Despite the growth in the agricultural sector in Latin America and the Caribbean, 8 out of every 10 farmers, small-scale producers who are at the base of domestic food production, remain largely excluded from the related benefits. Government efforts for strengthening agriculture allocate public resources to few lines of spending that favour a minority. Investment on small-scale agriculture is difficult to track and where possible, it is disproportionately lower than this group´s contribution to the sector.

The past decade has seen several African countries increasing their agricultural growth, a trend largely underpinned by increases in land area cultivated instead of productivity increases. Meanwhile, scholars debate whether Africa should pursue a strategy of large-scale or smallholder farms, paying little attention to a special group of smallholder farmers who have transitioned to become medium- and large-scale farmers. This study, therefore, begins to analyze this group of farmers, using qualitative data from in-depth interviews and focus group discussions in Ghana.

The 1: 2 000 000 Soil Associations map is based on

the Geomorphology and Soils map, at 1: 1 000 000 scals, prepared

by the FAO/UNDP Eth/78/003, Assistance to Land Use PlJ

Project in 1981 It incorporates some new information ob%,3 _

since the finalizing of the Geomorphology and soils map.

"A dramatic increase over the past fifteen years in domestic pork demand and production in the Philippines has created a potentially profitable opportunity for poor rural and agricultural households. In Southern and Central Luzon, the two biggest markets, however, smallholder pig producers hold only a minority share of total production compared to larger commercial farms. This report seeks to assess the scope for smallholders to remain in business by analyzing the relative profitability of small and large farms.

Increasing competition for water across sectors increases the importance of the river basin as the appropriate unit of analysis to address the challenges facing water resources management; and modeling at this scale can provide essential information for policymakers in their resource allocation decisions.

Recently scientists have started to examine how land-uses and land-use technologies can help mitigate carbon emissions. The half million small-scale farmers inhabiting the Amazon frontier sequester large stocks of carbon in their forests and other land uses that they might be persuaded to maintain or even increase through the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol.

Landscape changes and the processes driving them have been a critical component in both research and management efforts of savanna systems. These dynamics impact human populations, wildlife, carbon storage, and general spatio-temporal dynamism in response to both anthropomorphic and climatic shifts. Both biophysical and human agents of change can be identified by isolating their respective spatial, temporal, and organizational contingencies.

This paper describes the development of a Land Information Management System (LIMS) for County Governments in Kenya. In the new Constitution 2010, devolution of some national government functions and formation of county governments was provided for. These invoked the development of new land laws to guide the devolution processes and procedures. According to the County Government Act 2012, all County Governments are supposed to develop digital Geographic Information System (GIS) based spatial plans and these calls for development of LIMS for and efficient breakthrough.

1. Patch dynamics is a new, potentially unifying mechanism for the explanation of tree-grass coexistence in savannas. In this scale-explicit paradigm, savannas consist of patches in which a cyclical succession between woody and grassy dominance proceeds spatially asynchronously. The growing ecological and economic problem of shrub encroachment is a natural transient phase in this cycle. 2. An important step towards understanding patterns at the landscape scale is achieved by investigating mechanisms at a smaller scale.

Widely occurred woody encroachment in grass-dominated ecosystems has the potential to influence soil organic carbon (SOC) and total nitrogen (TN) pools at local, regional, and global scales. Evaluation of this potential requires assessment of both pool sizes and their spatial patterns. We quantified SOC and TN, their relationships with soil and vegetation attributes, and their spatial scaling along a catena (hill-slope) gradient in the southern Great Plains, USA where woody cover has increased substantially over the past 100 years.

The relationships between water yields of tributaries and coverage of different vegetation types in the corresponding sub-watersheds were investigated during the wet season in the Heishui River Valley, located in the upper portion of the Yangtze River in western China. Stable isotope analysis was used to calculate the relative contributions of the tributaries to water yield in the main stem of the Heishui River, while relative coverages of the different vegetation types were calculated from classified Landsat 7 TM satellite images of the study area.

This study examines rural women access to and control of agricultural production resources in arable small-scale sustainable agricultural production in a developing country setting. Specifically, the study addresses the women's level of accessibility and control of arable land in agricultural production in the North West Region of Cameroon.