This document presents results from the 8 April 2020 on-line conference on the impact of COVID-19 on small-scale farming;food security and sovereignty in the East African Community. There were 53 participants from 16 countries. The conference strongly acknowledged the contribution of small-scale farmers towards feeding the population during the time of COVID-19. Governments have tightened borders and restricted gatherings;but small-scale farmers often operate in groups. There is a lot of fear and uncertainty and most are staying away from their gardens in the planting season.

Climate mitigation targets must involve the agricultural sector, which contributes 10%–14% of global anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. To evaluate options for implementing mitigation measures in the agricultural sector, farmers’ knowledge, positions, and attitudes towards agricultural GHG emissions, their accounting, and reduction need to be understood. Using an online survey, we asked 254 German farmers about their motivation to reduce GHG emissions and their acceptance of possible regulation schemes.

Residents of rural areas live and depend on the land; hence, rural land plays a central role in the human–land relationship. The environment has the greatest direct impact on farmers’ lives and productivity. In recent years, the Chinese government carried out vigorous rural construction under a socialist framework and implemented a rural revitalization strategy. This study was performed in a rural area of Huanjiang County, Guangxi Province, China. We designed a survey to measure rural households’ perceptions of three types of rural spaces: ecological, living, and production spaces.

This paper reviews the scholarly literature discussing the effect(s) of land registration on the relations between land tenure security and agricultural productivity. Using 85 studies, the paper focuses on the regular claim that land registration’s facilitation of formal documents-based land dealings leads to investment in a more productive agriculture. The paper shows that this claim is problematic for three reasons. First, most studies offer no empirical evidence to support the claim on the above-mentioned effect.

Many land use systems in Mediterranean sloping areas risk abandonment because of nonprofitability, while their hydro-geological stability depends on an appropriate management. However, who are the land managers? What are their practices? Our research on the traditional olive groves of the Monte Pisano (Tuscany, Italy) reveals for the first time the quantitatively important role of hobby farmers as land managers in the area.

Utilization of agricultural land for non-agricultural purposes poses a threat to food production and agriculture commercialization. Hence, this study examined Rural Land Utilization and Commercial Agriculture among Female arable Crop Farmers in South West Nigeria. A multistage sampling procedure was used to collect primary data through questionnaire administration. Findings shows that 71.62% of the women had land market index of 0, indicating that they obtained their land through non-transaction based method and 28.38% acquired their land through transaction based method.

Covers key policy recommendations from a recent study. How can small-scale agriculture be more employment intensive?; identifying potential for employment creation through land redistribution to small-scale farmers; key opportunities for employment creation; rethinking farm size; promoting flexible land tenure options; customising support services; building capacity; complementary policy reforms; key strategic choices and policy trade-offs.

A new urbanization and rural revitalization strategy has been implemented in China over a number of years, under which farmers’ land contract rights (LCRs) flow inevitably through various means. The practice in reform pilot areas indicates that government funds cannot meet all the needs, so exploring market-based LCR payout paths is important for rural land tenure system reform. The purpose of this study is to answer questions such as the following: How would farmers respond if they were allowed to trade LCRs? Is there an equilibrium point between the potential supply and demand of LCRs?

In the last decade, despite considerable research developed for the forestland leasing market, little has been published in terms of econometric results on determinants of intentions and behaviors of Chinese farmers. With respect to leasing forestland, this study uses a Bayesian logit model to examine the factors that influence farmers’ intentions, using household data collected in one county in 2017. The results show that farmers’ past experience of leasing forestlands have significant impacts on their leasing intentions.

Maize has become the second most produced crop in the world. Specifically, in sub-Saharan Africa, global statistics show that more and more land is being used for (small-scale) maize production to meet future food demands. From 2007 to 2017, the area on which maize is grown in sub-Saharan Africa has increased by almost 60%. This rate of expansion is considered unsustainable and is expected to come at the expense of crop diversity and the environment.

This paper is one of three thematic case studies resulting from a set of pilot projects undertaken jointly by civil society and private business partners from 2016–2019 in five countries in sub-Saharan Africa. These pilots sought to test how private companies could collaborate with civil society organisations and other stakeholders to implement responsible agribusiness investments that recognise and respect community land rights, and to develop innovative tools and approaches that could be adopted and implemented at greater scale.

Labor migration and large-scale land enclosures are increasingly central to the story of agrarian change throughout the Global South. Nonetheless, there remain limited understandings of how recent explosions of mobile labor and new sources of smallholder capital shape and are shaped by ongoing land use and property transformations. This article reviews this gap in Southeast Asia – a region where labor and capital are highly mobile and where the expansion of industrial agriculture and forestry has been particularly rapid.