Medium-scale farms have become a major force in Malawi’s agricultural sector. Malawi’s most recent official agricultural survey indicates that these account for over a quarter of all land under cultivation in Malawi. This study explores the causes and multifaceted consequences of the rising importance of medium-scale farms in Malawi. We identify the characteristics and pathways of entry into farming based on surveys of 300 medium-scale farmers undertaken in 2014 in the districts of Mchinji, Kasungu and Lilongwe.

Damages on contaminated land have been mostly assessed for developments subsisting on the land, neglecting the goods and services derived from the land which possess only socio-cultural values. This paper aims to ascertain the importance of socio-cultural values in the total economic value of contaminated land, drawing from the experience of a coastal community oil spillage in the Niger Delta. The paper examines what constitutes a valuable interest on contaminated land and how socio-cultural factors are valued in the damage assessment process.

Gendered relations in resource access and farming are two important intersecting themes of gender studies in a northern rural context. However, conventional analysis and perceptions of the economy conceal the contribution of women within families, in businesses and in the labor market. This article demonstrate the significance of capital to farming women’s engagement with agriculture using a Swedish case study, based on descriptive analyses of data from the Federation of Swedish Farmers.

This study examines whether there is a biodiversity benefit (“dividend”) associated with the existence and management of conservation reserves in the extensive and largely natural landscape of northern Australia. Species richness and abundance of vertebrate fauna and the intensity of a range of disturbance factors were compared across a set of 967 sampled quadrats, located either in pastoral lands, Indigenous lands or conservation reserves, with all sampled quadrats within a single vegetation type (open forests and savannah woodlands dominated by Eucalyptus miniata and/or E. tetrodonta).

The increase in population and the expansion of built-up areas into natural and agricultural areas results in more than just loss of open spaces surrounding cities. Reduced accessibility to nature, visual intrusion of buildings into natural viewsheds, and changes in runoff requires us to assess these impacts on open spaces. Our aim in this paper was to examine and demonstrate how topography can be incorporated into modeling and analyzing environmental impacts of cities.

Intensity Analysis has become popular as a top-down hierarchical accounting framework to analyze differences among categories, such as changes in land categories over time. Some aspects of interpretation are straightforward, while other aspects require deeper thought. This article explains how to interpret Intensity Analysis with respect to four concepts. First, we illustrate how to analyze whether error could account for non-uniform changes. Second, we explore two types of the large dormant category phenomenon. Third, we show how results can be sensitive to the selection of the domain.

The Siwalik Hills is one of the most fragile and vulnerable ecosystems in the Nepalese Himalaya where soil erosion and land degradation issues are fundamental. There is very limited knowledge on soil erosion processes and rates in this region in comparison to other regions of the Himalaya. The aims of the present paper are to document, measure and interpret key soil erosion processes and provide an estimate of erosion rates in the Khajuri Stream catchment located in the eastern Siwalik Hills.

Multipurpose mosaic (“ecoagriculture”) landscapes can serve the purpose of land sharing to combine objectives of agricultural production and biodiversity conservation. Rewarding the people who shape and maintain those landscapes could act as a mechanism to generate added-value representing an indirect payment for ecosystem services. We investigated the feasibility of such an approach in two areas in Southern Africa differing in spatial configurations, history and socio-economic context.

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.

We quantify the emergence of biofuel markets and its impact on U.S. andworld agriculture for the coming decade using the multi-market multi-commodityinternational FAPRI model. The model incorporates the tradeoffs between biofuel, feed,and food production and consumption and international feedback effects of theemergence through world commodity prices and trade. We examine land allocation bytype of crop, and pasture use for countries growing feedstock for ethanol (corn,sorghum, wheat, sugarcane, and other grains) and major crops competing with feedstockfor land resources such as oilseeds.

The cadastre structure in the system of land and real estate management is determined by existing and technologically dependent kinds of works and procedures on registration, recording and valuation of real estate. A general approach to land evaluation of all categories is a differential rent income taking into account natural characteristics and location of pieces of land.