Continued strong population growth in already densely populated rural areas in parts of Sub-Saharan Africa makes it harder for youth to choose agriculture as their main source of income. We investigate whether near landless youth still can access rented land as a complementary source of income. We utilize a unique data of rural youth that have been allocated rehabilitated communal land to form formalized business groups for joint business activity. They rely on complementary sources of income and land renting is one of these.

We assess the spatial and intertemporal change patterns of farmland prices using per hectare minimum willingness to accept (WTA) sales and rental prices in Malawi. We use three rounds of nationally representative household farm panel data from the Living Standards Measurement Surveys (LSMS), collected in 2010, 2013 and 2016. We study price changes by splitting the sample in quintiles based on distance from the nearest major city, building on the von Thünen theory and urban growth model. Generally, WTA land prices decrease with distance from urban areas.

We investigate the extent of variation in output sharing in land rental contracts and alternative hypotheses to explain this variation. Close to half of the rental contracts in our study in northern Ethiopia have output shares that deviate from the dominant 50-50 equal sharing. Variation in land quality, the relative bargaining power of landlords and tenants, production risks and shocks are hypothesized to influence output shares. Matched data of landlords and tenants are used.