Report finds that land rights in Ethiopia are highly insecure, and higher tenure security and transferability could enhance investment and agricultural productivity. Trying to identify and implement measures to increase producers’ tenure security could have a large pay-off in terms of rural productivity and poverty reduction.The authors use a large data set from Ethiopia that differentiates tenure security and transferability to explore determinants of different types of land-related investment and its possible impact on productivity.

Key findings and policy implications discussed in this document—Promoting Farm Investment for Sustainable Intensification of African Agriculture— include the following: Farmers are much more likely to invest in both productivity and land protection when they can produce cash crops. Livestock husbandry is a boon to farm investments, as it provides cash income, manure, and an insurance policy against crop failures. Land tenure insecurity, political instability, policy caprice, and wildly fluctuating farm prices dissuade investment.

A workshop held in Midrand, South Africa, in May 2011 brought together policy and decision-makers, researchers and practitioners to discuss water security issues in eastern and southern Africa. This proceedings document summarises the workshop's outcomes with the aim of:

improving the understanding of water security
identifying opportunities to better address challenges faced by individual countries and sectors
highlighting areas for further research
identifying immediate opportunities for development projects.

Looks at the allocation of land for specific purposes in the integrated land use plans that have come into effect across China since 1998..The paper: presents an analysis of the development of policies on national land use planning since the promulgation of the first Land Law in 1986.

Agriculture is the largest global user of biodiversity. Over-reliance on a handful of crops puts global food security at great risk especially in the context of climate change. Selected and used by generations of farmers, agricultural biodiversity contributes to reducing malnutrition, alleviating poverty and combating climate change challenges. This diversity has been in decline for decades and is now in danger of disappearing and efforts needed to conserve them using both ex situ and in situ approaches.

This paper seeks to map out the historical trajectory leading to a series of migrations in and from the erstwhile princely state of Travancore during 1900-70 in order to acquire and bring land under cultivation. It argues that these migrations undertaken with a moralistic and paternal mission of reclaiming ‘empty’ spaces into productive locations were a result of a specific form of economic modernity in Kerala as beckoned by colonialism and appropriated by a resolute local agency through a process of translation.

Those who led southern African states to independence promised to redress the inequalities of settler colonialism by returning the land to the people. A generation later the rural poor are still waiting. Many lack access and full rights to agricultural land and, as developments in Zimbabwe and South Africa show, they are getting angry. Where did post-independence land reform policy go wrong?

Agriculture plays an important role in climate change, both as a contributor emitting greenhouse gasses (GHGs) and as a potential reducer of negative impacts. This paper gives an overview of how current and proposed agricultural practices affect climate change and how the proposed measures for mitigation and adaptation impact agriculture. The paper states that industrial agriculture, as currently practiced with monocultures and agrochemicals in a globalised production system, is a major contributor to climate change.

Utilises a number of situations observed in tropical Asia to motivate a simple trade-theoretical analysis of the implications of technological progress in agriculture.

This paper assesses the prospects of mitigating climate change through emission reductions from forestry and agriculture in the Brazilian Amazon. It uses official statistics, literature and case study material to identify the scope for emission reductions, in terms of potential additionality, opportunity costs, technological complexity, transaction costs, and risks of economic and environmental spill-over effects.

By Samuel Gebreselassie
Land and land tenure is a hot policy issue in Ethiopia. Three key issues are raised – farm size and fragmentation and the question of what is a ‘viable’ farm unit; tenure security and whether lack of land registration/certification or titling undermines investment in productivity improvements; and finally the issue land markets and whether imperfectly functioning markets constrain opportunities for land consolidation, investment and agricultural growth.