Gilan and Mazandaran are quite literally the only areas of Iran with rainfall comparable to any other major agricultural civilization. In our next land reform project in the agriculturally rich temperate regions of Gilan and Mazandaran Provinces, we will experiment with an increasingly individualized ownership system. Some state contracts have been made in Garmsar, which is lucky enough to sit on the Trans-Iranian railroad, but subsistence agriculture is still the overwhelming norm. Increases in the production of industrial crops has been minimal - no mechanism exists to transport and sell these crops when they are grown in isolated rural communities. The national agricultural market is also still embryonic, limiting the financial usefulness of the increased yields (though the extra calories are always helpful). Water resources are relatively plentiful in Garmsar, but already disputes have broken out with regards to the division of river flow between different branches of the delta and upstream versus downstream farmers. Some irrigation works have been dug, but landholding units have been unable to coordinate in buying tools, planning works, and assembling the necessary temporary workforce. While the Boneh structure of “ideal ownership” is small enough to create community norms governing resource use within the collectives, individual Boneh have difficulty managing access to resources and capital.
However, we have also noticed that the communal land holding structure that was instituted to avoid Islamic inheritance law has created many issues of its own. Agricultural productivity has increased, with no appreciable increase in the numbers of rural unemployed and a minor increase in the amount of land under cultivation. For the most part, they have been good ones.
Our previous land reform experiment in the dry zone of Garmsar has begun to produce results.