Zimbabwe today has an agrarian structure made up of small, medium and large farms, all under different forms of land ownership. A landscape once dominated by 4,500 large-scale commercial farmers is now populated by about 145,000 smallholder households, occupying 4.1 million hectares, and around 23,000 medium-scale farmers on 3.5 million hectares. Knowing exactly who has land and where is difficult. Illegal multiple allocations combine with unclear boundary demarcations and an incomplete recording system.

Over the last two decades, 200 million people across the world have been lifted out of hunger. But as climate change brings more frequent and severe weather shocks such as droughts and floods, and makes rainfall patterns less predictable, these gains are under threat, especially among Africa’s smallholder farmers. Agriculture is Africa’s biggest employer. But mean temperatures are expected to rise faster in the continent than the global average, decreasing crop yields and deepening poverty.

This article introduces the Special Issue on ‘Gender and generation in agrarian and environmental transformation in Southeast Asia’. The contributions to this collection focus on the intersecting dynamics of gender, generation and class in Southeast Asian rural communities engaging with expanding capitalist relations, whether in the form of large-scale corporate land acquisition or other forms of penetration of commodity economy. Gender and especially generation are relatively neglected dimensions in the literature on agrarian and environmental transformations in Southeast Asia.

Across many parts of Indonesia, investment in oil palm has brought accelerated forms of land acquisition and market engagement for communities, signalling far-reaching implications for equity and well-being of current and future generations. This paper uses a conjunctural feminist political ecology approach to explore gendered and generational engagements with oil palm in Indonesia.

The work presented here aims to support the Land Policy Initiative (LPI) Secretariat in spearheading the implementation of the Nairobi Action Plan, particularly the achievement of the first action related to the Assessments of large-scale land based investment (LSLBI) in Africa, in order to build the necessary evidence and analysis required for the implementation of the remainder of the actions under the Plan.

In this paper we assess the types of knowledge networks utilised by small-scale farmers in four case studies (located in Bulgaria, Poland, Portugal, and the United Kingdom). We focus on knowledge acquired to inform three new activities being undertaken by study participants: agricultural production, subsidy access and regulatory compliance, and farm diversification (specifically agritourism).

In sub-Saharan Africa the pace and scale at which land is changing hands are increasing fast. Summarises findings from a research project – including case studies in Ghana, Senegal, Mozambique, and Uganda – to improve understanding of these changes by addressing 3 main questions: How is land access changing in rural Africa, and what are the major drivers of change? How are these changes affecting rural livelihoods? What are the implications of these changes for development policy and practice?

The investigation of soya production in Central Mozambique presented here suggests small-scale farming can produce similar profits to large-scale operations and better social outcomes. Concentrating only on large-scale investments can mean forgoing opportunities for rural development and poverty reduction. With the right support, poorer households can develop market-oriented farming that contributes to local value chains at many levels.

This paper describes the development of a Land Information Management System (LIMS) for County Governments in Kenya. In the new Constitution 2010, devolution of some national government functions and formation of county governments was provided for. These invoked the development of new land laws to guide the devolution processes and procedures. According to the County Government Act 2012, all County Governments are supposed to develop digital Geographic Information System (GIS) based spatial plans and these calls for development of LIMS for and efficient breakthrough.

Looking at several large-scale land deals in Mozambique, Tanzania and Zambia, this documentary film highlights the nuanced impacts of these investments. Small-scale farmers and producers, national government officials, and African policy-makers unpack the deals, showing that there are winners and losers when providing investors access to large tracts of land in Africa. For example, land deals impact differently on women and youth, and altering land regimes also impacts on access to other natural resources such as water, fish, and local indigenous vegetables.

Includes tenure risk, conflict, and the path to prosperity, 2016 in depth: fear, violence and defence, communities face ever increasing criminalization and violence for practicing their traditional livelihoods and protecting their lands. Breakthroughs to scale: indigenous peoples and communities make major gains in protecting their land rights. Development finance institutions emerge as potential leaders on community land rights. Companies are slow to implement commitments and change business models.

Changing dietary preferences and population growth in South Asia have resulted in increasing demand for wheat and maize, along side high and sustained demand for rice. In the highly productive northwestern Indo-Gangetic Plains of South Asia, farmers utilize groundwater irrigation to assure that at least two of these crops are sequenced on the same field within the same year. Such double cropping has had a significant and positive influence on regional agricultural productivity. But in the risk-prone and food insecure lower Eastern Indo-Gangetic Plains (EIGP), cropping is less intensive.