The three principal communist parties of India continue, in their programmes, to emphasize the significance of landlordism. This paper subjects their arguments about the current state of agrarian production relations to scrutiny, in the light of contemporary research and scholarship. This strongly suggests that classic ‘semi‐feudal’ landlordism has very largely gone. The paper argues however, that there remains a strong case for redistributivist land reform, even though it does not supply the answer to the agrarian question of India that once it did.

The European Union Rural Development Policy (RDP) for the period 2007–2013 seeks to establish a coherent and sustainable framework for the future of Europe's rural areas and is closely related to the improvement of living conditions in the countryside involving aspects of housing, the environment, infrastructure, communication, employment possibilities, land management, etc. Such interventions are very welcome in many Central and Eastern European countries where land reform after the collapse of the Soviet regime has resulted in a worrying drift towards rural depopulation.

A preoccupation with the idea of land as a productive asset continues to dominate donor policy prescriptions imposed on poor nations of the world. The presumption is that a view of land as a productive asset implies security which then induces investment and improvements in agricultural productivity.

Urban agriculture is potentially an important element of land reform and economic development programmes in South Africa. The social value of urban agriculture, such as improving food security, developing a sense of community and promoting ecological conservation, is well documented. But in order to effectively contribute to development agendas, urban agriculture must also present viable, sustainable economic opportunities. This study sets forth vegetable box schemes as a context-appropriate, economically feasible urban agriculture enterprise for which there is growing consumer demand.

Current practices in intensive animal production increasingly raise questions with respect to animal ethics both among the public in Europe and in political circles. This paper integrates three areas of philosophical views in order to formulate a general ethical position with respect to animal husbandry. The first area regards the question to what type of beings animals are. Secondly, an evaluative model of agrarian practices is employed in order to obtain a better perception on the place of animals in animal husbandry.

In 1999 the Scottish Parliament convened for the first time in almost 300 years and in response to long-standing popular discontent about highly concentrated land ownership passed the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003. Quite in contrast to the emphasis that much of the international development literature and policy have placed on the importance of individual private ownership, Scotland's land reform promotes community ownership. Rather than breaking up large private estates, land reformers aim to keep these estates whole while transferring ownership of them to local communities.

The South African government has endeavoured to strengthen property rights in communal areas and develop civil society institutions for community-led development and natural resource management. However, the effectiveness of this remains unclear as the emergence and operation of civil society institutions in these areas is potentially constrained by the persistence of traditional authorities. Focusing on the former Transkei region of Eastern Cape Province, three case study communities are used examine the extent to which local institutions overlap in issues of land access and control.

A ‘pink tide’ swept over Latin America following Hugo Chávez's 1998 election to the presidency in Venezuela, bringing to power multiple left or center-left governments. What possibilities for and obstacles to social change were presented by their having attained power through the ballot box? This question is explored through an examination of Venezuela's agrarian reform and the promotion of agroecology within it.

Throughout the Philippines' agrarian history, various interventions have been made to improve the lives of smallholder farmers, but the majority failed to materialize. In 1988, the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law (CARL) was passed, which sought to achieve more equitable land ownership, more empowered beneficiaries and improved livelihoods. This study aims to identify the factors affecting agrarian reform beneficiaries' (ARBs) perceptions of success or failure of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) in Malita, Davao del Sur.

In many developing countries, land ownership remains a subject of contention. In South Africa, notwithstanding the strides that have been made to foster equitable land ownership, land reform policies have been unsuccessful in delivering land to the poor majority. Due to the nature of agriculture as a source of food production and national security, and the lack of farming skills and related competencies’ equilibrium, programmes intended to deliver land to black people have been inadequate in their reach.

In the savanna rangelands of southern Africa, the debate about land reform tends to be about the redistribution of formerly freehold ranches and fencing-off the rangeland commons into ranches for better-off African farmers. The position of those who favour privatisation has been strengthened by the belief that the only environmentally sound way to manage the range is to subdivide it into private ranches because traditional open-range pastoralism is environmentally destructive. This point of view is at variance with an ever-increasing body of research.

The grassland biome of South Africa is a major resource for livestock farming; yet the soils of these rangelands are stressed differently by various management systems. The aim of this study was to investigate how basic soil properties respond to different management systems. For this purpose we sampled rangeland management systems under communal (continuous grazing), commercial (rotational grazing) and land reform (mixture of grazing systems) farming.