The present paper was prepared as part of the work programme of food and agriculture for the 1988-1989 biennium. It constitutes element 2.4 on multinational co-operation on livestock development in Africa and it focuses on the performance of the sector in the face of government intervention and the structural adjustment programmes (SAP). The effect of the SAP on the achievement of increased collective self-sufficiency and self-reliance in animal food production and supply was given particular attention.

This paper examines the implications for African economies of the possible outcomes from the ongoing agriculture negotiations in the Doha Round. The paper defines scenarios that capture key elements of the modalities negotiations and undertakes simulations using a global dynamic general equilibrium model to examine the impact of multilateral agricultural trade reforms on African economies.

African Agriculture is in crisis. Serious deterioration in the terms of trade, frequent droughts, growing expenditure on food imports, and rapid population growth on an ecologically fragile agricultural resource base have, all combined to prevent African agriculture from playing its vital role as the engine of economic development of the continent.

Recently, we witnessed an immense increase in international land transactions in the Global South, a phenomenon slowly expanding in northern industrialized countries, too. Even though in Europe agriculture plays a decreasing economic role for rural livelihoods, the increases in land transactions by non-local, non-agricultural investors pervades rural life. Nevertheless, the underlying processes are not yet well understood. Large-scale land acquisitions describe such purchases and leases in a neutral way, while ‘land grabbing’ expresses negative consequences for rural people.

In many African countries and especially in the highlands of Ethiopia—the investigation site of this paper—agricultural land is highly fragmented. Small and scattered parcels impede a necessary increase in agricultural efficiency. Land consolidation is a proper tool to solve inefficiencies in agricultural production, as it enables consolidating plots based on the consent of landholders. Its major benefits are that individual farms get larger, more compact, contiguous parcels, resulting in lower cultivation efforts.

Sustainable rural development (with the development of social functions) is currently one of the basic objectives of the rural areas policy in Poland. The main purpose of this article is to determine the level of social development of rural areas and to examine whether the National Support Center for Agriculture (NSCA) activities (in the form of transferring land to communes for the implementation of social goals) have an impact on that development, and to what extent. In this article, an assessment of the social development level of rural areas using the Hellwig method was carried out.

The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification defines ‘land degradation’ as a reduction or loss of the biological and economic productivity resulting from land-use mismanagement, or a combination of processes, such as soil erosion, deterioration of soil properties, and loss of natural vegetation and biodiversity. Land degradation is hence an interactive process involving multiple factors, among which climate, land-use, economic dynamics and socio-demographic forces play a key role.

Labor, land, and funds are keys to revitalizing rural areas around the world. Previous studies have focused on the impacts of funds on agricultural production, but placed little emphasis on its role in agricultural land-use transformation. Thus, this study explores the quantitative relationship between agricultural credit and farmland abandonment from the perspective of rural revitalization.

Construcción de la justicia desde la justicia indígena: Experiencias interlegales de Inquisivi
 
Magali Vienca Copa Pabón[1] / Amy Michelle Kennemore[2]
 
Introducción

The 2016 peace agreement between the Government of Colombia and the FARC-EP created institutional space for an effective implementation of needed rural reforms. However, the change of power structures also contains risks, like the deterioration of natural resources and the strengthening of other armed groups. By addressing collective perceptions regarding the Integrated Rural Reform (IRR), this paper shows the consequences of the peace agreement for the rural population in the department of Caquetá. Additionally, it presents the main challenges for further departmental development.

The Historical Injustices Issues Paper seeks to present the various historical land claims issues and perspective related to them and consequently proffer policy statements for their redress.

For a long time the issue of land and related problems has been debated mostly by academicians, politicians and professionals. Although the problem has remained more or less one of the most talked of in Kenya, the public has very often been left out of the debate. Again mostly the debate has been dominated more by complaining about either the lack of policy or the bad land policies and laws and the failure by successive governments to correct those problems.