Land tenure administration in Zambia suffers from serious shortcomings in governance. Too much power is vested with too few checks and balances in too few people, notably the chiefs, local councils and the Commissioner of Lands. This creates fertile ground for abuse and corruption, both of which mar the sector. Zambia still has an important distance to cover in the field of land governance and legal recognition of customary rights and institutions.

In the Karnataka state of India, the First Agro farm has more than 40 varieties of vegetables on sale, all of them free of chemical residues. Both hotels and restaurants as well as more and more retailers are appreciating the range of certified products from this young enterprise.

To ensure that there is sustainability at the community level in its land rights and governance training programme, Land Rights Research and Resources Institute (HAKIARDHI), a Tanzanian national level organization that spearheads land rights of small-scale producers, uses land rights monitors (LRMs) in its program areas. In each of the selected villages of the program districts, two LRMs (a man and a woman) who have received land rights training from HAKIARDHI are democratically elected by villagers.

The global finance, energy and food crises are fuelling a global rush for land in developing countries. In their search for land, political leaders and investors look to Africa as a potential food supplier for the rest of the world. However, the current trend of land liberalisation rarely offers a solution to sustainable food production and poverty reduction among smallhold farmers in rural areas, as shown by this case study.

The Land tenure system in Zambia is divided in the following administrative segments: colonial period

1880-1964; immediate post independence 1964-1975, post independence period of one party political

In 2003, the Maputo Declaration of the African Union stated that, within five years, 10 per cent of budgets of member states would be dedicated to agriculture. Ten years on, despite spending increases by some countries African governments still allocate an average of only 4 per cent of their national budgets to agriculture. Only eight out of 54 countries under the African Union have consistently reached the 10 per cent target.

Food First Backgrounder, Spring 2014, Vol. 20, No. 1

Introduction: Land, Race and the Agrarian Crisis

The disastrous effects of widespread land grabbing and land concentration sweeping the globe do not affect all farmers equally. The degree of vulnerability to these threats is highest for smallholders, women and people of color—the ones who grow, harvest, process and prepare most of the world’s food.

At the turn of the 21st century, farmland was still considered an investment backwater by most of the financial sector. Although some insurance companies have had farmland holdings for years, most financial investors found farmland, and agricultural investment in general, unappealing compared to the much higher returns to be made in financial markets.

Introduction: Farmland, A Safe Investment in Troubling Financial Times

Sustainable agricultural intensification holds promise to play a
role in the broader effort to ensure food security while protecting our natural
resource base. But what would such a sustainable intensification look like in
practice? This chapter presents the results of an ex ante assessment of the yield
and food security potential of 11 technologies for the sustainable intensification
of the key staple crops of maize, rice, and wheat.

The practice of food security assessment in Tanzania is based on use of food crops production data surveys of a preceding seasonal year with agro-meteorological analyses based on estimated vegetation status as reflected from NDVI computed from NOAA satellite images.  Food security assessment essentially is a prediction of food availability in predefined future time framework. It helps to establish availability or deficiency of food, thereby facilitating planning and implementation of strategies to mitigate the problem of hunger.

The concept in this paper builds upon basic principles of sustainability to address the problem of how a sustainable project must contribute to economic and social welfare without depleting natural resources, destroying the environment or harming human health.. With this understanding, a systems approach was used in a study that conceptualised a paradigm shift in project management system for sustainability incorporating Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), Cause-effect Chain and the Socio-economic Resource models.

Selection of roads for improvement of transport network with minimum demolition of houses required in roads widening has been a challenge for many years in upgrading informal settlements. The problem is compounded by lack of a methodological tool required to assist decision makers on selecting roads that can be widened and improved for improvement of transport network with minimum demolition of houses and compensation costs.