This contribution deals with agricultural dynamics in late-Imperial Russia. Based upon a comprehensive micro-level data set on annual yields between 1883 and 1913, we provide insight into regional differences of agricultural growth and the development prospects of Russian agriculture before WWI. Making use of the fact that contemporary Russian statistics distinguished between mostly communally governed open fields and privately owned land, we are able to test the implications of different land tenure systems for agricultural yield growth.

Communal forests, or Montes Veciñais en Man Común (MVMC), are a specific form of communal land tenure and a singular legal category in Galicia, a region in Northwest Spain. MVMC extend over one third of the area of the region. Over the years, MVMC have undergone many changes in terms of ownership and resource management. Such changes have resulted in land tenure insecurity among current landowners, who live in rural areas.

The nation's family forest lands can be an important contributor to carbon sequestration efforts. Yet very little is known about how family forest landowners view programs that enable them to sell carbon credits generated from the growth of their forest and the compensation that would be required to encourage a meaningful level of participation. To address this information gap, we conducted a study to identify and quantify family forest landowner interest in participating in a voluntary carbon market trading program in the Lake States, USA.

This paper examines claims and conflicts in the management of the Abijata-Shalla Lakes National Park in the Central Rift Valley of Ethiopia. We used data from households, key informants (elders, park managers), and focus group discussions. Poor wildlife policy resulting in space competition between wildlife and humans (other forms of land use), limited means of revenue generation for insiders and centralized benefits from tourism have accumulated grievance and then conflict between national park authority and local communities.

The paper aims to identify the rationality of peasant communities and their contribution to rural development in Kampong Thom province. To do so, an interdisciplinary analytical framework addresses the dynamics of land use and land tenure, the strategies of labor force allocation as well as the determinants of land and labor agricultural productivities amongst peasant communities. It rests on details field surveys in two communes located in very distinct agro-ecological settings of Kampong Thom province.

In the early 1980s residents of Hobeni, in South Africa’s Eastern Cape, were subjected to forced resettlement, under “betterment” policy ostensibly aimed at soil conservation. They were moved into a spatially contiguous but socially differentiated village. South Africa’s political transition ended this policy, and in the early 1990s, some people, mainly from part of the resettlement area (Kunene) characterized by dense kinship networks who had faced pressure to leave, and began to return voluntarily to their former sites, opting to live in dispersed, flexible settlements.

The rainfall pattern in the Sahel is very erratic with a high spatial variability. We tested the often reported hypothesis that the dispersion of farmers' fields around the village territory helps mitigate agro-climatic risk by increasing yield stability from year to year. We also wished to evaluate whether this strategy had an effect on the yield disparity among households in a village. Based on a network of approximately 60 rain gauges spread over 500km² in the Fakara region (Southwest Niger), daily rainfall was interpolated at 300m×300m resolution over a 12-year period.