Tenure Relations Research Articles

The persistence and expansion of sharecropping in a Javanese village

AbstractIn the Javanese village of Kaliloro, share tenancy in rice cultivation, which was widely predicted to disappear with the Green Revolution, has not declined but expanded since the early 1970s. In this article, building on previous debates on share tenancy, we show how sharecropping has survived and expanded in Kaliloro's generally commoditized agrarian economy. Many share tenancy relationships in Kaliloro link wealthier landowners and landless or near‐landless tenants. But many also occur between households of relatively equal status and between parents and their own children. For both landowners and share tenants, their reasons for reliance on sharecropping over hired labour are complex, going beyond simple comparisons of relative labour costs (to landowners) or labour earnings (to share tenants). The landless and near‐landless are well aware of the exploitative nature of share tenancy, but it remains an important component of their pluriactive livelihoods, even in times of rising farm wage rates, mainly to ensure a supply of rice for domestic consumption. For landowners who are too busy, or unable, to manage cultivation themselves, share tenancy remains the most convenient, effective, and risk‐free labour regime, and mechanism of surplus transfer from direct producer to landowner.

Dynamics of Tenancy Relations Among the Small- and Medium- Scale Farmers of Telangana State

Dynamics of Tenancy Relations Among the Small- and Medium- Scale Farmers of Telangana State

Adoption and potential of agri‐environmental schemes in Europe: Cross‐regional evidence from interviews with farmers

Abstract In Europe and elsewhere, agri‐environmental schemes (AES) are designed to reduce agriculture's impacts on the environment. Designing effective schemes requires an understanding of the reasons that drive farmers' decisions whether to adopt AES. Currently, most insights come from individual case studies or structured surveys based on predefined questions. There is a paucity of studies that do not rely on rigid preconceptions about relevant behavioural factors while also offering a geographically and socio‐culturally broad perspective that can address the cultural and institutional context‐specificity of behavioural studies. Also, most studies focus on the adoption decision, while implementation decisions and their consequences for the ecological effectiveness of AES remain understudied. In this article, we present the results from semi‐structured farmer interviews conducted in five agricultural landscapes across Europe. The results are used to uncover reasons for AES adoption as well as the implications of AES implementation decisions for their ecological effectiveness. The main reason for AES adoption that was common across case study regions is the interplay of opportunity costs and payment levels, which has negative implications for the ecological effectiveness of AES as farmers prioritized marginal land or adopted non‐additional AES. Among reasons that vary across regions, tenure relations and the role of ecological reasoning stand out. We find that AES are unlikely to trigger broader shifts towards sustainable management but there is some potential for improvement, mainly by increasing the flexibility, spatial targeting and ecological ambition of the schemes. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

Land tenure transformation: The case of community conservancies in northern Kenya

Over the last thirty years, community conservancies have become widespread in several African countries exemplifying new patterns of land and resource governance strategies. Since 1995, thirty-nine new community conservancies have been established in association with an NGO - the Northern Rangelands Trust in Kenya. Through community conservancies, or community-owned conservation initiatives organized around a demarcated area, the rights and responsibilities of resource governance are significantly reorganized. In this paper, we analyze the process of reorganizing the pastoralist commons in northern Kenya through community conservancies leading to land tenure transformation. Based on two case studies in northern Kenya, we show how land and natural resource governance interventions following a global policy blueprint through community conservancies results in real material and political consequences, and highlight the spatial implications as a result of this process. We argue that community conservancies significantly reorganize the governance of collectively used land and resources. This reorganization has serious implications for land tenure relations and has become the latest manifestation of the hardening of lines between communities in northern Kenya.

Local Self‐Governance and the State in South Sudan: Studying Gendered Tenure Relations in Times of Uncertainty

<p>With governance increasingly regarded as co-governance, states’ capacity to steer, correct, and discipline a wide range of self-governing actors becomes crucial for states’ effectiveness, efficiency, and democracy. This article investigates that capacity and the relationship between formal institutions and customary self-governance in areas of limited statehood. In South Sudan, the field of land governance can be regarded as an area of limited statehood. As land relations are closely connected to clan structures and intra-familial relationships, customary norms and institutions enjoy great legitimacy and are an important locus of local land governance and dispute resolution. The South Sudanese government has promulgated legal provisions for equal rights to property and inheritance that clash head-on with customary notions of gender roles in the family and the preservation of family land. By focusing on the case of women’s land rights in South Sudan, combining literature study with data from exploratory fieldwork in two South Sudanese towns, this article aims to reflect on the cohabitation of customary and formal norms and values and the role formal legal and administrative systems, in areas of limited statehood, can and do play in boundary setting for customary self-governance.</p>

Land Transfer or Trusteeship: Can Agricultural Production Socialization Services Promote Grain Scale Management?

Grain Scale Management (GSM) is a crucial factor in ensuring national food security. However, in countries facing rigid resource constraints and complex land tenure relationships, the strategy of promoting large-scale grain management through land management rights transfer may not be sustainable. Therefore, based on the traditional agricultural division of labor theory, we analyze the mechanism and rationality of Agricultural Production Socialization Services (APSS) with scale characteristics to promote GSM and propose a new approach to GSM with empirical evidence from China. Using county-level panel data from Hubei province spanning from 2010 to 2021, we construct a multi-period double difference model based on the difference in the time of the establishment of pilot agricultural production socialization service counties in Hubei province. Our empirical results demonstrate the role of APSS in promoting GSM at the macro level. Specifically, the establishment of pilot counties for APSS significantly improves the level of local GSM. Furthermore, our study reveals that the degree of local financial intervention, regional industrial structure, and regional topography have heterogeneous effects on the implementation of the policy.

Specific Human Capital and Skills in Indian Manufacturing: Observed Wage and Tenure Relationships from a Worker Survey.

Successive Indian governments have attempted to increase the growth in employment alongside encouraging skill enhancement. Against this background, we empirically explore issues surrounding the investment in specific capital by workers. In particular, we try to discern the presence of specific human capital investment by investigating whether there is a link between tenure and wages and find that there is indeed such a link evident in India. This allows us to infer that it is valuable to have long-term relations between employers and their workers and therefore labour market institutions that support long-term employer-employee relationship need to be encouraged.

“It is the Wild West out here”

This research builds on the emerging body of literature investigating the implications of changing land tenure relations in the Prairie Provinces, where over 70% of Canada’s farmland is located. Through an analysis of survey data collected in 2019 from 400 grain farmers, we address the following research questions: How are farmers experiencing changing patterns of land tenure and control at the local level? What challenges and opportunities do farmers face in these changing farmland markets? And, how has the entry of new actors (farmland investors) changed relationships between landlords and tenants? Our findings suggest that those farmers who are witnessing the financialization of farmland in their regions view this phenomenon with alarm. Furthermore, we show that those who rent from corporate investors are more often subject to landlord influence over production practices and pay higher rental rates than those who rent from other landlord types. Concern about farmland concentration is widespread among Prairie farmers, with a variety of negative effects identified, including increased competition over land and the decline of local communities. We recommend that future research probe how different investor types (individual vs. corporate and/or institutional) engage in land markets, examine the gender dimensions of landlord-tenant relations, and engage in analyses that challenge the current iteration of the private property regime.

Informal land leasing in rural India persists because it is credible

While insecure property rights are considered ‘perverse’ with respect to development, we examine what are the features most amenable for their persistence. Applying a Credibility Thesis framework in the context of rural land tenancy relations in India, that are largely held through private arrangements, we try to understand if there are inherent preferences to the existing informal structure of land leasing. An in-depth primary household survey across four states of India reveals that farmers rely on customary, informal mode of leasing arrangements because of their functionality in terms of no paperwork, easy accessibility, swifter modes of payment and prompt conflict resolution. Informality makes the existing institutional arrangement ‘credible’ in the eyes of both the tenants and owners. This raises the questions of whether policy prescriptions on intricate land related issues should entail appreciation of prevailing informal tenant customs, regulating them, or simply letting them be and realign agrarian support and delivery systems around this embedded informality.

Magnitude and Determinants of Reverse Tenancy: A Study of Agriculturally Developed and Backward States

The present study analyses the extent of reverse tenancy in terms of who leases in and who leases out land in agriculturally developed and backward states using unit-level National Sample Survey data from different rounds. There are three important findings of the study. First, reverse tenancy in terms of distribution of leased in and leased-out land among households of different size categories is more pronounced in agriculturally developed states while in agriculturally backward states, most of the leased in and leased-out land was accounted for by sub-marginal, marginal and small households. Second, in terms of concentration of leased in and leased-out land among households at different levels of ownership hierarchy, the tenancy relations in both the categories of states conform to the traditional variety where most of the leased-in land is concentrated among households that are at the bottom and middle levels and leased-out land among households that are at top different levels. Third, the results of the logit regression further show that variables such as household size, age of the head of family, education of the head of the family, self-employment in agriculture, ownership of livestock and land use affect the probability of medium and large households leasing in and sub-marginal, marginal and small households leasing out land though the nature of their effect, and statistical significance of the regression coefficients vary among agriculturally developed and backward states and also over the years.

Informal cadastres as enabling tools for disaster risk management

Disaster Risk Management requires up-to-date land information availed through the cadastre. Informal settlements are often located in disaster prone areas. Having up-to-date land information about these informal settlements is one step towards disaster preparedness and building community resilience in the highway towards sustainable development. This study designs conceptual models using unified modelling language (UML) for an informal cadastre for recording land information pertinent to disaster risk management based on a South African case study. The results demonstrate that land tenure relationships in informal settlements can be mapped using the Social Tenure Domain Model (STDM). The importance of disaster information is that it provides communities with information to tackle disasters and improve in their capabilities to handle them. With such information, the disaster risk can be minimised. This study is aligned to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 1 and 3. The linkage between spatial data, disaster resilience and the SDGs is explored.

Excavating agrarian transformation under ‘secure’ crop booms: insights from the China-Myanmar borderland

ABSTRACT This paper examines the transformation of agrarian livelihoods due to crop booms at the China-Myanmar borderland. A key finding is that local villagers have rented out their land to outside investors looking to make fruit boom investments. However, the villagers neither cultivated the same crops themselves, nor were they hired as wage laborers. Overall, this study finds that crop booms provide local villagers with opportunities to reallocate natural resources and adjust their livelihoods. We argue that the dynamics of agrarian livelihoods are co-produced as the result of transnational labor migration and state-led borderland repositioning under secure land tenure relations. This study contributes to the current discussion regarding the changes undergone by an agrarian society experiencing crop booms.

SmartSkeMa: Scalable Documentation for Community and Customary Land Tenure

According to the online database landmarkmap, up to an estimated 50% or more of the world’s habitable land is held by indigenous peoples and communities. While legal and procedural provisions are being made for bureaucratically managing the many different types of tenure relations in this domain, there continues to be a lack of tools and expertise needed to quickly and accurately document customary and indigenous land rights. Software and hardware tools that have been designed for documenting land tenure through communities continue to assume a parcel-based model of land as well as categories of land relations (RRR) largely dimensionally similar to statutory land rights categories. The SmartSkeMa approach to land tenure documentation combines sketching by hand with aerial imagery and an ontology-based model of local rules regulating land tenure relations to produce a system specifically designed to allow accurate documentation of land tenure from a local perspective. In addition, the SmartSkeMa adaptor which is an OWL-DL based set of rules for translating local land related concepts to the LADM concepts provides a more high-level view of the data collected (i.e., what does this concept relate to within the national LADM profile?) In this paper we present the core functionalities of SmartSkeMa using examples from Kenya and Ethiopia. Based on an expert survey and focus groups held in Kenya, we also analyze how the approach fairs on the Fit-for-Purpose Land Administration tools scale. The results indicate that the approach could be beneficial in scaling up mapping of community and customary lands as well as help reduce conflict through its participatory nature.

Testing and Validating the Suitability of Geospatially Informed Proxies on Land Tenure in North Korea for Korean (Re-)Unification

The role of remote sensing data in detecting, estimating, and monitoring socioeconomic status (SES) such as quality of life dimensions and sustainable development prospects has received increased attention. Geospatial data has emerged as powerful source of information for enabling both socio-technical assessment and socio-legal analysis in land administration domain. In the context of Korean (re-)unification, there is a notable paucity of evidence how to identify unknowns in North Korea. The main challenge is the lack of complete and adequate information when it comes to clarifying unknown land tenure relations and land governance arrangements. Deriving informative land tenure relations from geospatial data in line with socio-economic land attributes is currently the most innovative approach. In-close and in-depth investigations of validating the suitability of a set of geospatially informed proxies combining multiple values were taken into consideration, as were the forms of knowledge co-production. Thus, the primary aim is to provide empirical evidence of whether proposed proxies are scientifically valid, policy-relevant, and socially robust. We revealed differences in the distributions of agreements relating to land ownership and land transfer rights identification among scientists, bureaucrats, and stakeholders. Moreover, we were able to measure intrinsic, contextual, representational, and accessibility attributes of information quality regarding the associations between earth observation (EO) data and land tenure relations in North Korea from a number of different viewpoints. This paper offers valuable insights into new techniques for validating suitability of EO data proxies in the land administration domain off the reliance on conventional practices formed and customized to the specific artefacts and guidelines of the remote sensing community.

Defusing Land Disputes? The Politics of Land Certification and Dispute Resolution in Burundi

ABSTRACTThere is a growing interest in localized land registration, in which user rights are acknowledged and recorded through a community‐based procedure, as an alternative to centralized titling to promote secure tenure in sub‐Saharan Africa. Localized land registration is expected to reduce land disputes, yet it remains unclear how it impacts disputes in practice. This is an urgent question for war‐affected settings that experience sensitive land disputes. This article discusses findings from ethnographic fieldwork in Burundi on pilot projects for land certification. It identifies three ways in which certification feeds into land conflicts rather than preventing or resolving them. First, land certification represents a chance for local people to enter a new round of claim making, as those ignored or disenfranchised in earlier rounds see new opportunities. Second, it offers an avenue for institutional competition between different land‐governing institutions. Third, certification provides politicians with openings to interfere in tenure relations and to expand their support base. The authors conclude that these problems are not simply a matter of inadequate policy design. Rather, there are crucial political dimensions to land conflicts and land tenure in Burundi, which means that land registration programmes run the risk of inflaming conflictive property relations in rural communities.

Do ambiguous property rights matter? Collective value logic in Lin Village

Since the 1980s, landed property rights have been the subject of heated debate in China. On the one hand, the OECD and many mainstream economists, China’s road to prosperity is hampered by its system of vaguely-defined rights to land which, according to these analysts, is preventing the efficient use of land and causing social conflicts. On the other hand, critics of private property rights theory argue that the axiomatic denunciation of ambiguous property rights one-sidedly privileges economic efficiency at the expense of social, cultural and ethical considerations. This polarised debate raises the question, ‘Do ambiguous property rights matter?’ To address this question, this article analyses the negotiations around a development project in Lin Village, Xiamen. In this relatively affluent urban village, differing conceptions of the ownership of land have not posed any impediment to the joint development projects successfully carried out by villagers, Lin Village Collective and the local government. This evidence questions the claim that a private property rights system is prerequisite for transformative urban development irrespective of context. Lin Village’s land use system, an alternative to private land tenure relations, suggests that the collective value logic, defended by land economists of the original institutional economics school, offers an alternative to the private, exclusionary model of urban development.

“...tierras de labranza por rentas moderadas [georgías epì metríais misthósesi]” (Isoc. 7.32). Explotación y relaciones de trabajo rural entre los ciudadanos atenienses durante la democracia

Partiendo de la propuesta de Isócrates de volver a tiempos en los que los ricos cedían tierras a los pobres por rentas moderadas, en el presente trabajo se analizan las relaciones de místhosis en el contexto de la democracia ateniense. En primer lugar se consideran las características estructurales que enmarcaban este tipo de relación social y que atañen a la distribución de la tierra y las condiciones de acceso a las mismas. En segundo lugar se analiza diverso tipo de evidencia que permite reconstruir algunas de las características principales de la práctica del arriendo de tierras entre ciudadanos. En base al análisis de fuentes se propone que, por un lado, en oposición a la perspectiva desarrollada por varios especialistas, las relaciones de místhosis se encontraban bastante más desarrolladas de lo que suele pensarse dado lo exiguo del material documental. Por otro lado, se modera la idea de que el arriendo de tierras constituyó un mecanismo importante de explotación en manos de los ciudadanos ricos, particularmente útil en un siglo IV a.C. concebido como de pauperización del campesinado. Por último, se analizan las necesidades tanto de los terratenientes como de los productores directos que eran suplidas a través de relaciones de tenencia.

Bridging the Semantic Gap between Land Tenure and EO Data: Conceptual and Methodological Underpinnings for a Geospatially Informed Analysis

When spatial land tenure relations are not available, the only effective alternative data method is to rely on the agricultural census at the regional or national scale, based on household surveys and a participatory mapping at the local scale. However, what if even these are not available, which is typical for conflict-affected countries, administrations suffering from a lack of data and resources, or agencies that produce a sub-standard quality. Would it, under such circumstances, be possible to rely on remotely sensed Earth Observation (EO) data? We hypothesize that it is possible to qualify and quantify certain types of unknown land tenure relations based on EO data. Therefore, this study aims to standardize the identification and categorization of certain objects, environments, and semantics visible in EO data that can (re-)interpret land tenure relations. The context of this study is the opportunity to mine data on North Korean land tenure, which would be needed in case of a Korean (re-)unification. Synthesizing land tenure data in conjunction with EO data would align land administration practices in the respective parts and could also derive reliable land tenure and governance variables. There are still many unanswered questions about workable EO data proxies, which can derive information about land tenure relations. However, this first exploration provides a relevant contribution to bridging the semantic gap between land tenure and EO data.

Understanding the essential principles of landlord and tenant laws in Nigeria through judicial decisions

Tenancy relationships in Nigeria are largely regulated by statutes. Most of the provisions of these statutes to lawyers and other stakeholders are susceptible to inconsistent interpretations. In recent times, the courts in Nigeria have taken steps to look beyond the law books and give flesh to areas in tenancy matters where there seem to be inadequacies in the provisions of the laws. In doing this, the courts have come up with some legal principles that the relevant statutes do not explicitly provide for, but arguably flow from the provisions of such statutes – a good example being the principle that a tenant who contests ownership with the landlord loses right to statutory notice to quit. Terms such as ‘landlord’ and ‘tenant’ are not as simple as they appear, especially considering the statutory definitions given to them by some of the tenancy statutes in Nigeria – particular attention is given in this regard to Tenancy Law of Lagos State 2011. This paper considers the intricacies of the definition of and relationship between the landlord and the tenant as provided in statutes and as interpreted by overtime by courts in Nigeria. The paper analyses the nature of the relationship between the landlord and the tenant as may be conceived and disambiguates the scope of law of a landlord and tenant relationship in Nigeria.

Чиншевое право в Западном крае Российской империи и законодательные попытки его ликвидации (вторая половина XIX — начало XX веков)

The issue of peasant land tenure with rent in the Russian Empire and attempts to eliminate it in the second half of the XIX - early XX centuries is considered. Attention is paid to the activities of the Russian authorities aimed at legislatively resolving problems related to the peculiarities of land tenure relations with rent in the Western Territory. The relevance of the study is due to the need to summarize the material accumulated by historiography on this topic, as well as the lack of elaboration of plots related to attempts by representative institutions of the beginning of the 20th century - the State Duma and the State Council - to eliminate or even to streamline the peasant land tenure with rent relations in the Russian Empire. The novelty of the study is in reviewing of the new sources, allowing to enter into scientific circulation data that clarify the idea of measures to regulate the rule of peasant land tenure with rent in the reign of Emperor Nicholas II. Particular attention is paid to the consideration by the State Duma and the State Council of draft laws on the right to development and “On common ownership in cities and towns of Western and Belarusian provinces”, designed to regulate peasant land tenure with rent interests. It has been proved that the initiative of the State Duma to eliminate the rest of the peasant land tenure with rent in the Western Territory has not actually been implemented.