In recent years, Zambia has witnessed increased interest from private investors in acquiring land for agriculture. As elsewhere, large-scale land acquisitions are often accompanied with promises of capital investments to build infrastructure, bring new technologies and know-how, create employment, and improve market access, among other benefits

A Case Study of Selected Agricultural Investments in Zambia (2013) 

Agricultural investments create risks as well as opportunities, for instance The Case Study of Integrated Tamale Fruit Company (2013) In recent years, Ghana has witnessed increased interest from private companies in developing agricultural investments. This trend is common to many lower/middle income countries.

A Case Study of Selected Agricultural Investments in Northern Tanzania (2013)

For early reports, see FAO’s Corporate Document Repository

CIHEAM - Watch Letter N.28 released: "Land Issues in the Mediterranean Countries"

Since 2007 CIHEAM is publishing a quarterly Watch Letter devoted to Major Issues in Mediterranean Agriculture, Food and Rural Areas. Each Issue contains a series of articles on a specific topic, together with information on CIHEAM current activities.

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"For millions of people living in the world’s poorest countries, access to land is a matter not of wealth, but of survival, identity and belonging. Most of the 1.4 billion people earning less than US$1.25 a day live in rural areas and depend largely on agriculture for their livelihoods, while an estimated 2.5 billion people are involved in full- or part-time smallholder agriculture.

In line with the conventional view that customary land rights impede agricultural development, the traditional tenure system in Nigeria has been perceived to obstruct the achievement of efficient development and agricultural transformation. This led to the Land Use Act (LUA) of 1978.

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.

28 May 2014

GRAIN | La Vía Campesina

For immediate release

Friends of the Earth’s report, ‘What’s your pension funding? How UK institutional investors finance the global land grab’, highlights the investments of UK institutional investors, such as British Airways Pension Fund, Legal & General and Standard Life, in companies accused of grabbing land, destroying the environment, and undermining sustainable livelihoods.

This briefing paper makes the case for proactive business engagement in respecting land rights and ensuring legal, fair and inclusive practices on land use, access to natural resources and equitable development opportunities. It outlines key challenges, provides an overview of existing instruments that can help companies address issues related to land, and points to practical entry points for improved business practices.

In agrarian societies land serves as the main means not only for generating a livelihood but often also for accumulating wealth and transferring it between generations. How land rights are assigned therefore determines households' ability to generate subsistence and income, their social and economic status (and in many cases their collective identity), their incentive to exert nonobservable effort and make investments, and often their ability to access financial markets or to make arrangements for smoothing consumption and income.

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