By Samuel Gebreselassie

Sharp inequalities in the distribution of land remains a major cause of extreme poverty in many developing countries. Some instances are the result of ownership patterns inherited from colonial administrations, others are linked to the struggle for economic prosperity in the post-independence era.Landlessness is therefore a significant problem for the rural poor. Most remedies that have been undertaken previously have not yielded positive results, as can be witnessed in Southern Africa today.

Poverty and income inequality persist in South Africa despite efforts to eliminate them. Poverty is more pervasive in rural areas, particularly in the former homelands: the majority (65 percent) of the poor are found in rural areas and 78 percent of those likely to be chronically poor are also in rural areas.

A workshop held in Midrand, South Africa, in May 2011 brought together policy and decision-makers, researchers and practitioners to discuss water security issues in eastern and southern Africa. This proceedings document summarises the workshop's outcomes with the aim of:

improving the understanding of water security
identifying opportunities to better address challenges faced by individual countries and sectors
highlighting areas for further research
identifying immediate opportunities for development projects.

Looks at the allocation of land for specific purposes in the integrated land use plans that have come into effect across China since 1998..The paper: presents an analysis of the development of policies on national land use planning since the promulgation of the first Land Law in 1986.

The agriculture sector faces the challenge of providing adequate food to a growing world population. There is limited scope to expand arable land, and unpredictable weather, floods, and other disastrous events make food production even more challenging. This guidebook provides information on 22 technologies and options for adapting to climate change in the agriculture sector.

Report finds that land rights in Ethiopia are highly insecure, and higher tenure security and transferability could enhance investment and agricultural productivity. Trying to identify and implement measures to increase producers’ tenure security could have a large pay-off in terms of rural productivity and poverty reduction.The authors use a large data set from Ethiopia that differentiates tenure security and transferability to explore determinants of different types of land-related investment and its possible impact on productivity.

Key findings and policy implications discussed in this document—Promoting Farm Investment for Sustainable Intensification of African Agriculture— include the following: Farmers are much more likely to invest in both productivity and land protection when they can produce cash crops. Livestock husbandry is a boon to farm investments, as it provides cash income, manure, and an insurance policy against crop failures. Land tenure insecurity, political instability, policy caprice, and wildly fluctuating farm prices dissuade investment.

Utilises a number of situations observed in tropical Asia to motivate a simple trade-theoretical analysis of the implications of technological progress in agriculture.

This paper assesses the prospects of mitigating climate change through emission reductions from forestry and agriculture in the Brazilian Amazon. It uses official statistics, literature and case study material to identify the scope for emission reductions, in terms of potential additionality, opportunity costs, technological complexity, transaction costs, and risks of economic and environmental spill-over effects.

Agriculture is the largest global user of biodiversity. Over-reliance on a handful of crops puts global food security at great risk especially in the context of climate change. Selected and used by generations of farmers, agricultural biodiversity contributes to reducing malnutrition, alleviating poverty and combating climate change challenges. This diversity has been in decline for decades and is now in danger of disappearing and efforts needed to conserve them using both ex situ and in situ approaches.

This paper seeks to map out the historical trajectory leading to a series of migrations in and from the erstwhile princely state of Travancore during 1900-70 in order to acquire and bring land under cultivation. It argues that these migrations undertaken with a moralistic and paternal mission of reclaiming ‘empty’ spaces into productive locations were a result of a specific form of economic modernity in Kerala as beckoned by colonialism and appropriated by a resolute local agency through a process of translation.