A workshop held in Midrand, South Africa, in May 2011 brought together policy and decision-makers, researchers and practitioners to discuss water security issues in eastern and southern Africa. This proceedings document summarises the workshop's outcomes with the aim of:

improving the understanding of water security
identifying opportunities to better address challenges faced by individual countries and sectors
highlighting areas for further research
identifying immediate opportunities for development projects.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that, in stateless regions in Colombia, the establishment of oil palm 1 plantations generates more forced migration than the introduction of coca crops. We provide a theoretical model to study this phenomenon where an agent, allied with the illegal armed group that controls a region, chooses between buying an agricultural good from peasants or producing it himself by evicting farmers from their lands. We compare two crops that differ in their labor intensity.

Investment in land is not conflict-neutral, and given the history of violent conflict and mutual destabilization in the Horn of Africa there is potential for localized political grievances to turn into wider regional conflict. There is significant foreign investment in land in Ethiopia by parties from Africa and further afield. This is primarily geared towards producing for the export market, and is often concentrated in regions with limited political influence.

Investment in land is not conflict-neutral, and given the history of violent conflict and mutual destabilization in the Horn of Africa there is potential for localized political grievances to turn into wider regional conflict. There is significant foreign investment in land in Ethiopia by parties from Africa and further afield. This is primarily geared towards producing for the export market, and is often concentrated in regions with limited political influence.

The structure of this review is as follows: the first section discusses how contract farming is defined for the purposes of this review and  briefly describes the history and extent of contract farming globally. The second section details the main factors contributing to the increased incidence of contract farming in developing countries, and describes the most common models utilised. Section 3 covers the main conceptual and theoretical perspectives on contract farming.

The main objective of this paper is to provide a) a presentation of the diversity of land related conflicts in Africa, b) an analysis of underlying causes of conflicts and experiences in conflict resolution and, c) lessons learnt and best practices from the policy and legal responses and links with enhancement of land governance in the region.

The LAPSSET Corridor project, a major infrastructure development project that will run from Kenya to South Sudan and Ethiopia, will impact, positively or negatively, on the lives of more than 100 million people in the three countries. Indigenous peoples will potentially suffer the most negative impacts as a result of their having been historically marginalized economically, socially and politically. The recent discovery of oil in Turkana will add to the suffering of the Turkana peoples.

Betting on World Agriculture: US Private Equity Managers Eye Agricultural Returns, a new report from the Oakland Institute (OI), focuses on the private investment vehicles that advertise and manage investment opportunities in farmlands and agriculture for investors including pension funds, university and foundation endowments, and high net worth individuals.

En esta edición de La Revista Agraria presentamos un especial sobre la concentración de la tierra en el Perú, con artículos sobre el tamaño de los latifundios, variables a tener en cuenta para limitar la propiedad rural, el acaparamiento en la subasta de tierras del proyecto Olmos, y los problemas ambientales que presentan los proyectos de irrigación en la costa. También se hace un análisis del presupuesto del MINAG y la problemática del sector vicuñero.

Practical manual on land use planning through the government local level participatory planning approach in Ethiopia.

The Agricultural Water Management Solutions Project (AWM Solutions) has identified a variety of small-holder agricultural water management interventions (AWM Regional Mapping) that have a high potential to improve food security and livelihoods of the rural poor in sub-Saharan Africaand South Asia.The analysis underlying the scenarios is based on an integrated modeling system that combines geographic (GIS) data analysis, biophysical and economic predictive modeling, and crop mix optimization tools to assess the regional potential for smallholder agricultural water management across sub-Sahar