How does practice matches land laws in Central Asia?

Zarema Akhmadiyeva,Thomas Herzfeld

doi:10.1016/j.landusepol.2021.105726

Abstract

This paper aims to explore the association between discrepancies in land rights and actual practices on the one hand and farmers’ intentions to increase agricultural production on the other hand. We use farm-level data collected during a survey conducted in 2019 in southern Kazakhstan and eastern Uzbekistan and compare perceptions with land legislations of both countries. Comparative analysis of tenure conditions revealed that Kazakh farmers are less restricted in land use than Uzbek farmers. Moreover, insufficient law enforcement allows Kazakh farmers to violate existing restrictions on land transferability. Uzbek farmers tend to underuse their rights in such crucial issues as income generating and withdrawal of products from the land; the reason lies in inconsistency between land code and supplementary decrees for strategic crops. Our empirical findings show that mismatches between land rights on paper and perceived land rights − that might be the violation of law restrictions or incomplete use of land rights − generally reduces farmers’ willingness to increase production.

Highlights

Land intensification that basically refers to the increased use of nonland inputs on a given plot plays an important role in improving global food security (Brookfield, 2001; Gustavsson et al, 2011)
Data on actual practices collected during the survey was used to estimate their discrepancies with legal rights
This study examines the association between tenure insecurity originating from the discrepancies between formal land rights and in dividual perceptions of these rights, and the farmers’ intention to in crease agricultural production in southern Kazakhstan and eastern Uzbekistan

Summary

Introduction

Land intensification that basically refers to the increased use of nonland inputs on a given plot plays an important role in improving global food security (Brookfield, 2001; Gustavsson et al, 2011) It comprises various farmers’ actions (often investment consuming) such as the conversion of fallow land to permanent cropland, an increase in inputs, and adoption of improved technologies. Much of the literature on land tenure security uses formal or informal institutional arrangements separately to analyse their impact on the performance of farming activity, but neglects the effect of their interactions. This gap leads us to investigate how the interaction between legal land rights and perceived land rights affects land inten sification. Introducing a new approach to compare what is in “paper and practice”, Klümper et al (2018) assume that these paper-practice mis matches can lead to less investment in resource use; but authors do not provide corresponding empirical evidence

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