@Mio

1. Will capital flow out of the country? Liquid capital will almost certainly flow out of the country. Many people will likely use the capital infusion to migrate out of their home low-income country. (Based on the interviews I've done this is what I'd predict.) However this is potentially not a bad thing. One of the biggest reasons politically-driven land reform fails is because landowners have a strong incentive to reassert their interest in the land (which government forced them to relinquish). So if we observe emigration, from the island, it's a good bet the former landowners aren't going to try to undermine the project politically.

2. I am always interested in partnering with people. If you have connections, please let me know. Or you can just suggest "you should reach out to so-and-so" because I'm not shy about a cold contact. I have some relationships in the academic realm, and have gotten great feedback from them. My sense is that there isn't enough money in academia to make something like this happen through academic funding. If you know an organization point me their way and I'll write the grant.

3. This has, so far, been my biggest struggle working in the Lesser Antilles. There's just not a lot of people in/from those islands total, so it's hard to connect. While I'm working on that, I'm also working connections in other Central American countries. I'm working on submitting an update in the next week or two on some great boots-on-the-ground contacts I've made there, and the wealth of information we're getting from interviews. Lots of positive feedback from tenant farmers about the project.

4. I'm digging into the history/culture at the moment, as well as following news and other developments. Haven't found anything specific, sorry.

@prudentj This is the current place to go for updates. I can't promise any news in the offing, but if you want to be more directly involved let me know.

@saulmunn This is a good concern, and one that I've been pondering for some time. Part of why I wanted to start purchases from current landowners, instead of buying land on the open market, is to specifically avoid driving up property values. However, as you suggest if people know there's someone going around buying all the land this will encourage holdouts - which could defeat the whole redistribution project.

One mitigating factor is that I don't think we need to buy 100% of the land to help propel a country down the development path. I'm not sure yet what percent of the land we'll need, but a significant percentage of the tenant farmers will likely be able to transition toward industrial or other non-farm work without us having to buy the land directly.

A concern with this is that landowners who hold out too long may actually have the opposite problem once we no longer need to use land transfers to spur economic growth: that having missed their chance to sell for land transfers, farmland values may not equal what they could have gotten from us. Hopefully, economic growth will make that land valuable for other reasons by that point, and they will not feel that the project has harmed their financial interests.

A big open question is what percent of the land would need to be part of the land transfer to drive self-sufficient economic growth. If we knew this going in, we could start by redistributing that percentage and avoiding the market distortion from the outset ... in theory. In practice, I imagine it'll be a lot more messy and we won't know how much so until we encounter these problems in the real world.

Does this project need additional funding beyond what Scott contributed? Yes and no.

To get started, no. I'm going to be using the ACX grant to work out the logistics and get a dollar amount for buying a first farm.

Once I've identified an opportunity, I will need additional funding to make the first farm purchase. I'll be seeking additional funding once I get to that point. If you're interested in getting involved at that level, please let me know. I'm considering crowdfunding efforts, along with other potential sources of funding.