Commercialization also drives up the price of land making access to it even less likely. Government policies tend to favor urban groups by requiring peasants to produce food at very low prices to keep urban food prices low. Thus the peasants are condemned to poverty because prices are set too low. Many stop farming. This has been the pattern especially in parts of Africa.
Land reform is offered as a solution.
Handleman points out that successful land reforms such as those carried out in Japan, Taiwan, and Korea were induced through pressures from the outside. Thus the experience of these nations is unique. In Japan, land reform was forced by the American occupation. In Taiwan, the experience of revolution in mainland China induced the nationalists to support land reform. In South Korea, the landowners were discredited because they had collaborated with the Japanese during Japan's occupation of Korea.