# **Identification of potential beneficiaries**

Under the process followed before initiation of the pilots, selection of beneficiaries was often arbitrary and ad hoc. Despite the regulations of the new law, INCORA continued to select beneficiaries on a case by case basis once a given farm had been put up for sale and central approval for the release of the necessary land purchase funds had been obtained. In these cases, to be able to disburse funds quickly, sales of farms were often quite secretive, despite the existence (on paper) of a needs-based qualification system. The selection committees that were established included workers of the existing farm who were generally careful not to admit too many contenders from outside.<sup>2 4</sup> To ensure participation beyond the membership of well-established _campesino_ organizations and a transparent and more competitive market for land, this approach has, in the pilot municipios, been replaced by a procedure that aims to create the basis for land transactions through a more competitive market. To identify potential demand, a systematic information campaign to disseminate the law, with subsequent inscription of potential land reforn beneficiaries _(aspirantes)_ in a registry to be maintained by INCORA, is conducted throughout the _municipio._ A questionnaire provides basic information on beneficiaries' educational level, their agricultural experience (if any), their income sources, and their access to other types of government services such as education or health. Based on this, a prequalification, essentially a means test based on assets, is conducted.

Experience indicates that enabling potential beneficiaries to register at public offices and police stations in outlying villages has considerably broadened the outreach of the program. Contrary to the procedures followed earlier by INCORA, the information supplied is checked for consistency, resulting in the elimination of a large number of non-qualified applications. The names of rejected and accepted _aspirantes_ (with reasons for rejection) are posted publicly. The publicity of the selection process seems to have increased accountability, and facilitated a better understanding of the scope and limitations of land reform by local authorities and potential beneficiaries. In all of the _pilotmunicipios,_ alternative programs have been initiated to (temporarily or permanently) take care of the specific needs of groups who will not be able to benefit from land reform in the immediate future. These programs include chicken hatcheries and other micro-enterprises for female household heads, construction of rural roads under seasonal food for work schemes, as well as reforestation of environmentally fragile zones.

> **24** While one would expect that the transfer of large and relatively extensively cultivated farms would provide an opportunity for accommodating additional workers, the opposite often happened in practice, due to the unwillingness of existing workers to reduce their share and the associated incentives to exaggerate the amnount of land needed to establish a productive unit. This tendency to expel laborers is well known from the theory of cooperatives.

13