ABSTRACT
Iran's plainly archaic agriculture needed to be changed before it strangled the national development. Iran brought to the twentieth century feudal land tenures and medieval agricultural technology. Variety and complexity are the keynotes of the country's agricultural geography. The overthrow of the landlord-dominated Eqbal administration in 1961 and the appointment of the dynamic Dr Hassan Arsanjani as Minister of Agriculture in the new reformist government revived concern for effective reform action. Arsanjani was becoming too popular with the peasants, and the Reza Shah and the government slowed down the pace of reform and brought about his resignation. In the 1930s Shah attempted to break the power of certain tribal leaders by allotting tribal land to nomads in individual holdings, including large areas in Sistan province in eastern Iran, but sedentarisation had little success. In 1951 the present Shah began distributing the royal family's estates of some 2000 villages.
