, by state subvention if necessary. The solution of the land tenure problems in Venezuela will put the keystone into its economic arch.

The article discusses the pattern of Neo colonialism. Early on in Venezuela, which was a remote peripheral frontier area, boundary lines were vague and land was concentrated in the hands of a few powerful families. The grasslands were devoted to extensive ranching. The poor and the landless cleared their tiny plots in the wooded areas on which they produced their corn, beans and yuca for domestic use as they had done for centuries. The small farmers got few if any credits and little or no technical assistance. In many cases they had difficulty in getting to market the food crops they do produced. The Soviet Union and Cuba allot small plots to farmers on which to produce food crops for home use and for sale locally. The concentration of land in few hands has gone on apace. It is worked in a highly mechanized, capital-intensive fashion to produce crops for export by companies accountable to the interest of no country. The huge profits go to the local elite or are banked abroad. This is the pattern of neocolonialism.

The article discusses the book "Wilson Popenoe, Agricultural Explorer, Educator and Friend of Latin America," by Frederic Rosengarten. It is a well written, beautifully illustrated biography, and deserved and fitting tribute to a noted explorer and horticulturalist. During his work with the United States Department of Agriculture, and as chief agronomist and director of tropical research for the United Fruit Co., he collected and recorded his findings.

The article discusses how land monopoly arose in Mexico. The author also talks about his visit to Mexico. Going up the Uspanapa River from Puerto Mexico to the oil camp, there were thatch-roofed huts surrounded by small clearings hacked out of the dense tropical rain-forest. On these clearings the local Indian population used to raise for their own use crops of corn, beans, and squash. They also raised oranges and papayas which they brought by dugout canoe to the small farmers' market at the oil camp and which they sold at what seemed like ridiculously low prices. A half century later, in the same area, subsistence farmers have reappeared along the new highways that have been built in the region. They now build their huts and plant their crops of corn, beans, squash and plantains on the highway's right of way, using the strip of land available between the pavement and the barbed wire fence That meager strip was the only land on which the landless squatters could grow food crops. Beyond the fence, the land is owned by large landholders who use it to grow bananas or plantains or for pasture on which beef cattle graze. All these crops are for export to distant market. The concentration of land ownership began after the Revolution that was fought for "land and liberty."