"This paper describes the emergence of improved traditional planting pits (zaï) in Burkina Faso in the early 1980s as well as their advantages, disadvantages and impact. The zaï emerged in a context of recurrent droughts and frequent harvest failures, which triggered farmers to start improving this local practice. Despair triggered experimentation and innovation by farmers. These processes were supported and complemented by external intervention. Between 1985 and 2000 substantial public investment has taken place in soil and water conservation (SWC).

Contrairement aux prévisions communément admises quant à l’aggravation du déclin économique de l’Afrique, une récente étude présente une vision alternative plus positive de l’avenir de ce continent. De nouveaux engagements politiques, une gestion du programme de développement sous égide africaine ainsi que l’accroissement de l’intérêt et des investissements dans les petites exploitations agricoles ont le potentiel d’arrêter, voire d’inverser la tendance spiroïdale de la famine, de la pauvreté, de la dégradation environnementale, des maladies et des guerres civiles.

"In contrast to popular predictions of Africa’s worsening economic decline, recent research supports an alternative and more positive vision of Africa’s future. New political commitment and African ownership of the development agenda, combined with a renewed focus on and investments in smallholder-led agriculture, have the potential to halt or reverse the current downward spiral of hunger, poverty, environmental degradation, disease, and civil strife.

The workshop participants were clear that now is the time for choices, and that without the will to make those choices, the likelihood of success in boosting agricultural growth on a sustained basis would be small. Without such growth, it will not be possible to improve food security or halt natural resource degradation. It seems unlikely that all countries of Africa will choose to put in place the necessary conditions for growth, which makes it all the more important to decide at the outset which conditions are most likely to beget further success.

This LEGEND bulletin takes stock of some of the recent experience in legal empowerment. The result is a kaleidoscope of approaches operating at different levels, but pursuing broadly converging agendas.

The first observation from this workshop is that everywhere in the world, we are seeing strong growth in the inequalities of the distribution of land, with a growing concentration of land in the hands of a reduced number of players.

This land concentration phenomenon unavoidably leads to the exclusion and marginalization of small production units and their workers. We are dealing with an increasingly bipolar agricultural model which opposes family agriculture and large scale agriculture in an unequal fight.

La primera conclusión nacida de este taller es que, por todo el mundo, se observa una fuerte expansión de las desigualdades en la distribución de las propiedades, con una creciente concentración de tierras en manos de un reducido número de actores.

Este fenómeno de concentración de la propiedad entraña necesariamente la exclusión y la marginalización de las pequeñas unidades de producción y de sus trabajadores. Nos dirigimos cada vez más hacia un modelo agrícola bipolar, donde se enfrentan la agricultura familiar y la agricultura a gran escala, en una lucha desequilibrada.

Le premier constat issu de cet atelier est que, partout dans le monde, on observe une forte expansion des inégalités dans la distribution du foncier, avec une concentration croissante des terres dans les mains d’un nombre réduit d’acteurs.

Ce phénomène de concentration du foncier entraîne nécessairement l’exclusion et la marginalisation des petites unités de production et de leurs travailleurs. On a à faire de plus en plus à un modèle agricole bipolaire, qui voit s’opposer dans une lutte déséquilibrée l’agriculture familiale à l’agriculture à grande échelle.

Source: Rights and ressources.org

Description

ABSTRACTED FROM EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: This report deals with land concessions in Cambodia, Lao People’s Democratic Republic and Thailand – a much contended topic which leads discussants from issues such as land ownership and utilization to social structures, human rights and beyond. Overall, this report aims to examine changes in relative competitiveness in selected tradable commodities of Thailand and whether they are impacted through increases of land concession in selected countries in the subregion.

ABSTRACTED FROM EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Rubber prices in northern Laos have fallen significantly over the last few years, eroding much of the enthusiasm developed by both farmers and government officials in the 1990s and early 2000s about rubber providing a way out of poverty for poor upland farmers.

In a widely read paper, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, World Bank and others propose systematic property rights formalization as a key step in addressing the problems of irresponsible agricultural investment. This paper examines the case of Cambodia, one of a number of countries where systematic land titling and large-scale land concessions have proceeded in parallel in recent years.