Land reform (also agrarian reform, though that can have a broader meaning) is an alteration in the societal arrangements whereby government administers possession and use of land. Land reform may consist of a government-initiated or government-backed real estate property redistribution, generally of agricultural land, or be part of an even more revolutionary program. This definition is somewhat complicated by the issue of state-owned collective farms. In various times and places, land reform has encompassed the transfer of land from ownership — even peasant ownership in smallholdings — to government-owned collective farms; it has also, in other times and places, referred to the exact opposite: division of government-owned collective farms into smallholdings. The common characteristic of all land reforms is modification or replacement of existing institutional arrangements governing possession and use of land.