Global land use structure is changing rapidly due to unceasing population growth and accelerated urbanization, which leads to fierce competition between the rigid demand for built-up area and the protection of cultivated land, forest, and grassland. It has been a great challenge to realize the sustainable development of land resources.

Detailed comparative analysis of basic lines of agrarian transformations in China and Russia has been done, its results have been analysed. Not only conceptual differences of the agrarian policy in those countries are demonstrated, but also consequences of concrete political decisions for the development of the branch. The differences are stipulated mainly by two groups of factors. The first of them is the opposite approaches to transforming land relations and the entire system of agrarian relations.

The view that widows and their dependents face greater livelihood risks in the era of HIV/AIDS is indeed supported by nationally-representative survey results from Zambia. Efforts to safeguard widows’ rights to land through land tenure innovations involving community authorities may be an important component of social protection, poverty alleviation, and HIV/AIDS mitigation strategies. Several of the findings reported show the influence of local traditional authorities in affecting the extent to which widows are able to retain land.

The serious food crisis in 2007 has reinstated the issue of food security. In particular, it evokes an old set of questions associated with the sustainability of an adequate food supply: are we facing a systemic shortage of arable land for food production? How serious is the oil dependence of food security in relation to peak oil (the point in time when the maximum rate of global oil extraction is reached)? To answer these questions one has to study the role of technical inputs in agricultural production, especially those inputs generated from fossil energy (how much fossil energy is used?

Internationally, there is interest in increasing the trade in ‘green’ market products, such as organic, fair trade, reduction of deforestation and forest degradation/reduction of deforestation and forest degradation+ for reduced deforestation and mitigation of climate change, and environmental goods and services. This crucially needs to be extended to the many poor, hungry and marginalized smallholder farmers in developing countries.

The present e-collection of scientific works deals with results of research on issues of economy, agrarian and engineering sciences studied by researchers, post-graduate students, magisters and students of Mykolayiv State Agrarian Univ. and other educational establishments of the Ministry of Agrarian Policy of Ukraine are elucidated. The issue comprises 32 scientific papers, distributed by three sections, in particular Economic sciences (23 papers), Agricultural sciences (7) and Engineering sciences (2 papers), and, what is important, except the Ukrainian-language contents (pp.

The present e-collection of scientific works deals with results of research on issues of economy, agrarian and engineering sciences studied by researchers, post-graduate students, magisters and students of Mykolayiv State Agrarian Univ. and other educational establishments of the Ministry of Agrarian Policy of Ukraine.

Rehabilitating degraded rangelands using enclosures offers various benefits to agro‐pastoral households. However, enclosure benefits cannot be generalized as there are variations across dryland ecosystems and societies. This study assessed the qualitative and quantitative benefits derived from rehabilitating degraded rangelands using private enclosures in Chepareria, West Pokot County, Kenya.

A large number of mathematical models have been developed for supporting optimization of land-use allocation; however, few of them simultaneously consider land suitability (e.g., physical features and spatial information) and various uncertainties existing in many factors (e.g., land availabilities, land demands, land-use patterns, and ecological requirements). This paper incorporates geographic information system (GIS) technology into interval-probabilistic programming (IPP) for land-use planning management (IPP-LUPM).

Key Policy Message:- Despite having relatively low population densities, inadequate access to land is one of the major causes of rural poverty in Zambia.- The apparent paradox of inadequate access to land for many rural households in a country of low population density is partially reconciled when taking into account that economically viable arable land requires at least some degree of access to basic services, water, road infrastructure, and markets.

This paper provides arguments for discussions of the role of property rights for food security and child nutrition in rural Africa. The results are drawn from a case study in the Kafue Flats of Zambia. They show that unclear jurisdictional boundaries and weak authorities facilitated re-negotiations of property rights related to natural resources in the context of the Southern African food crisis 2002-2003. Access to natural resources was skewed towards the more powerful.