Examines the implications of the HIV epidemic for rural development policies and programmes in sub-Saharan Africa and, in particular: the inter-relationships between rural development and HIV/AIDS; and the broad policy and programming challenges that the epidemic poses for rural institutions. The proposed conceptual framework for the identification of key policy and programming issues for rural development raised by HIV is intended to provide guidance for the design and conduct of a set of four case studies to be carried out in Southern and Eastern Africa.

The National Agricultural Policy (NAP) document released by the Government of Indian in 2000 aimed to attain an agricultural output growth rate in excess of 4 percent per annum, based on efficient use of resources, and sought to achieve this growth in a sustainable and equitable manner.This paper argues that (by 2004) no serious action had been initiated on most of the NAP’s proposals, and blames this inaction on the lack of a concrete and time bound action plan to complement the policy.

Aim of this series to provide a reference point for DFID decision-making about various aspects of service delivery and resource management. The series will also analyse different aspects of the policy process and options for donor intervention.
Issues covered are:

Land redistribution or the transfer of ownership rights to the tiller has been the focal point of the land reform program in the Philippines. This transfer was envisioned to result in a significant shift in income and productivity in the agrarian sector. While some equalisation of incomes may have indeed occurred, the full benefits of this asset transfer, however, have not been realised.

Today, many rural poor Filipinos are using state law to try to claim land rights. In spite of the availability of a much stronger set of legal resources than ever before, claiming legal land rights remains difficult. Some argue these difficulties are a reason to turn away from state-led land reform and toward a market-assisted land reform (MALR) model.

Examines livelihood diversification as a survival strategy of rural households in developing countries. Although still of central importance, farming on its own is increasingly unable to provide a sufficient means of survival in rural areas.

The series of studies discussed in this overview pull together updated information about large-scale land acquisitions in the region, with the aim of identifying trends, common threats, divergences and possible solutions. As well as summarising trends in investment, trade, crop development and land tenure arrangements, the studies focus on the land tenure and human rights challenges.

As decentralisation and tenure reform sweeps through the Sahel, doubts remain whether communities can look after commonly owned land. Is privatisation or state control the best means of preventing the degradation of resources? Can local communities forge institutional mechanisms to regulate competing claims on common resources?

Literature review, focusing on recent and contemporary tenancy structures in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Tenancy for purposes of this review is broadly defined to include different leasing arrangements such sharecropping, labor tenancy, fixed cash rentals, and reverse leasing. Authors have limited our discussion to private leasing of agricultural land, thereby ignoring issues pertaining to leasing of public, forest, and other noncrop lands.

This paper develops a theoretical model of land leasing that includes transaction costs, risk pooling motives and non-tradable productive inputs. It investigates the empirical implications of land contracts using data collected from four villages in Ethiopia.The paper shows that sharecropping is the dominant contract if transaction costs are negligible, but that a rental contract may arise if transaction costs decrease with increasing the tenant’s share of output.

Population growth and urbanisation are driving a livestock revolution. Mixed farming systems are the present and the foreseeable future of West African livestock systems, with concurrent changes in livestock feeding systems and the role of grazing, fodder and penning. The livestock economy has to be seen as part of a national economy in which urban and rural facets interact. Effective policies need to be based on recognition of the capacity of rural people to invest in improving their livelihoods.

Summarizes recent research (to 1991) on rural land markets in the Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) region and on the relationship between this research and broader land tenure issues. The purpose of the project that prompted this paper was to carry out cross-country and longitudinal research on land tenure issues in the LAC region so as to provide an instructive and informative analysis of how tenure patterns affect economic, rural development, and environmental issues.