Impact of Land Tenure System on Socio-Economic Characteristics in Selected Areas of Mymensingh

The present study aims at investigating into the existing land tenure system of Dorirampur, Jhairpar and Goisa para at Traishal Upazila of Mymensingh District. Keeping in view the objectives 70 samples were randomly selected. Survey method was followed to collect required data. Sampled farmers belonged to six tenurial groups. Out of 70 respondents 34, 22, 16, 7, 10 and 11 percent of total were owner operators, part operators, part tenants, part operator-cum-part tenants, tenants and absentee landowners respectively during the study year. In the study, out of 70 respondents 67 percent were owner operator, 33 percent of them were tenant operators. The selected farmers in the study area practiced three types of share cropping system: i) fifty-fifty share cropping, ii) forty-sixty share cropping and iii) fixed amount of paddy payment. The average annual income were found to be Tk. 97096, 128267, 5215, 76340, 35871 and 113563 respectively for owner operator, part operators, part tenants, part operator-cum-part tenants, tenants and absentee landowner. Analysis of annual income reveals a positive relationship between tenure category and that of annual income during the study area.J. Environ. Sci. & Natural Resources, 10(2): 133-142 2017

Policy lessons from spatiotemporal enrollment patterns of Payment for Ecosystem Service Programs in Argentina

Over the last 50 years, payment for ecosystem services schemes (PES) have been lauded as a market-based solution to curtail deforestation and restore degraded ecosystems. However, PES programs often fail to conserve sites under strong long-term deforestation pressures and allocate financial resources without having a sizeable impact on long-term land use change. Underperformance, in part, is likely due to adverse selection as landowners with land at the lowest threat from conversion or loss may be most likely to enroll or enrollment may be for short time-periods. Improving program performance to overcome adverse selection requires understanding attributes of landowners and their land across large scales to identify spatial and temporal enrollment patterns that drive adverse selection. In this paper, we examine these patterns in Argentina’s PES program in the endangered Chaco forest ecoregion, which was established in 2007 under the National Forest Law. Our study area covers 252,319 km2. Among our most important findings is that large parcels of enrolled land and land owned by absentee landowners show greater evidence of spatiotemporal adverse selection than smaller plots of land and land owned by local actors. Furthermore, lands managed for conservation and restoration are more likely to be associated with adverse selection than lands that provide financial returns such as harvest of non-timber forest products, silviculture, and silvopasture. However, prior to recommending that PES programs focus on land uses with higher potential earnings, a greater understanding is needed of the degree to which these land uses meet ecological and biodiversity goals of PES programs. Because of this, we posit that a PES incorporating a market-based compensation strategy that varies with commodity prices, along with approaches that provide incentives for conservation and restoration land uses and enrollment of local landowners, could promote long-term conservation of endangered lands.

EXTERNALITIES, PROFIT, AND LAND STEWARDSHIP: CONFLICTING MOTIVES FOR SOIL AND WATER CONSERVATION ADOPTION AMONG ABSENTEE LANDOWNERS AND ON-FARM PRODUCERS

This research aimed to illicit nonfarming absentee landowners’ and producers’ preferences for the benefits and characteristics derived from conservation practices during adoption decisions using maximum difference scaling, also called the best-worst method. Both groups are found to rank and value the attributes and reasons for adoption of conservation practices differently at the 95% significance level. This difference between the two groups reinforced the importance of land tenure in decision making. This indicated the need for new extension educational efforts, research efforts, and economic incentives to reduce negative externalities that could be ameliorated from adoption of soil and water conservation practices.

The rise and rise of agricultural wage labour: evidence from Ethiopia's south, c.1950–2000

This article seeks to examine the dynamic transformation in the system of labour mobilization and the consequent intermingling of peoples of diverse cultural background in northern Sidama, Ethiopia. It investigates the different labour recruitment strategies deployed in the study area at different times, ranging from traditional to hired labour. In the former case, the household plays a major role in the recruitment and supply of agricultural labour, whereas in the latter case, ‘trans-locality’ reinforced by migration becomes central to the labour history of the region. In the 1940s and 1950s, Emperor Haile Selassie I granted large estates of land in the study area to absentee landowners who started schemes of commercial coffee farming. The subsequent expansion of commercialized coffee farming in a locality called Wondo Gänät (northern Sidama) from the 1950s onwards was responsible for the introduction of agricultural wage labour into the wider region. There was no local surplus labour to satisfy the labour needs of the new coffee farms. This void was later filled by Kembata, Hadiya and Wolayita migrant labourers who flocked into the study area from regions widely noted for their scarcity of arable land. This translocal movement of workers paved the way for the beginning of wage employment and eventually the commodification of farm labour in line with capitalist agriculture. Although commercial coffee plantations provided the initial stimulus for labour commodification in the study area, sugar cane-based cash cropping has helped it flourish even further. I argue in this article that the imperial land grants of the late 1940s and 1950s were an important milestone both for the agricultural history of the study area and for the organization of farm labour. Most importantly, I also argue that some of the social tensions and conflicts that often haunt contemporary northern Sidama are legacies inherited from the labour migrations of the 1950s and 1960s and the demographic heterogeneity that ensued.