Over the past decade issues pertaining to land sharing/land sparing have gained some space in the debate on the study of land-use strategies and their associated impacts at landscape level. State and non-state actors have, through their interests and actions, triggered changes at the landscape level and this report is a synthesis of some of the main findings and contributions of a scoping study carried out in Zambia as part of CIFOR’s Agrarian Change Project. It focuses on findings in three villages located in the Nyimba District.

Zambia remains committed to the socio-economic development planning of the country as reflected by the return to development planning in 2005. The Seventh National Development Plan (7NDP) for the period 2017- 2021 is the successor to the Revised Sixth National Development Plan, 2013-2016 (R-SNDP) following its expiry in December 2016. The Plan, like the three national development plans (NDPs) that preceded it, is aimed at attaining the long-term objectives as outlined in the Vision 2030 of becoming a “prosperous middle-income country by 2030”.

Zambia Agriculture Development Goal:

Reduce poverty through broadbased income growth for those in the agricultural sector

Zambia’s Economic Achievements:

Classified as low-middle income by World Bank
 GDP growing at 6% per annum
 Agricultural growth rate at 7%, above 6% CAADP Goal
 Three consecutive maize bumper harvest years

This study on farmers’ suicides is done by Indo-Global Social Service Society (IGSSS) through its local partner the Baitarani Initiative. This study was attempted to understand if farmers’ suicides were just a desperate reaction to events like droughts and crop loss or there were more fundamental roots.

En menos de dos décadas, en Bolivia estamos viendo cómo, por un lado, se consolida un modelo agrario dominante de agricultura empresarial a gran escala y, por otro, la agricultura a pequeña escala de campesinos e indígenas, que todavía muchos creemos que es la que provee la mayor parte de los alimentoso que consumimos.

This article examines the evolution of policy recommendations concerning rural land issues since the formulation of the World Bank’s “Land Reform Policy Paper” in 1975. That paper set out three guiding principles: the desirability of owner-operated family farms; the need for markets to permit land to be transferred to more productive users; and the importance of an egalitarian asset distribution.

The vitally important provision of food through the food system is not a simple linear process, but a contested outcome of a complex system. This systematic literature review was undertaken to better understand the inherent complexity of this system and inform a long‐ term scenario‐planning process aimed at ensuring a food secure future in South Africa.  

This research report contains an overview of two innovations that form part of a project called Supporting Smallholder Agriculture (SSA) conducted by the Southern Africa Food Lab (SAFL). The two innovations documented in this report simultaneously investigated market segmentation and standards - related challenges among smallholder farmers in two parts of the country.

Investidores agrícolas estrangeiros estão em conflitos com camponeses locais em Moçambique, num confronto sobre modelos agrícolas e desenvolvimento. Investidores estrangeiros de olho em terra aparentemente vaga, prometem lucros elevados (muitas vezes inflacionados) a investidores e parceiros locais. Alguns esperam capitalizar com créditos de carbono ou produzir biocombustíveis e alegam ser investimentos “verdes” (ecológicos). Todos prometem empregos, escolas e desenvolvimento local.

Although opinions on impacts of land market transfers are sharply divided, few studies explore the welfare and productivity effects of land markets on a larger scale. This paper uses a large Indian panel spanning almost 20 years, together with a climatic shock (rainfall) indicator, to assess the productivity and equity effects of market-mediated land transfers (sale and purchase) compared with non-market ones (inheritance). The analysis shows that frequent shocks increase land market activity, an effect that is mitigated by the presence of safety nets and banks.

Recognition of the importance of institutions that provide security of property rights and relatively equal access to economic resources to a broad cross-section of society has renewed interest in the potential of asset redistribution, including land reforms. Empirical analysis of the impact of such policies is, however, scant and often contradictory. This paper uses panel household data from India, together with state-level variation in the implementation of land reform, to address some of the deficiencies of earlier studies.

In the developed countries less than 20 per cent of the population is engaged in agriculture. The rest is employed in the industrial sector. In the underdeveloped countries less than 10 per cent of the population is employed in the industrial sector and the rest is engaged in agriculture. At once this dictates that, for some time to come, the route to development in the latter countries will depend on agriculture, which also mainly depends on land policy and tenure. The land question is a contradiction in land rights and consequential social, economic and political abuses replicated on it.