A guest post by Dr. Paul Munro-Faure, Deputy Director, Climate, Energy and Tenure Division, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) Last month, the 40th Session of the UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS) was held at the headquarters of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Rome. Land governance and responsible tenure were a strong thread of interest and discussion throughout the week-long meeting.

A new opinion piece describes how secure land rights can improve agricultural productivity and food security. In Why Strong Land Rights Advance Food Security, Eric Postel, USAID's Assistant Administrator for the Bureau of Economic Growth, Education and Environment and Tjada McKenna, Feed the Future’s Deputy Coordinator for Development, explain what development practitioners can do to improve land rights and food security in a multitude of development projects.

The G8’s New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition aims to lift 50 million people out of poverty in ten years through a partnership between G8 members, African nations and the private sector. In order to increase production at a rate needed to achieve food security, the New Alliance seeks to accelerate responsible investment in African agriculture and commit to coordinated policy reforms.

Guest commentary by Tiernan Mennen, Director, Land Tenure and Resource Rights Practice, Chemonics International, Inc.

The unequal distribution of land in Malawi has been identified as one of the binding constraints on agricultural productivity and production. Most smallholder farmers hold land under customary tenure and own less than one hectare, many being unable to produce adequate food. In order to improve access to land, the Government started implementing a land reform programme in 2005 through a market-assisted, community-based approach to land acquisition.

It has been argued that many of the poverty reduction strategy papers pay insufficient attetion to the role of land access and land distribution in rural poverty. Redressing the inequalities between small-scale and large-scale farming sectots is likely to be an important element of an effective rural poverty reduction strategy in countries such as Zimbabwe and Kenya.

Land has a cultural value in Nigeria in that its ownership cements
the relationship of the owner with the community. But more
importantly, land resource is critical to the livelihood of rural
farmers because they depend on it for income and food supply.
It is therefore important that it is sustainably managed and
efficiently used. This study investigated the ownership pattern
of land among the farming families in the study area and the
attitude towards its management. It adopted the farming and

The report by the Urban Agriculture Magazine draws on numerous case studies from around the world in discussing issues of availability, access and usability of land for urban agriculture.Rapid urbanisation has lead to an increasing demand for urban agricultural land. The adequate and efficient use of the land by urban farmers is of increasing concern to planners and municipal policymakers especially.Urban agriculture takes place on-plot and off-plot, and in periurban and is limited by the amount of non-built-up space.

Bangladesh is a land scarce country where per capita cultivated land is only 12.5 decimals.The present study estimates the rate of land conversion and consequent loss of agricultural production of the country besides determining the factors affecting such conversion. The study is based mainly on field survey covering 24 villages from six divisions of the country Annual Conversion of farm land is estimated to be 0.56 per cent and the country’s loss of rice production is also estimated to be between 0.86 and 1.16 per cent.

This report is the culmination of a three-year research project that brought together forty members and partners of ILC to examine the characteristics, drivers and impacts and trends of rapidly increasing commercial pressures on land.The report strongly urges models of investment that do not involve large-scale land acquisitions, but rather work together with local land users, respecting their land rights and the ability of small-scale farmers themselves to play a key role in investing to meet the food and resource demands of the future.The conclusions of the report are based on case studie

This research in the highlands of Ethiopia shows how poverty and land degradation can be reduced in a resource-constrained agricultural area. It uses a bioeconomic model to address how alternative policy options can affect poverty and land degradation.

This paper examines the case of a Nordic appropriation of land through a lease agreement with chiefs in southern Ghana, initially for biofuel production and then for large-scale, mechanized food production.The production shift triggered resistance over loss of land and environmental impact, and threatened to destabilize the project.This enticed the company to innovate through improving cooperation and offering compensation to individuals who lost land.