Land tenure and agricultural productivity in Uganda

Uganda’s significant economic growth over the last twenty years seemed to create favorable conditions for increased agricultural productivity, but agricultural productivity has failed to increase concordantly. As a result, most increases in aggregate crop production have been achieved from the expansion of cultivated land rather than increased investment in production technologies to raise crop yields per unit area of land. As access to land is increasingly constrained by high population growth, further expansion of cultivated land will be unsustainable. How can Ugandan farmers make more productive use of the land they now have? Research has shown that secure land tenure is an important institutional factor affecting agricultural technology utilization by smallholder farmers by providing incentives for greater investment to enhance the productivity of the land. This brief seeks to determine the relevance of security of land tenure to agricultural development in Uganda.