Joint Ventures (JVs) between ‘agribusiness’ investors and ‘small farmers’ or ‘customary landowners’ are being promoted in South Africa’s land and agrarian reform programme as a way to include land reform beneficiaries in the country’s competitive agricultural sector. This paper undertakes an in-depth comparative analysis of two JV dairy farms located on irrigation schemes in the former ‘homeland’ of the Ciskei, in South Africa’s Eastern Cape Province. The community, through government investment, brings the fixed assets to the business: land, irrigation infrastructure and milking parlours.

Urban agriculture has been theorized by social scientists, and even some urban growers, as a means of reclaiming the commons. But what does “reclaiming the commons” entail? A longue-durée genealogy reveals distinct socio-legal imaginations of the commons and visions of how it might be reclaimed. Social thinkers and reformers have split over how to address the key problem of private property identified by John Locke: landless people who can’t find paid employment.

Opportunistic land encroachment, resulting from costly and incomplete enforcement of common land boundaries, is a problem in many less-developed countries. A multi-period model of such encroachment is presented in this paper. The model accounts explicitly for the cumulative effects of non-compliance of regulations designed to protect a finite, non-renewable resource - in this case common land - from private expropriation. Gradual evolution of property rights from common to private - the consequence of encroachment - is demonstrated to be an equilibrium.

Au Mali, au début des années 1990, la décentralisation fut d’abord un acte politique permettant de proposer une solution viable au problème de la rébellion touarègue.Ensuite, les aspirations aux idées occidentales démocratiques (pluralisme politique,liberté de la presse, etc.) d’une partie des élites urbaines ont rencontré les plans des occidentaux pour le développement de l’Afrique pour donner un système de décentralisation territoriale à la française, mais où la commune est composée d’un ensemble

Over the course of their existence, peasant cooperatives known as ejidos and comunidades have significantly reconfigured the property relations, landscapes, and settlements of rural Mexico. These cooperatives remain relevant today, even though most of Mexico’s rural population now makes its living from activities other than agriculture. New uses, meanings, and values have attached themselves to the deagrarianized lands. Perhaps the most innovative resignification has been promoted by inhabitants who resist land commodification through a discourse of rights to Indigenous territory.

Translation of the Customary

Given its seemingly beneficial aspects to socioeconomic development and environmental well-being, the legislative reforms initiated under the Land Act of Bhutan, 2007 have raised so much consternation as well as hope in the minds of the Bhutanese people who either depend on livestock husbandry or leasing out such rights to others with livestock and compensated with payment in cash or kind in the form of livestock products.

Land is an imperative and crucial factor in the social, cultural and economic identity of the people in Sri Lanka due to the importance it has been given throughout our history. Moreover, the rights and interests over land are unequivocally and legally secured without any discrimination on the basis of gender, caste, religious or ethnic lines for its peaceful enjoyment and for the economic development of the people and the country.

India promotes the production of biodiesel from tree-borne oilseeds. This is seen as an option for substituting fossil fuels, reducing CO2 emissions, afforesting wastelands, and generating rural employment. Critics, however, claim that it may lead to food scarcity and seizure of common lands by corporate investors. This report shows that biodiesel production in India has mainly positive effects. As it is promoted on the basis of non-edible oil seeds on marginal lands, the risks of driving up prices for edible oil or crowding out food production are relatively low.

This report titled Land in India: Issues and Debates is part of an initiative under the aegis of India Land & Development Conference (ILDC) which has a long-term objective of bringing out an annual Status of Land in India volume. This report is a modest beginning in that direction by drawing on the works of ILDC partners to present a quick over view of some of the key developments and debates in India’s land sector. The report brings together 11key issues which currently engage the minds of the policy makers and researchers in India.

Este estudio nos cuenta del Asentamiento contestado, el cual desde 1999 logra desarrollar sus actividades conjuntas. 108 familias que proponen un uso adecuado de los recursos en la agroecología. Participan activamente en encuentros y cursos para lograr el uso adecuado de la tierra y maximizar su producción. Tambien hacen partícipes a los niños, los cuales desarrollan destrezas propias.

La familia Gómez Montoya, cuenta la experiencia de Rosalina, Una mujer de 71 años, quien a pesar de su baja estatura y avanzada edad, conserva intacto su carácter, sutesón y su ánimo de lucha, adquirido según ella, en su natal ‘Aquitania’, la fuerza para enfrentarse y resistir a las dificultades cotidianas que implica haber crecido y vivido en el campo.