Mitigation of land scarcity situation through tenure practices: a study on two selected villages in Jashore district of Bangladesh

Bangladesh is one of the most densely populated countries with immense pressure on agricultural land in rural areas. Mainstream of the rural households depend on either agriculture or its associated activities for their livelihood. However, rural land distribution is highly skewed, majority of them are landless. Under such a land scarce situation, farmers in rural areas have been gradually inclining towards land tenancy. Present study steered to explore the nature and volume of temporary land transaction through tenancy agreement in studied areas and to scrutinize its role in aligning land distribution. In 2017, a total of 166 farmers were randomly selected from two different villages in Jashore district for study. Result of the study administrated that land tenancy practice has been significantly mitigating land disparity among rural farmers. Study also explored that comparatively rich farmers are leaning towards tenant out land and most of these lands tenanted in by the landless and marginal farmers. Consequently, on an average landless farm could significantly increases their cultivable land from 0.01 acre to 0.98 acre compared to the marginal farm 0.31 to 0.73 acres. At the same time, cultivable land of medium farm has decreased as of 3.74 acres to 2.83 acres in studied villages. Int. J. Agril. Res. Innov. Tech. 10(2): 164-169, December 2020

Mitigating Catastrophic Risks and Food Security Threats: Effects of Land Ownership in Southern Punjab, Pakistan

In the wake of environmental challenges, the adoption of risk management strategies is imperative to achieve sustainable agricultural production and food security among the Pakistani farmers of Punjab. For a deeper insight into farmers’ adaptive behavior towards climate change, this study explored the role of land tenancy in the adoption of risk management instruments, such as off-farm diversification, improved varieties, and crop insurance. Off-farm diversification was found to be a preferred instrument among landless tenants. The study also employed a multivariate probit model that further signified the role of land tenure in risk-related decisions. Apart from land tenancy, the results identified the prominence of risk perception, information access, and extension access in adoption decisions. This study also investigated the association between risk management approaches and food security indicators (household hunger scale, food consumption score). Analysis revealed a significant association between risk management tools and food security indicators.

Liberating Farmers from Tenancy Bondage: The Land and Agrarian Reform Programs of Ramon Magsaysay (1954-1957)

The past economic colonial policies in the Philippines created severe issues for land tenancy and distribution patterns. When Magsaysay won the presidency in 1953, his administration carried the banner of land and agrarian reform as its core policy. The paper investigated how Magsaysay Administration’s agrarian reform policies addressed the needs of the peasants. Further, the study presents the land and agrarian reform programs enacted by the Magsaysay Administration, from conceptualization to implementation, their results, and efficacy in easing the tenancy problem of farmers. Using the historical method, the study showed that Magsaysay's land and agrarian reform program provided security of tenure to the farmers. It enabled them to become more independent, self-reliant, and responsible citizens. Ultimately, the program succeeded in protecting the farmers from the uncertainty and threat of land deprivation and, in effect, curtailed insurgency. Magsaysay's program also proved influential to succeeding administrations in the design and construction of their land and agrarian reform laws.

Land Reform and Agricultural Development, 1968–1975

This chapter focuses on the major policies under President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu that transformed the countryside and contributed significantly to the economic development of South Vietnam in the last years of the war. These policies included land reform, an agricultural development program, price liberalization, and market stabilization. The policies practically eradicated land tenancy, reduced rural inequality by creating a large class of landowners, rapidly expanded production toward achieving food self-sufficiency, and stabilized market and consumption. This took place in the middle of a savage war and amounted to a successful rural revolution that has not been adequately acknowledged in the scholarship on the war. Rather than coercion and class struggle, the Republic of Vietnam's revolution was carried out based on a combination of economic incentives and new technologies that appealed to and benefited the majority of South Vietnamese farmers.

Ecology and Postcolonial Biblical Criticism

This article outlines an eco-agrarian perspective on the Hebrew Bible. Countless passages treat the multifaceted interdependency of arable land, animals, and human communities, as well as the social dynamics of force, which deprived small farmers of land tenancy or control throughout the biblical period. Works by Walter Brueggemann, Wendell Berry, and Edward Said take account of the social and material knowledge and experience of rural communities in modern North America and Africa as well as ancient Israel. Elements of a “prophetic ecology,” drawn from Former and Latter Prophets, suggest that the flourishing of the land, the possibility of shalom, and even the status of the land of Canaan as holy are all connected to attention to the land by small farmers. From both biblical and modern perspectives, agriculture that sustains local communities is the only alternative to war.

Types of Agriculture Land Tenancy System in Demak District, Demak Regency

Agricultural tenancy system is a farmland management system commonly used by farmers. This system poses as a provider for rural community’s job opportunities and occupations. The purpose of this research is to identify types of tenancy system and the on-farm profiles in Demak District, Demak Regency. The connection between farmlands and these profiles may become a ground for mutual arrangement with the government in order to protect the existence of farmlands. The result of survey to 238 respondents in the district identified there are at least four types of tenancy system that exist in Demak District society, namely: (1) basic tenancy system, (2) partial tenancy system, (3) farm bussiness tenancy system, and (4) managerial tenancy system. Furthermore, based on age characteristics and farming experience data, it is identified that there are possibilities of scarcity in farming profiles of the next generation, which may threat the existence of farmlands. Author argued that the scarcity may be due to job diversification in rural areas. This research suggests a new approach to implement the agricultural land protection policy by modifying one of the existing agricultural land tenancy systems into a contract based system with the government. The contract is aimed to formalize and bind on-farm profiles with their farmland, as well as to limit the number of them. Thus, other productive labor force may be shifted to another field for regional economic development.

El debate sobre el latifundio en la Argentina de entreguerras

This article analyses the agrarian debate in Argentina during the interwar period. Beginning in 1912, times of hardship for grain growers made agrarian conflict a recurrent feature in the Pampean cereal belt. As a result, large estates became the target of much criticism, both in the countryside and the city. This article explores changes in the way rural problems were depicted and discussed, focusing on the climate of ideas and the public mood rather than how individual authors analysed the agrarian question. A look at how the right and the left addressed rural issues also suggests that their contribution was of little significance. Finally, the article explores why the reformist consensus achieved during this period failed to transform the land tenancy structure.