If the proposed agrarian compensated legislation does not pass, I offer an alternative.
There are reasonable criticisms from both sides: it is wrong that the government that did not implement land seizures should have to pay for them, just as it is wrong that impoverished peasants should have to foot the bill for an act of Congreso. Therefore, I propose a hybrid solution. The greatest crime of the Agrarian Land Reform Act was its economic ignorance. Not only did it shatter the grand farming estates that, prior to industrialisation, were the mainstay of the Chilean economy in general and the agrarian industry in particular; it then forced the State to subsidise the very farms that it had rendered unprofitable. Due to the way the land was divided, it did nothing to uplift the rural labourers; their individual plots are so minor that they can only support their inhabitants, never mind the markets. By dividing the land, we have reduced the labourers to subsistence farming and the landlords to bankruptcy.
Therefore, the solution is to combine land. By agglomerating the smaller plots into larger farms, we will increase the productivity and profitability of our agrarian sector, and subsequently increase the standard of living for rural workers. From the greater profits earned by agglomeration, we can then compensate the dispossessed landlords. The State shall issue compensation to the landlords, and shall in turn be compensated by the agglomerated farms, which can repay the debt at their leisure and so avoid crippling their finances.
Agrarian Agglomeration Act
1. The individual plots created by the Agrarian Land Redistribution Act will be agglomerated into cooperative farming units (CFU), on a basis of fifty families per CFU,
2. The families of each CFU will elect a Superintendent, responsible for managing agrarian affairs in the CFU and reporting to agricultural authorities,
3. The Government of Chile will issue compensation to all landlords affected by the Agrarian Land Redistribution Act, adjusted for inflation,
4. This compensation will be divided as debt between all the CFUs, to be gradually repaid over the course of five to ten years.