Throughout Vietnam's long histoty, the central elite and peripheraI farming communities have been legaIly and culturally divided. This dichotomy was never as complete as the famous injunction that "the emperor's writ stops at the village gate" infers. InitiaIly, during the period of French colonisation and more recently since the introduction of doi moi (renovation) economic reforrns, central authorities have attempted to unify land management with universaI normative law.

The growth of agriculture output over the past 200 years has been phenomenal. When Malthus wrote in 1798, he perceived limits on agricultural production as serious and imminent. Since then world population has increased by six-fold and global agricultural production has more than kept pace. Falling real grain prices for most of the 20th Century are cited as evidence. The sources of the increase in food production, however, have been quite different and have come in distinct waves. For most of the 19th century, increased output came from expanded land area in production.

Food insecurity is expected to accelerate substantially in sub-Saharan Africa where available evidence suggests that environmental degradation such as soil erosion, desertification and deforestation is seriously depend for increasing their agricultural productivity. As a result, about 44 percent of Africa's population live below the poverty line earning an income of about $39 per month.

Meeting: Cities Feeding People : Lessons Learned from Projects in African Cities, 21-25 June 1998, Nairobi, KE

The issue of supplying food to African towns will remain a major challenge in the coming years in view of the steep urban growth, the small increase in extensive agricultural production and the risks of bottlenecks in the supply and distribution circuits. Yet it is very difficult to summarize this issue for French-speaking Africa. The situations vary widely and are reversible. Information systems are rather unreliable.