Policies for improved food security : the roles of land tenure policies and land markets

This chapter is written for the European Commission for a book to be published by Springer on The Role of Smallholder Farms in Food and Nutrition Security. The author takes full responsibility for the content.
This chapter provides an overview of what we know about farm size distributions, the emerging land markets, the role of tenure systems, tenure reforms and land policies in shaping the distribution of increasingly scarce land resources. The primary focus is on Africa while making some comparisons with Asia. Climate risk and change have serious implications for household vulnerability and food security. While there is a need to absorb further population growth in rural areas, a rapid rise in rural-urban migration is inevitable. Careful land use planning and tenure reforms are needed to smooth the transition towards more intensive land use.