LAND TENURE

Introduction:
• Secure access to land, whether through formal, informal,
customary or other means, is necessary for rural households
to enjoy sustainable livelihoods.
• Secure land access is an important part of sustainable
development
Land tenure problems are often an important contributor to:
i. Food insecurity
ii. restricted livelihood opportunities, and therefore to
poverty.
• When designing solutions to specific rural development or
food insecurity situations, access to land should be considered
i.e recognizing and tackling land tenure related problems
even in the earliest stages of a rural development project. 1
 LAND TENURE
Land tenure refers to the rights and patterns of
control over land. These rights include:
• Rights to use and exclude use
• Rights to output from land
• Right to transfer the land or its output to other
users

Land rights determine social and political status and

economic power of a large proportion of the
population in developing countries

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 LAND TENURE
As population density increases, farming techniques
change, and markets in agricultural products grow,
pressures often develop to change existing land
tenure arrangements.
 In societies where land is held in common,
permanent enforceable rights to land evolve.
 In countries where ownership patterns are such
that a few people own much land and many people
owning little or no land, pressures are exerted on
the government to undertake land reform
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 LAND TENURE
A land reform, therefore is an attempt to change the
land tenure system through public policies.

Land reform may change not only rights and patterns

of control over land resources, but also the mode of
production (whether semifeudalistic, capitalistic, or
socialist)

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 LAND TENURE
• Land tenure is the relationship, whether
legally or customarily defined, among people,
as individuals or groups, with respect to land.

• Land tenure is not restricted to access to land

alone, but also includes access to other
natural resources, such as water and trees,
which may be essential for people’s
livelihoods.
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 LAND TENURE
Land tenure is an institution, i.e., rules invented by
societies to regulate behavior.
Rules of tenure define how:
• property rights to land are to be allocated within
societies.
• access is granted to rights to use, control, and
transfer land, as well as associated responsibilities
and restraints.

NB: Land tenure systems determine who can use

what resources for how long, and under what 6
 Land Tenure
Land tenure relationships may be well defined and
enforceable in a formal court of law or through
customary structures in a community.
Or,
they may be relatively poorly defined with
ambiguities open to exploitation.

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 Land Ownership and Tenure Systems
A wide range of land ownership and tenure systems
exist in the world. These systems reflect either;
 Historical influences
 Stage of development
 Culture
 Political systems
 Transaction costs
The systems vary in size and organization of land
holdings, affect incentive to produce and invest,
influence the distribution of benefits from agricultural
growth. 8
 Average size of landholdings in Africa, Asia and Latin America (1970)

Region and Country Average size (in hactares)

Africa;
Cameroon 5.2
Ghana 3.2
Kenya 4.1
Malawi 1.5
Sierra Leone 1.8
Zambia 3.1
Asia
India 2.3
Indonesia 1.1
Iraq 9.7
Korea 0.9
Republic of Pakistan 5.3
Philippines 3.6
Latin America
Brazil 59.7
Colombia 26.3
Costa Rica 38.1
El Salvador 4.1
Mexico 137.1

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 Land Ownership and Tenure Systems
NB; the larger holdings in Latin America compared to Asia
and Africa are a description of the impact of colonial rule
on landholdings.
The major types of farm ownership include;
 Family farms
 Corporate farms
 State farms
 Group farms
Organization of farm enterprises within these types can
vary i.e in many cases the owner of the farm is also the
operator. Or those who work on the farm may earn a fixed
wage or pay rent in cash or in a share of the farm output10
 Land Ownership and Tenure Systems
Land tenure is categorized as:
1. Private: the assignment of rights to a private party
who may be:
 an individual,
 a married couple,
 a group of people, or a
 Corporate body such as a commercial entity or non-
profit organization.
E.g, within a community, individual families may have
exclusive rights to residential parcels, agricultural
parcels and certain trees. 11
 Land Ownership and Tenure Systems
1(a) Small subsistence or semi-subsistence family
farms;
Common in developing countries
Family often provide most of the labor
Cultivation is labor intensive
Most of the output is consumed on the farm where it is
produced
However, not all small family farms are subsistence or
semi-subsistence farms; many are small commercial
farms producing substantial surpluses for sale.
Those farmers that do consume most of what of what
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 Land Ownership and Tenure Systems
1(b) Large commercial family farms;
They sell most of what they produce.
While in developed countries these farms are highly
mechanized and often involve only a small amount of
non family labor, in developing countries the
operations are usually more labor-intensive and use a
high proportion of hired labor.

The owner frequently does not live on the farm, but

pays a manager to oversee the day-to-day operation.
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 Land Ownership and Tenure Systems
1(c)Corporate farms
Often produce a limited number of commodities in
large scale units
The firms have their own marketing (including
processing) systems
It is more common in developed countries than in
developing countries.
Examples: Fruit plantations in central American
countries, banana plantations of the philippines,
Cocoa plantations in Wes Africa
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 Categories of Land tenure
• Communal / Group farms
These are communes, kibbtzin, collectives, etc
Operated by a group of people who work and manage
the farm jointly
Joint income is the divided up among the members of
the group
Group operations may also involve non-agricultural
activities.
The farms are characterized by overinvestment in
labor-saving capital-intensive technologies, since
individuals do not receive the full returns from their
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 Categories of Land tenure
Communal/Group Contd,,
Special arrangements may be devised to provide
incentives for individual members to work harder.
Small individual private plots may be allowed
a right of commons may exist within a community
where each member has a right to use independently
the holdings of the community.
E.g, members of a community may have the right to
graze cattle on a common pasture.
Examples: The kibbutzim of Israel, the mennonites in
the paraquayan chueo, Ujamaa village of Tanzania16
 Categories of Land tenure
Open access: specific rights are not assigned to anyone
and no-one can be excluded. This typically includes
marine tenure where access to the high seas is generally
open to anyone; it may include rangelands, forests, etc,
where there may be free access to the resources for all.
(An important difference between open access and
communal systems is that under a communal system
non-members of the community are excluded from
using the common areas.)
• State: property rights are assigned to some authority
in the public sector. E,g, in some countries, forest lands
may fall under the mandate of the state, whether at a
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central or decentralised level of government.
 Types of Tenancy and Leasing Arrangements
Farm families may lease all or part of their land for
cash or for a share of the production from the land
A farmer may be allowed to farm a piece of land in
exchange for his/her labor on another part of the
owner’s land
In some countries, the village, tribe, or national
government ma own the land and grant use rights to
part of the land to individual families e,g in Africa

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 Classification of land tenure rights
land tenure rights are often classified according to whether
they are “formal” or “informal”.
• Formal property rights may be regarded as those that are
explicitly acknowledged by the state and protected using
legal means.
• Informal property rights are those that lack official
recognition and protection. In some cases, informal
property rights are illegal, i.e., held in direct violation of the
law e.g squatters may occupy a site in contravention of an
eviction notice.
Illegal property holdings arise because of inappropriate laws
e.g the minimum size of a farm may be defined by law
whereas in practice farms may be much smaller as a result19of
 Classification of land tenure rights
• Property rights may also be illegal because of their
use, e.g., the illegal conversion of agricultural land
for urban purposes.
• In other cases, property may be “extra-legal”, i.e.,
not against the law, but not recognized by the law.
In some countries, customary property held in rural
indigenous communities falls into this category.
• A distinction often made is between statutory rights
or “formally recognized rights” on the one hand and
customary rights or “traditional rights” on the other
hand.
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 Classification of land tenure rights
• Formal and informal rights may exist in the same
holding. E.g, in a country that forbids leasing or
sharecropping, a person who holds legally recognized
ownership rights to a parcel may illegally lease out
the land to someone who is landless.
• A particularly complex situation arises when statutory
rights are granted in a way that does not take into
account existing customary rights (e.g., for agriculture
and grazing). This clash of de jure rights (existing
because of the formal law) and de facto rights
(existing in reality) often occurs in already stressed
marginal rain fed agriculture and pasture lands. 21
 Classification of land tenure rights
• In conflict and post-conflict areas, encounters
between settled and displaced populations lead to
great uncertainties as to who has, or should have,
the control over which rights.

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 LAND ADMINISTRATION
• Land administration is the way in which the rules of land
tenure are applied and made operational.
• Land administration, whether formal or informal,
comprises an extensive range of systems and processes
to administer:

(i) Land rights: the allocation of rights in land;

 the delimitation of boundaries of parcels for which the
rights are allocated;
 the transfer from one party to another through sale,
lease, loan, gift or inheritance;
 the adjudication of doubts and disputes regarding rights
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 LAND ADMINISTRATION
(ii) land-use regulation: land-use planning and
enforcement and the adjudication of land use
conflicts.
(iii) land valuation and taxation: the gathering of
revenues through forms of land valuation and
taxation, and the adjudication of land valuation and
taxation disputes.

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 LAND ADMINISTRATION
Information on land, people, and their rights.
- rights to land do not exist in a physical form and they have to
be represented in some way i.e information.
- In a formal legal setting, information on rights, whether held
by individuals, families, communities, the state, or
commercial and other organizations, is often recorded in
some form of land registration and cadastre system.
- In a customary tenure environment, information may be
held, unwritten, within a community through collective
memory and the use of witnesses.
- In a number of communities, those holding informal rights
may have “informal proofs” of rights, i.e., documents
accepted by the community but not by the formal state
administration. 25
 LAND ADMINISTRATION
An enforcement or protection component is essential to effective land
administration since rights to land are valuable when claims to them can be
enforced. Such a component allows a person’s recognized rights to be
protected against the acts of others.
This protection may come from the state or the community through social
consensus.
A stable land tenure regime is one in which the results of protective actions
are relatively easy to forecast.
In a formal legal setting, rights may be enforced through the system of
courts, tribunals, etc.
In a customary tenure environment, rights may be enforced through
customary leaders.
In both cases, people may be induced to recognize the rights of others
through informal mechanisms such as community pressures.
People who know their rights, and know what to do if those rights are
infringed, are more able to protect their rights than those who are less 26
LAND ADMINISTRATION

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 ACCESS TO LAND

Access to land for the rural poor is often based on

custom. Customary rights to land in indigenous societies,
for example, are usually created following their traditions
and through the ways in which community leaders assign
land use rights to the community members.
These rights of access may have their origin in the use of
the land over a long period.
They are often rights developed by ancestral occupation
and by the use of land by ancestral societies.
In such cases, it is through the act of original clearance of
the land and settlement by ancestors that rights are
claimed
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 Land Reforms
A country can desire land reform for economic, social
and political reasons
Why land reform may be needed
 Economic and development goals of most societies
include desires for improved income growth
(Efficiency), equity (Income distribution), and
security (political and economic stability)

Skewed distribution of landholdings can hamper

economic efficiency gains for several reasons;
1. Large land holdings often are not farmed 29
 Land Reforms
2. Some land owners hold land for speculative reasons
3. Some land owners are absentee land lords who provide
little supervision of those working on the farm.
4. If the farm is owned by the government, planning and
management may be centrally and poorly controlled,
and individual incentives may be stifled since farms be
forced to respond to output and input quotas
5. Large farmers facing labor supervision or other
management problems often demand capital-intensive
innovations from the agricultural research system in
the country. Therefore generated technologies fail to
reflect true scarcity of land, labor and capital in 30the
 Land Reforms
6. Land reforms may be needed for equity reasons.
The number of landless laborers is growing rapidly in
many countries, along with associated poverty and
malnutrition. Providing land resources to these
people can be an effective means of raising incomes
7. As large farms are broken up, even the poor who
own no land can benefit due to increased demands
for labor
8. Land reform appeases political unrest and reduces
the chances of evolution– reducing extreme deaths
and suffering that accompany revolution.
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