The Land Settlement Association (LSA): its co-operative ideals and their implementation

There is talk about the creation of a new Land Settlement Association (LSA) but it is yet to be seen whether the idea can become a fully formed credible proposal. The LSA appears to have been chosen as the inspiration because it was a co-operative scheme for supporting individual smallholders.

This paper describes the LSA’s original thinking on its co-operative ideals and analyses them in the light of events which prevented their implementation in the form originally intended. It is not unusual for the organisations to put forward a business plan based on ideals which, in practice, cannot be put into practice. In the LSA’s case the economic and physical elements of their scheme of land settlement were implemented but not the social side, the side which allowed the settlers a voice in the running of the business.

The LSA’s Principles of Land Settlement are worthy of careful examination and, possibly, emulation but the promoters of the ‘new LSA’ must be open minded and clear thinking about how to improve upon the original LSA scheme. They must not assume ideal conditions either within their scheme or within the competitive market in which they will find themselves operating.