Zambia Agriculture Development Goal:
Reduce poverty through broadbased income growth for those in the agricultural sector
Zambia’s Economic Achievements:
Classified as low-middle income by World Bank
GDP growing at 6% per annum
Agricultural growth rate at 7%, above 6% CAADP Goal
Three consecutive maize bumper harvest years
The Government of Zambia is embarking on an ambitious program of legal and administrative reforms in land policy. Although the need to liberalize the land market is universally shared, the ideas on how to accomplish this transformation are not. Two decades of underinvestment in field research have resulted in the present situation of micro-level data on land tenure and farm-level production, consumption, and resource management inadequate to guide policy decisions.
All land in Zambia is vested in the president, in trust for the people of Zambia, under the Land (Conversion of Titles) Act, 1975 (see p.16), SECTION4.The president has delegated landadministration to the Commissioner of Lands under Statutory Instrument No. 7 of 1964 and GazetteNotice No. 1345 of 1975, as amended. Land in Zambia is divided into State (formerly crown),Reserve, and Trust Lands, as well as park reserves.
The global finance, energy and food crises are fuelling a global rush for land in developing countries. In their search for land, political leaders and investors look to Africa as a potential food supplier for the rest of the world. However, the current trend of land liberalisation rarely offers a solution to sustainable food production and poverty reduction among smallhold farmers in rural areas, as shown by this case study.
Land, and in particular agricultural land, is central to livelhoods in rural Zambia. Zambia is characterised by a dual legal system of customary and statutory law and by dual land tenure, with state land and customary land. A first wave of socialist-oriented reforms took place after independence in 1964, which abolished previously existing freehold land in favour of leasehold. Subsequent changes in government policies under the influence of structural adjustment programmes and a new government in 1991 paved the way for a market-driven land reform.
Government has been implementing the Land Resettlement Programme for over twenty four (24) years, focusing mainly on land resettlement for agricultural purposes without a comprehensive policy and legal framework. This has caused a number of challenges including lack of a coordination mechanism at higher level of Government in the implementation of the land resettlement programme, land disputes and low levels of infrastructure development and service provision in the resettlement schemes.
Zambia is one of the most forested countries in Africa, with about 50 million out of the 75 million hectares total land area under some form of forest cover. However, the country also has one of the highest rates of deforestation and degradation in the world, estimated at 250,000-300,000 hectares of forest loss per annum. Reversing/slowing this high deforestation and degradation trend will require the country to design and implement programs and strategies that will effectively deal with both the proximate and underlying drivers of deforestation and degradation.
By Anthony Piaskowy, Communication and Urban Specialist for USAID's Land Tenure and Property Rights Division.
Identification of Land Quality Indicators (LQIs) is a key requirement of sustainable land management. They are required to assess, monitor, and evaluate changes in the quality of land resources and environmental impacts. The Land Quality Indicator (LQI) program monitors the environment and the sector performance of managed ecosystems. The program is being developed on a national and regional scale, but it is also part of a larger global effort to improve natural resource management. The LQI program recommends addressing issues of land management by agroecological zones.
The objectives of this paper are to help build a picture of the role of women in China’s agriculture, to assess whether or not agricultural feminization has been occurring, and if so, to measure its impact on productivity. To meet these goals, we rely on three datasets that allow us to explore who is working on China’s farms and the effects of the labor allocation decisions of rural households on productivity. We find that since 2000, the role of women has increased both in the supply of farm labor and in the duties that women take on in the management of farms.
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