Land tax could transform agriculture, incentivize productivity and reduce idle land.
The article discusses problems in communal agriculture, such as lack of investment incentives and idle arable land in KwaZulu. It suggests resettling expropriated land to small-scale farmers on private tenure basis. The return on grazing land is zero under communal systems, leading to non-usage. Land taxes may not increase productivity as they do not penalize non-usage. Taxes on agricultural land have advantages like targeting wealthy landowners but may have high administration costs.
