CAADP Policy Brief 10by Kate Wellard-Dyer

This paper provides an overview of what we know about farm size distributions, the emerging land markets, the role of tenure systems, tenure reforms and land policies in shaping the distribution of increasingly scarce land resources. The primary focus is on Africa while making some comparisons with Asia. Climate risk and change have serious implications for household vulnerability and food security. While there is a need to absorb further population growth in rural areas, a rapid rise in rural-urban migration is inevitable.

This paper explores gender and issues of land access and administration in rural development. It argues that increasing social, economic and technological changes are requiring a re-examination of the institutional arrangements used to administer who has rights to what resources and under what conditions.

This paper investigates how HIV/AIDS affects land access, utilisation and control in Malawi, with a particular focus upon vulnerable groups. It presents findings on the effect of HIV/AIDS on land holding, household responses to HIV/AIDS (to ensure their ability to continue using land as a resource), implications for tenure, effect of HIV/AIDS on land administration institutions, and the role of national legal and policy frameworks.The paper recommends:Firstly, that there is a need to raise the profile of the challenge posed by HIV/AIDS to poverty reduction.

The Indian state of West-Bengal saw two major turnarounds in its rural sector in the eighties. The growth rate of rice production jumped from 1.8 per cent during 1960-80 to 4.7 per cent during 1977-94, and rural poverty fell from 73 to 31 per cent between 1973 and 1999, greatly surpassing achievements of other Indian states.This coincided with the 1977 election of a coalition of left-wing parties, led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPM, which held uninterrupted power for the following 26 years.

This paper outlines a framework for understanding the complexity of land degradation processes, their impacts, and offers insights into their remediation.

In Ethiopia, 85% of the population is directly supported by the agricultural economy.  However, the productivity of that economy is being seriously eroded by unsustainable land management practices both in areas of food crops and in grazing lands (Berry, 2003).

This study investigates the impact of land certification on sustainable land resource management and long-term investments. It also assesses the impact of land certification on farmers’ perceptions and confidence in land ownership and land use rights in Eastern and Western Amhara Region, Ethiopia.

Recent increases in the level of agricultural commodity prices and the resulting demand for land has been accompanied by a rising interest in acquiring agricultural land by investors. This paper studies the determinants of foreign land acquisition for large-scale agriculture.

With the introduction of rural reforms in the early 1980s, China broke with its
collectivist past and began the arduous transition from a centrally planned to a free
market economy. The People’s Communes – the institutional basis of
agriculture under Mao – were disbanded, and communal land was
redistributed to users through a family-based ‘Household Contract
Responsibility System’ (HCRS), which offered farmers more managerial

Land degradation is a serious problem in Sub-Saharan Africa, where up to two-thirds of the productive land area is reported to be degraded to some extent.  Local communities suffer the most from the degradation of their land and they are therefore fundamental to the widespread adoption of sustainable land management (SLM) techniques.