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The land reform in interwar Yugoslavia was a process of redistribution of agricultural land in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (renamed Yugoslavia in 1929) carried out in the interwar period. The reform's proclaimed social ideal was that the land belongs to those who work it. An unrealistically idyllic image of Serbian villages in the region of Šumadija was touted as the model of national awareness and peasant liberty sought by the reform. The reform was aimed at dismantling remnants of serfdom and sharecropping in parts of the country, as well as at breaking up large agricultural estates.
Approximately two thirds of the land expropriated and distributed by the land reform was located on the territory of the present-day Bosnia and Herzegovina. All parts of the country were subject to the reform, except the territory of the former Principality of Serbia (corresponding to the northern part of pre-World War I Serbia). A total of 1,924,307 hectares (4,755,070 acres) of land was redistributed through the reform. More than 600,000 families received land plots through implementation of the reform.
Internal colonisation was a significant element of the land reform. It consisted of awarding the expropriated land to colonists—Royal Serbian Army volunteers, landless peasants resettled from poorer parts of the country, Yugoslav citizens moving to the country from neighbouring countries, and even those who usurped agricultural land on their own initiative and without any formal authorisation. Preference was given to the volunteers and supporters of the Yugoslav authorities. The colonisation process was used by the Yugoslav authorities as a means of ethnic engineering, seeking to increase proportion of South Slavic peoples (predominantly Serbs), especially in border regions such as Banat, Bačka and Baranja and present-day territories of Kosovo and North Macedonia. Most of the colonists arrived from Serbia.
Implementation of the land reform relied largely on the Interim Decree on the Preparation of the Agrarian Reform promulgated in 1919, supplemented by a number of ministerial-level orders and regulations. An act regulating the reform was enacted in 1931. The reform and colonisation were conducted against the backdrop of ethnic violence against Moslem population in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in Kosovo, guerilla warfare waged by the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation and civil unrest elsewhere. In Dalmatia, the reform was delayed by the question of unresolved border with the Kingdom of Italy and relations with the Italian minority and enjoyment of property rights of Italian citizens in Yugoslavia. The reform and colonisation contributed to ethnicisation of politics in Yugoslavia.