This document prepared by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) identifies strategic opportunities with the goal of contributing to the transformation of rural Lesotho towards a more resilient and economically productive environment that allows its population to sustain their livelihoods and overcome poverty and malnutrition. It sets out to identify initiatives which can contribute to inclusive commercialisation of the rural economy and creating an enabling natural and business environment for sustainable and resilient rural transformation.

Land registration and titling in Africa are often advocated as a pro-poor legal empowerment strategy. Advocates have put forth different visions of the substantive goals this is to achieve. Some see registration and titling as a way to protect smallholdersrights of access to land. Others frame land registration as part of community-protection or ethno-justice agendas. Still others see legal empowerment in the market-enhancing commodification of property rights. This paper contrasts these different visions;showing that each entails tensions and trade-offs.

Smallholder farmers in the mid-hills of Nepal are facing an acute labor shortage due to out-migration which, in general, has affected the capacity to achieve timely crop establishment, harvest, and inter-cultural operations. These effects are more visible in the case of labor-intensive crops such as rice and promoting higher levels of rural mechanization has emerged as the primary policy response option. Nevertheless, quantitative evidence for the ability of mechanization to offset the adverse effects of shortages increasing labor prices in these systems is largely absent.

Tunisia, like many other countries, suffers from land degradation. Conservation agriculture is among the proper solutions to overcome this issue. The objective of our investigation is to determine the factors that influence the adoption of CA in Siliana, one of Tunisia’s most affected regions by erosion. A field survey was conducted to collect adoption data used for descriptive analysis, and for the estimation of a choice model (Logit).

L’accaparement des terres au Tchad est un phénomène nouveau, massif, et accumulateur visant le contrôle de large partie de terres riches agricoles. Le contexte tchadien correspond plus ou moins aux critères globalement admis pour définir l’accaparement des terres : la taille des emprises, les acteurs (passifs ou actifs), le contrôle des procédures, la légalité des acquisitions et l’utilisation des terres cédées. Les investisseurs étrangers se sont encore peu intéressés au foncier agricole tchadien. Le phénomène est porté par une classe d’investisseurs locaux.

Displacement induced by large scale investments and subsequent resettlement affects community access to land, land tenure patterns, and tenure security. This guide is published as part of the project ‘Strengthening Community Land Rights and Responses to Involuntary Displacements Caused by Development Projects in Zimbabwe.’ It highlights critical areas to be accounted for before introducing large scale developmental projects. These projects endanger communities’ land-related environmental, economic, social and cultural rights and benefits enshrined by the Constitution of Zimbabwe.

Double up legumes is intercropping two legumes (in this case groundnut and pigeonpea) that have different growth habits and takes advantages of beneficial interactions of the two legumes on the same piece of land. Intercropping groundnut and pigeonpea using the correct spatial arrangement increase land productivity, provides more types of food and profits while conserving and sustaining the environment through enhancement of soil fertility.

Land use decision making is influenced by various factors including tenure security, natural disasters and farm characteristics. Smallholder farmers operate under different land tenure systems, which influences their crop combinations. This paper investigates smallholder farmers’ crop combinations under different land tenure systems in Thailand in the context of the 2011 flood and government policy on rice.

Tanzania is a low-income country in Eastern Africa with a population reaching nearly 56 million inhabitants. Agriculture remains a cornerstone of the
economy, providing 31 percent to GDP and contributing 24.9 percent of annual export earnings, in particular through the main export crops cashew,
tobacco, sugar, coffee and cotton. Tanzania records a continuous agricultural sector growth and is considered largely self-sufficient in its main staple

In recent decades;many countries in sub-Saharan Africa have pursued national water permit systems;derived from the colonial era and reinforced by “global best practice.” These systems have proved logistically impossible to manage and have worsened inequality in water access. This study traces the origins of these systems;and describes their implementation and consequences for rural smallholders in Kenya;Malawi;South Africa;Uganda and Zimbabwe.

Is there an alternative model to small family farming that could provide sustainable livelihoods to millions of resource-constrained and often non-viable smallholders in developing countries? Could group farming constitute such an alternative, wherein smallholders voluntarily pool land, labour and capital to create larger farms that they manage collectively?

Mobilising under-utilised low carbon (ULC) land for future agricultural expansion helps minimising further carbon stock loss. This study examined the regency cases in Kalimantan, a carbon loss hotspot, to understand the key factors for mobilising ULC land via narrative interviews with a range of land-use actors and complementary desktop analyses.