Maize has become the second most produced crop in the world. Specifically, in sub-Saharan Africa, global statistics show that more and more land is being used for (small-scale) maize production to meet future food demands. From 2007 to 2017, the area on which maize is grown in sub-Saharan Africa has increased by almost 60%.
This paper is one of three thematic case studies resulting from a set of pilot projects undertaken jointly by civil society and private business partners from 2016–2019 in five countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
This paper deepens the economic analysis of the effects of land consolidation – reduction of land fragmentation. It does this in the context of rural Vietnam, studying whether land consolidation promotes or hinders the Vietnamese government's policy objectives of encouraging agricultural mechanization and stimulating the off-farm rural economy.
Labor migration and large-scale land enclosures are increasingly central to the story of agrarian change throughout the Global South. Nonetheless, there remain limited understandings of how recent explosions of mobile labor and new sources of smallholder capital shape and are shaped by ongoing land use and property transformations.
The recent spate of violence mostly in north-central and southern Nigeria, typically credited to conflicts between herders and farmers, and the reactions, narratives, and representations that have attended them, calls for an examination of core security questions: who or what is to be secured, from what threat and by what means.
Desde el giro neoliberal de la economía peruana, el gran agronegocio corporativo y latifundista se ha posicionado como el modelo de desarrollo de la actividad agraria en el Perú, en detrimento del campesinado y de la agricultura familiar.
The use of tree-based fallowing as a sustainable land management system may serve as an important developmental pathway out of poverty across drought-prone watersheds in the Upper Blue Nile Basin, Ethiopia.
The move towards sustainable agriculture requires a more detailed understanding of farmers’ knowledge(s) and knowledge practices. Increasingly, it is important to understand not only what farmers understand, but how their knowledge practices incorporate others – especially given the emerging call for environmentally-orientated policy measures to move beyond an individual farmer focus.
The final part of a blog series is a very preliminary reflection on the changes observed over 20 years and some speculation on what the future might hold for the land reform farmers of Masvingo over the next 20 years. Covers demographic shifts;places of success;accumulation and differentiation;changing patterns of investment;agriculture and local economies;state failure;the future?
Around the world, land is the foundation of rural life. Perhaps no other asset can equal the transformative power of land to create economic opportunity, boost productivity and food security, and fulfill the promise of fundamental human rights and a life of basic dignity and access to justice.
