This book exposes the key land use and environmental problems facing Kenya today due to lack of an appropriate national land use policy. The publication details how the air is increasingly being polluted, the water systems are diminishing in quantity and deteriorating in quality. The desertification process threatens the land and its cover. The soils are being eroded leading to siltation of the ocean and lakes. The forests are being depleted with impunity thus destroying the water catchments.

Sustainable agriculture has emerged as a key issue in agricultural development and natural resource management because of widespread and growing concern about the seriousness of degradation of the world's natural resource base and ever-increasing pressures on these resources from continuing rapid population growth. This paper examines the changes in land use and the problem of tropical deforestation affecting the world's land resource base for sustainable agricultural development. Global land-use changes have been slow in the last decade.

This publication is a lobby material to advocate the passage of the National Land Use Act. As one of the major outputs of the high level experts forum held last June 4, 2015, this abridged version of the proceedings highlights the experts’ discussion, answering the following key questions related to agriculture:

This document lays down the Zambia National Strategy to Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+). Zambia has developed this strategic document under the REDD+ mechanism. Its vision is to realize a prosperous climate change resilient economy by 2030, anchored upon sustainable management and utilization of Zambia’s natural resources towards improved livelihoods.

Colombia Siembra es la estrategia del Ministerio de Agricultura y Desarrollo Rural (MADR) para aprovechar el potencial de desarrollo agropecuario que tiene el país. El documento establece la meta de sembrar un millón de hectáreas adicionales en el país entre 2015 y 2018, con un enfoque en el incremento de la productividad que garantice la oferta constante y la mejora de la calidad de los productos, y fomento de las exportaciones agropecuarias.

Successful development experiences have demonstrated the greater efficiency achieved with a growth strategy based on small and medium-scale farmers (SMFs). This study is sought to identify potential agribusiness models for enhancing inclusive growth through NGOs partnerships with SMFs in Myanmar. The paper illustrates that agricultural sector in Myanmar is characterised by already high land inequality and landlessness, and low productivity of most SMFs.

Agricultural production in Cambodia is concentrated in the northwestern districts bordering Thailand, on the central plains surrounding the Tonle Sap Lake and its river systems, along the Mekong and Bassac rivers towards the Mekong delta, and in the northern and northeastern provinces. In 2012, the total land-use area under major agricultural crops was about 4.015 million ha. Rice is the dominant crop, occupying about 2.968 million ha; non-rice crops are grown on about 1.047 million ha (MAFF 2012).

The type of agrarian structure employed to produce tropical commodities affects many dimensions of land use, such as ownership inequality, overlapping land rights and conflicts, and land use changes. I conduct a literature review of historical changes in agrarian structures of commodities grown on the upland frontier of mainland Southeast and South Asia, using a case study approach, of tea, rubber, oil palm and cassava.

For centuries, farmers in the mountainous region of mainland Southeast Asia have practiced shifting cultivation, with plots of land cultivated temporarily and then allowed to revert to secondary forest for a fallow period. Today, more than one million hectares have been converted to rubber plantation. By 2050, the area under rubber trees in the montane regions of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, and China's Yunnan Province is predicted to increase fourfold.

Despite the many transformations taking place in Myanmar, its agricultural sector is lagging. A high proportion of rural households remain poor and food insecure as a result. This article examines the underlying causes of poor agricultural performance through a combination of literature and secondary data review combined with extensive field interviews with a broad range of key informants in the main agricultural zones of the country. We identify key structural changes that are needed to unleash smallholder-led agricultural transformation and broad-based rural economic growth.

Over the past 15 years, northwest Cambodia has seen dramatic agrarian expansion away from the central rice plain into the peripheral uplands fuelled by peasant in-migration. Against this background, we examine the nature of relations between the peasantry and the state. We first show the historical continuities of land control processes and how the use of violence in a post-conflict neoliberal context has legitimised ex-Khmer Rouge in controlling land distribution.

“Bodem is de grond van ons bestaan”. De bodem is een belangrijke productiefactor in de landbouw, bevat een significant deel van de biodiversiteit op aarde, buffert neerslag en klimaat en is drager van ons leefmilieu. Wat doen we om de kwaliteit van de bodem te behouden? In dit artikel wordt stilgestaan bij het onderzoeksprogramma Duurzame Bodem binnen de Topsector. Aan de orde komen: bodem-bewustzijn; te realiseren doelstellingen; handelingsperspectief van de ondernemer; partners en financiers; sessie op 19 november 2014.