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Knowledge-based evidence about potential and existing rainfed cropping is crucial for decision-making for sustainable land use and food security. Using multi-criteria spatial analysis techniques, this study assessed the current status of cropland availability and projected impacts on future crop production in Ethiopia. The study primarily defined the extent of the Rainfed Cropping Area (RCA) and assessed the performances of different cropping practices. After precisely mapping cultivated area, cropping intensification potentials were estimated. Subsequently, disregarding the existing cultivated area, completely unsuitable areas, and protected and intact forest areas, the potentially available arable land using suitability analysis techniques was determined. In addition, the performance of existing crop production systems was evaluated against the natural potential. The findings reveal that RCA covers ~60% of the country's landmass, of which cropping is practiced in only 33%. The coverage of Potentially Available Cropland (yet uncultivated) accounts for 16% of the country's RCA. This is dominantly located in sparsely populated western and southwestern parts of the country. This study confirms that Horizontal Cropping Intensification (HCI) in the RCA of Ethiopia reaches only 33%. On the other hand, Vertical Cropping Intensification (VCI) practices cover only 10%, while about 1/3 of the RCA is suitable for VCI strategies at various levels of suitability. The performance of existing VCI-oriented cropping (which covers only 10% of the RCA) is very poor. Challenges to the use of the available cropland and ways of addressing land shortage for needy farmers are highlighted to inform efforts to readdress landlessness and food insecurity in Ethiopia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper applies the theory of transnationalism to Mahmoud Darwish's A River Dies of Thirst, exploring how his poetry reflects the traumatizing experiences of Palestinians, their perpetual displacement, and their lost identity. As a poet Darwish personally underwent psychological, physical, and emotional suffering in exile when Zionists imposed forced expulsion. His poetry is teemed with Palestinians' heart-wrenching narratives of the dispossession of their belongings and the irreparable loss of their loved ones. A translation approach analyzes Darwish's depiction of exile, fragmented identity, and territorial loss, focusing on how contemporary geopolitics influences these experiences. The Study finds that Darwish's poetry powerfully expresses the Palestinian reality of landlessness, forced diaspora, and the diminishing of their homeland, creating a profound sense of loss and dislocation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current state of urban planning in South Africa excludes allocation for church land. In many South African cities, there is a temporary structure for church fellowship within neo-Pentecostalism. A literature review shows that many neo-Pentecostal churches still conduct fellowship in tents and shacks, which poses health hazards for congregants and followers of these churches. Furthermore, some of the neo-Pentecostal churches rent industrial or even community buildings for church services every week. These kinds of temporary structures, tents, and rentals make neo-Pentecostal churches to be very unmanageable in local governments. This article is a literature analysis that argues within the framework of land reform that landless neo-Pentecostal churches should be included in urban planning for the sustainable development of South African cities. This article found that when neo-Pentecostal churches are properly registered and given a portion of land to build proper church structures, local governments will be able to manage these churches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge-based evidence about potential and existing rainfed cropping is crucial for decision-making for sustainable land use and food security. Using multi-criteria spatial analysis techniques, this study assessed the current status of cropland availability and projected impacts on future crop production in Ethiopia. The study primarily defined the extent of the Rainfed Cropping Area (RCA) and assessed the performances of different cropping practices. After precisely mapping cultivated area, cropping intensification potentials were estimated. Subsequently, disregarding the existing cultivated area, completely unsuitable areas, and protected and intact forest areas, the potentially available arable land using suitability analysis techniques was determined. In addition, the performance of existing crop production systems was evaluated against the natural potential. The findings reveal that RCA covers ~60% of the country’s landmass, of which cropping is practiced in only 33%. The coverage of Potentially Available Cropland (yet uncultivated) accounts for 16% of the country’s RCA. This is dominantly located in sparsely populated western and southwestern parts of the country. This study confirms that Horizontal Cropping Intensification (HCI) in the RCA of Ethiopia reaches only 33%. On the other hand, Vertical Cropping Intensification (VCI) practices cover only 10%, while about 1/3 of the RCA is suitable for VCI strategies at various levels of suitability. The performance of existing VCI-oriented cropping (which covers only 10% of the RCA) is very poor. Challenges to the use of the available cropland and ways of addressing land shortage for needy farmers are highlighted to inform efforts to readdress landlessness and food insecurity in Ethiopia.

This paper brings together Alexis de Tocqueville's writings on enslavement and emancipation in the United States and the French Empire to trace how his project to abolish slavery in the French Caribbean relied on the use of coercive state power to temporarily truncate the property rights of Black workers and steal part of their wages. Highlighting how Tocqueville proposed forcing ex-slaves into conditions of landlessness and partial wagelessness, I conceptualize these processes respectively as preemptive dispossession and preemptive proletarianization. Attention to Tocqueville's emancipation prescriptions underscores the transnational scope and entanglements of political economy and processes of racialization in his political theory of empire and slavery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Critics of neo-liberalism's advance have not always paid sufficient attention to how the ideology came to be attached to class and state power, either internationally or in any country. "Land problems" remain central to the development of capitalism in Papua New Guinea. Proposals for reform of what is known as customary tenure have remained within the liberal tradition, as liberalism itself changed internationally. From the 1990s, one strand of that tradition, known internationally as neo-liberalism, became prominent among the tussles over reform. This article documents how prominence did not translate into the hold on political power necessary to move ideology into policy implementation. Instead of the favoured neo-liberal direction of individualised land tenure, in Papua New Guinea customary tenure remains the principal form of land occupation and ownership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper examines the levels and pattern of consumption expenditure of different land-owning non-farm households in rural Punjab. The household consumption expenditure of non-farm households is Rs. 167139 in rural Punjab. It is the highest for the medium land holding households, followed by the small land holding, marginal land holding and landless households. All the land ownership categories of non-farm households spend the maximum amount on food items. The consumption pattern of different categories of non-farm households is of subsistence in nature. A large share of total consumption expenditure by these categories is allocated to food items distinctly, followed by non-food items and socio-religious ceremonies. The per capita consumption expenditure of the medium land holding households is 2.10 times of the per capita consumption expenditure of the landless households. The worst pattern of distribution of consumption expenditure is shown by the small land holding households and somewhat fair pattern of distribution is observed in the marginal land holding households. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Historia Agraria is the property of Historia Agraria and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This study examines the impact of two hydropower dam reservoirs, Amerti and Neshe, on the adjacent rural household food insecurity in the Abay Chome district, northwestern Ethiopia. A cross-sectional method was employed to collect data from 485 households (268 affected and 217 non-affected households) following a probability proportional to the size sampling procedure. Households’ food insecurity access scale (HFIAS) and households’ dietary diversity score (HDDS) were used to examine households’ food insecurity status in the study area. The Endogenous Switching Regression model was employed to identify the impact of the dam construction on household food insecurity. The results revealed that the average HDDS and HFIAS in the study area were 5.1 and 10.29, respectively. The study also demonstrated that the affected household’s average HDDS and HFIAS were 4.48 and 10.98, respectively. The study results further revealed that the construction of dams has significantly increased the HFIAS of displaced households by 14.6% while reducing HDDS by 24%. This study found a negative relationship between dam construction and food security, although dam construction is supposed to increase food security by increasing access to water. Thus, we recommend that hydropower reservoirs be effectively designed to reduce the impacts on adjacent communities.

Copyright of Historia Agraria is the property of Historia Agraria and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Historia Agraria is the property of Historia Agraria and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

• Between 1993–94 and 2011–12, among social groups, Adivasis appear to be the worst affected community in terms of decline in LFPR by UPS criteria. • LFPR of Adivasi women has increased in 2022–23, but it is largely attributed to increase in their participation in unpaid family labour and own account work. • The LFPR deterioration among Adivasi women has been pronounced more in rural regions. • In urban regions unlike the overall women, Adivasi women have registered a fall in their LFPR. • Landlessness has forced more Adivasi women into domestic duties than that of the women in general. • Adivasi women owning a larger amount of land have a better chance to move to higher-paid occupations, particularly in urban regions. This study examines the changes in occupational patterns and addresses the problem of transitioning from paid activities to unpaid activities among Adivasi women in the context of land alienation. We use data sources, viz. the 50th and 68th rounds of Employment and Unemployment Survey, the Periodic Labour Force Survey (2022–23) and the Time Use Survey (2019) of the NSSO. We apply simple descriptive statistics, binary and multinomial logistic regression models to derive reasonable inferences. The study reveals that between 1993–94 and 2011–12, Adivasi women's labour force participation has declined more when compared to women from other social groups. However, between 2011–12 and 2023–24, their participation has increased which can be attributed to increase in their participation in unpaid family labour and own account works. The study deduces that landholding size determines their participation in the labour market, and quality of occupations. Larger landholding size is an enabling factor which enhances the propensity of Adivasi women to take up better-paid occupations, while lower landholding size increases the risk of taking up either employment in precarious occupations or unpaid domestic duties. The findings reinforce the argument that landholdings play a crucial role among Adivasis in maintaining the relative egalitarian values in their society. Finally, this study suggests measures to improve the LFPR of Adivasi women and the quality of their employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Land scarcity has frequently been cited as the primary barrier preventing rural households from pursuing better livelihoods in Vietnam and other developing societies. In this paper, we investigate the role of landlessness and landholdings in the choice of livelihoods and in household income in the Red River Delta, the most densely populated region in Vietnam. Using data from the 2018 Vietnam Household Living Standard Survey, our cluster analysis classifies five livelihoods pursued by local households, namely informal wage-earning jobs, formal wage-earning jobs, nonfarm self-employment, agriculture, and non-labor livelihoods. Non-laboring, agricultural, or informal wage-earning households earn less per capita income on average than formal wage-earning or nonfarm self-employment households, according to both descriptive and inferential statistical analyses. Our regression analysis demonstrates that land scarcity is not a significant obstacle preventing rural people from seeking gainful livelihoods in the region. The finding suggests that improving education and supporting non-farm activities should be high-priority government policies for local households with limited land and education. Such policies are expected to help them not only transform their livelihoods but also improve their economic well-being.

This study examines the impact of two hydropower dam reservoirs, Amerti and Neshe, on the adjacent rural household food insecurity in the Abay Chome district, northwestern Ethiopia. A cross-sectional method was employed to collect data from 485 households (268 affected and 217 non-affected households) following a probability proportional to the size sampling procedure. Households' food insecurity access scale (HFIAS) and households' dietary diversity score (HDDS) were used to examine households' food insecurity status in the study area. The Endogenous Switching Regression model was employed to identify the impact of the dam construction on household food insecurity. The results revealed that the average HDDS and HFIAS in the study area were 5.1 and 10.29, respectively. The study also demonstrated that the affected household's average HDDS and HFIAS were 4.48 and 10.98, respectively. The study results further revealed that the construction of dams has significantly increased the HFIAS of displaced households by 14.6% while reducing HDDS by 24%. This study found a negative relationship between dam construction and food security, although dam construction is supposed to increase food security by increasing access to water. Thus, we recommend that hydropower reservoirs be effectively designed to reduce the impacts on adjacent communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Land scarcity has frequently been cited as the primary barrier preventing rural households from pursuing better livelihoods in Vietnam and other developing societies. In this paper, we investigate the role of landlessness and landholdings in the choice of livelihoods and in household income in the Red River Delta, the most densely populated region in Vietnam. Using data from the 2018 Vietnam Household Living Standard Survey, our cluster analysis classifies five livelihoods pursued by local households, namely informal wage-earning jobs, formal wage-earning jobs, nonfarm self-employment, agriculture, and non-labor livelihoods. Non-laboring, agricultural, or informal wage-earning households earn less per capita income on average than formal wage-earning or nonfarm self-employment households, according to both descriptive and inferential statistical analyses. Our regression analysis demonstrates that land scarcity is not a significant obstacle preventing rural people from seeking gainful livelihoods in the region. The finding suggests that improving education and supporting non-farm activities should be high-priority government policies for local households with limited land and education. Such policies are expected to help them not only transform their livelihoods but also improve their economic well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent decades have witnessed unprecedented agrarian transformations and mining sector-led development projects in the countryside of the Global South. This study explores the impact of land appropriation for gold mining on customary land tenure systems and rural livelihoods in Ghana. Data were gathered through face-to-face semi-structured and structured interviews with 120 affected farmers, key informant interviews (seven participants), and three focus group discussions (28 participants). The findings show a growing tendency of customary authorities being coopted into the wider assemblages of economic and political actors who are benefiting from the land appropriation by the state and mining companies. As a result, customary authorities have become facilitators and the manu longa of the state. The study demonstrates how gold mining companies have exploited centuries-old traditional land allocation and governance practices to suppress reactions from below and how this has led to increased social differentiation and social tension in northern Ghana. In conclusion, land expropriation for gold mining has resulted in a transformation in the Ghanaian customary land tenure system, producing a marked shift from agrarian to non-agrarian livelihoods, increasing household food insecurity and societal tension, and creating a new class of (near-)landless farmers in the rural communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indian agriculture is under crisis. However, the degree of distress is experienced differently by the various agrarian classes across different regions. This paper studies the state of Bodo peasantry in modern-day Assam. Having been shifting cultivators with community ownership of land at a certain point in history, we find a differentiated Bodo peasantry with private land ownership in the present, mainly due to extraneous interventions. However, in conceptualizing the transformation of tribes into a peasant production stage, scholars collapse the tribes into the dominant community of the region they cohabit. We maintain that peasantization does not lead to the collapse of tribes into other regionally dominant communities; that they are a society in their own right. In contrast to scholarship that reports the prevalence of an egalitarian social structure among tribes, we maintain that, at least among the plains tribe, such a view is far from the truth. In this paper, we first locate the Bodo tribe in India's peasant economy and then situate them to fit the prevailing agrarian classes. We deal with two questions in this paper: (a) Is there evidence of differentiation among the Bodo peasantry? (b) In an environment of increasing market integration, are the Bodo peasantry undergoing agrarian distress and proletarianization like the rest of the country? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the changing distribution of land in rural Vietnam based on plot-level information in the Vietnam Household Living Standards Surveys. Both agricultural and residential land holdings in Vietnam became more unequally distributed between 2004 and 2014, due to rising landlessness in the bottom quintile and land accumulation in the top quartile of the land distribution. Applying Fields' regression-based inequality decomposition, we find the main drivers of land inequality were the share of household members working in agriculture and the shares of forestry and perennial crop land. In contrast, irrigation and off-farm employment contributed to reducing land inequality. Landlessness and near landlessness, which increased by almost two-fifths, is associated with similar factors, along with higher education of the household head. Taken together, these results underline the rapid structural transformation that has occurred in rural Vietnam. The rise in functional landlessness observed presents a challenge to the Vietnamese Government's desire to promote growth with equity. • Agricultural and residential land holdings in rural Vietnam became more unequally distributed between 2004 and 2014. • Agricultural landlessness and near landlessness increased by almost two-fifths over the decade. • Rapid accumulation of residential land in the top quartile contributed to rising rural land inequality. • Key drivers of land inequality were the shares of agricultural workers per household and forestry and perennial crop land. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article attempts to explore urban relocation impacts on the livelihoods of poor households displaced by a development project in Bahir Dar city in northwestern Ethiopia. Qualitative methods were used to generate the necessary data. The findings identified that the urban relocation caused a variety of livelihood risks such as loss of home or shelter, lack of urban infrastructures such as road facilities, electricity, job opportunites, potable water services and cash compensation for rehousing, as well as landlessness and separation of small cohesive social groups (notably coffee members). Though IDPs are exposed to various livelihood challenges because of a lack of addressing environmental impact assessment recommendations, those who received housing land are partly happy with owning legally recognised urban land. Currently, IDPs are the owners of the land registered by the municipality. The study urges the need to assess and address the unmet needs of poor urban residents as well as the environmental impact of urban development projects.

This study attempts to explore urban relocation impacts on the livelihoods of poor households displaced by development project in Bahir Dar, North Western Ethiopia. Population displacement has become a global problem particularly in developing countries. Internal displacement is a risky venture that disrupts the life of people. The literature has documented multifaceted risks faced by displaced people by different causal agents which are regarded as the challenges for sustainable development practice. Studies also indicated that development is the largest cause of population displacement globally and commonly termed in the literature as Development-Induced Displacement (DID). This study deals with the urban displacement in particular by development project and its associated risks faced by poor households. To this end, the qualitative methods were used to generate the necessary data. The findings identified that the urban relocation caused a variety of livelihood risks such as the loss of home or shelter. According to the study, the relocated households are made to live in the new neighborhood with no mainstream urban infrastructures including road facility, electricity, marketing, and potable water services, inability to get cash compensation for rehousing, landlessness experienced by some groups of relocated households. They are also experienced separation from small cohesive social groups notably coffee members. Though the displaced households are exposed to various livelihood problems and challenges, those who received housing land are partly happy with owning legally recognized urban land. The study has implications for addressing the needs of these vulnerable groups of people for sustainable development endeavors. The study urges the need to make feasibility study to address the unmet needs of poor urban residents being displaced by urban development projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the coming decades, ensuring food security is one of the greatest challenges in Ethiopia. Most Ethiopians practice mixed agricultural activity which represents about 33.88% of the country`s GDP. Therefore, this paper is devoted to reviewing the existing agricultural challenges and future prospects in the country. Majorly, it focused on the shortage of farmland, climate change, fragmentation and degradation of farmland, unevenly distributed constructions and urbanizations, pests, lack of integration among stakeholders, political instabilities, and its prospects. Despite the numerous challenges, Ethiopia has marvelous opportunities like the commercialization of fruit, vegetable, and ornamental plant productions. The country has also ample opportunity in the areas of animal production that ranks first in Africa in the number of livestock heads. The country has a huge labor force and water resources. It is proximity to Middle East markets is valuable to transport fresh products within a short period of time to the needed destination. However, Ethiopia’s current fruit, vegetable, and animal production for export are very limited because of fragmented cultivation and lack of quality. The country has also a great variety of climate and soil types that enables it to grow a diversity of horticultural crops. Therefore, emphasizing agriculture in Ethiopia requires the political as well as the economic commitment of all parties concerned.

In the coming decades, ensuring food security is one of the greatest challenges in Ethiopia. Most Ethiopians practice mixed agricultural activity which represents about 33.88% of the country's GDP. Therefore, this paper is devoted to reviewing the existing agricultural challenges and future prospects in the country. Majorly, it focused on the shortage of farmland, climate change, fragmentation and degradation of farmland, unevenly distributed constructions and urbanizations, pests, lack of integration among stakeholders, political instabilities, and its prospects. Despite the numerous challenges, Ethiopia has marvelous opportunities like the commercialization of fruit, vegetable, and ornamental plant productions. The country has also ample opportunity in the areas of animal production that ranks first in Africa in the number of livestock heads. The country has a huge labor force and water resources. It is proximity to Middle East markets is valuable to transport fresh products within a short period of time to the needed destination. However, Ethiopia's current fruit, vegetable, and animal production for export are very limited because of fragmented cultivation and lack of quality. The country has also a great variety of climate and soil types that enables it to grow a diversity of horticultural crops. Therefore, emphasizing agriculture in Ethiopia requires the political as well as the economic commitment of all parties concerned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes how Nuevomexicanas/os have used texts, images, and other media to reclaim the lands they lost in the US-Mexico War. Along the way, it models a method for reading “imagined environments”—the frameworks through which human groups have represented, related to, and resided in their more-than-human worlds. This article focuses on two generations of writer-activists. In the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, Adelina Otero-Warren and Fabiola Cabeza de Baca situated themselves in the Precarious Desert, an imagined environment of constraints, contingencies, and struggles for survival. Then, in the 1960s and 1970s, the Alianza Federal de Mercedes revived the Pueblo Olvidado, an imagined environment saturated with laws, treaties, and cultural traditions. Despite many differences, both generations shared a desire to settle on and profit from Native lands. But though they never became environmentalists, they experimented with environmental writing and politics. By recovering these experiments, this article shows how media produce—rather than simply portray—lands and waters. Ultimately it tells the story of the borderlands as a series of struggles over what environments are, whom they can contain, and how they should be used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study on the extensive group of landless people in eighteenth-century Andalusia, particularly western Andalusia, is concerned with their specific characteristics and the complicated options for social advancement. Firstly, it defines the different groups of landless people and establishes differences within this highly heterogeneous collective. Two groups, salaried workers and small farmers with scarce resources, come to the fore in collections of rich empirical material. Secondly, landless people's poverty and their submission to multifactorial uncertainty are outlined. Even the situation of small farmers with some land was precarious. As they owned a limited amount of farming tools and no farm animals, they faced the problem of finding more land to cultivate and suffered the repercussions of a bad or lost harvest due to adverse weather conditions or other unforeseen circumstances. Thirdly, the text analyses the almost non-existent prospects that landless people had for improving their social position and breaking the status quo. This lack of choice is explained by an aggregate of causes including unequal property distribution, the prevailing formulas for working the arable land and the limitations imposed by the technological limitations of organic-based agriculture. The reform policies undertaken by the enlightened governments of the time had little impact on all these constellations, although some of the organised land distributions were relatively successful. For landless rural workers with no other opportunities the last resort was migration. Big cities were the preferred destination: rich city dwellers and convents required large numbers of domestic servants and other workers. Altogether, the issue of landless people has continued into the nineteenth century and the Second Spanish Republic until today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The essay focuses on the notion of ordinary violence in the homiletical and literary corpus of Archbishop Óscar Romero of El Salvador. Focusing especially on the reality of landlessness, I attend to Romero's characterization of the inability of people to access land and livelihood as itself a form of violence, which he understands to be an attack upon the dignity of those deprived of what they need to survive and to flourish. The essay then turns to the assumptions about the world that make the perception of ordinary violence possible, arguing that such violence assumes and elaborates upon the theological grammar of creation as a common gift. I proceed to sketch the moral and theological landscape opened up by this belief about creation, suggesting some of the possibilities it generates for moral description and agency. For instance, Romero's understanding of ordinary violence considerably complicates commonplace conceptions of thievery—a complexity especially evident in his claim that some Salvadoran oligarchs are like thieves because they take the land that belongs to all. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We know very little about the unlanded population (obesuttna) in Sweden before 1750. Still, knowledge of this group is vital not only to our understanding of the proletarianization process, but also to the understanding of rural Sweden before the changes of the 18th and 19th centuries. This article takes a step towards filling this gap. Tax registers and church records from 17th-century Västmanland shows substantial proportions of unlanded people, i.e. crofters, cottagers, soldiers, artisans, and lodgers, around 1640 and 1690. The age structure of this group, which can be studied for the latter part of the period, shows that it mostly consisted of people in working age. In conclusion, the article argues that there was a significant group of smallholders and wage labourers in 17th-century Sweden, comparable to the labouring poor of other European countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The origin of women's landlessness is traceable to the hegemonic masculinities sown by powerful empires from the ancient and medieval times. • Three pillars of women's landlessness in sub-Saharan Africa include gender insensitive worldviews, rights restrictions and male power. • Male power has linguistic power and father-husband-son power, which interact to cripple women's empowerment within their social spaces. • A policy pathway to neutralise the pillars of women's landlessness is to apply principles of gender compensation and abandon gender competition. A typical character of land tenure or property systems in sub-Saharan Africa is that the systems exclude women (implicitly and explicitly). That is why the discourse on women and land tenure remains a burgeoning policy debate in sub-Saharan Africa. This study is relevant for land policy (and land governance) in sub-Saharan Africa because it evokes the minority voices of women in the land and gender discourse in sub-Saharan Africa. The study dissects, anatomically, female landlessness by probing why women still do not enjoy equal land rights today, and what must be done (policy-wise) to unchain women from their state of landlessness. By way of methodology, the study reviews relevant literature on the historical dimension of womenös access to property rights. It is an explorative study based on two e-Focus Group Discussions conducted on two different online platforms to enable the capture of more expert knowledge on the subject of customary land tenure, gender and womenös land rights in (and on) sub-Saharan Africa. The findings exposed three pillars of womenös landlessness in sub-Saharan Africa, including an analysis of the stages of male power that cripple womenös capacity to own or have access to land. The study identified and explained the nature of the contributions of different stages of male powers — including linguistic power , son power, husband power, and father power — to womenös landlessness. It shows how these powers form the elements of male dominance which interact over a life course to cripple womenös physical and psychological strength within their social spaces (which usually results into socio-political and economic disempowerments). As a key output, the study produced a policy pathway to neutralising the pillars of womenös landlessness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Landlessness and poverty are closely linked to each other. Being agricultural country, land is considered as a principal asset in Pakistan. This study aims to identify the poverty situation of landless peasants in Pakistan. Primary data are collected by simple random sampling method. Binary logistic regression model are used to estimate the relationship between landlessness and poverty. Result shows that high age of household head, education level, land ownership, operational land holding, and income earners in a household significantly reduces the chances of household's poverty. The value of Gini coefficient is found 0.63 that indicates that there is high income inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spanish land reform, involving the breakup of the large southern estates, was a central issue during the first decades of the twentieth century, and was justified on economic and political grounds. This article employs new provincial data on landless workers, land prices, and agrarian wages to consider whether government intervention was needed because of the failure of the free action of markets to redistribute land. Our evidence shows that the relative number of landless workers decreased significantly from 1860 to 1930, before the approval of the 1932 Land reform during the Second Republic (1931–6). This was due to two interrelated market forces: the falling ratio between land prices and rural wages, which made plots of land cheaper for landless workers to rent and buy; and structural change that drained the rural population from the countryside Given that shifts in factor prices were already helping workers gain access to land by the 1930s, the economic arguments for introducing reform at that time remain unclear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Recent processes of socio-economic change in rural Myanmar are etching significant shifts to the social distribution of advantage and disadvantage, with implications for patterns of food security and dietary quality. This paper uses original repeat cross-sectional household survey data to identify emergent relationships between land and livelihoods on the one hand, and food security and dietary quality, on the other. The paper concludes that although land 'matters' (landholding households are more likely to be food secure and have higher dietary diversity than landless households), this association is strongly conditioned by livelihood and seasonal circumstances. Households with livelihood arrangements articulated to the non-farm economy, whether they were landholders or landless, exhibited superior food and nutritional outcomes compared to those with livelihoods only in farming. Hence, while access to arable land remains an important factor in shaping food security and dietary diversity, of greater importance is the capacity for households to supplement their land assets with livelihood activities in the non-farm economy. This finding reinforces broader arguments that emphasise the importance of the non-farm economy as a vital shaper of wellbeing for rural households in the global South. Highlights • A survey of 2,109 households in rural Myanmar reveals the importance of the non-farm economy as a source greater food security and higher dietary diversity. • The role of the non-farm economy was especially important in seasonal 'hard times'. • These findings highlight the need for researchers and policy-makers to appreciate the important role of non-farm livelihoods as a driver or good quality diets in rural regions of the global South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the first ten years after the transition to democracy in 1994 over one million farmworkers, farm dwellers and labour tenants were displaced and evicted from white commercial farms across South Africa. This briefing focuses on the violence of farm evictions and its impact on farmworker women in South Africa. It views these forced removals as a violent dislocation, uprooting and separation of farm workers and farm dwellers from land and their livelihoods. It contextualises the evictions in terms of commercial farming and the apartheid legacy and identifies the current legislation relating to farm evictions. The ongoing evictions highlights the inadequate nature of these policies. It illustrates the everyday violence these women experience by drawing on interviews, conversations, reports from farmworkers and research as well as the author's observations as an activist working on farms and with farm workers and farm dwellers mainly in the Western Cape, but also in the Eastern Cape, Free State and Limpopo for the past 10 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agriculture has been seen as the engine of growth for Afghanistan, but it has failed to deliver. Evidence from a long-term livelihood study points to a rural economy that is driven more by social relations than by market relations. These are underpinned by major land inequality and a distributional economy concerned with survival, given the absence of rural employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study attempts to understand the role of brick industry in changing rural production system and economic activity in relation to the landless labourers of the three community development blocks of district Murshidabad, West Bengal. Two hundred ninety seven respondents, belonging to 27 active brick industries spread over three community development blocks, were selected for this study. The purposive sampling technique was used to select the study blocks. The stratified proportionate sampling technique for the selection of brick industry and proportionate purposive sampling techniques for the selection of respondents were applied. The result shows that majority of the respondents' yearly incomes were constituted from daily agricultural wage labour, daily wages from other than agricultural sectors, daily wages from construction sector, and daily casual daily wages before the brick industry came into existence in the study area. However, the emergence of brick industries has significantly changed the nature of sources of income and share of yearly income. The study also shows that the numbers of working days have significantly increased among the labourers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article, focusing on the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) of Brazil, demonstrates how members of Latin America’s largest social movement perform the diverse compacts of obligation and reciprocity that characterise an MST occupation. MST encampments seek to enact a transformation of the land on which members are situated, but also emphasise a transformation of the human subject itself, from unproductive to productive. Performing this transformation and becoming truly ‘landless’, however, goes beyond merely being a willing new member: equally as important is the creation and maintenance of an ‘aesthetics of orderliness’ which makes visible the moral connotations that structure or undermine one’s right to become sem terra, landless. Through an analysis that foregrounds the temporality and territoriality of how the MST occupy and drawing a distinction between the precariousness of an MST encampment and the relative stability of an MST settlement, I suggest that movement members are content to perform in the former, but increasingly seek to issue performative acts in the latter. Building on Judith Butler’s distinction between performativity and performance, I argue that individual MST members, embedded in relational spheres, ultimately seek not only to transform themselves but also the wider movement by reconfiguring the very moral framework that structures their social movement from the ground up. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use the concepts of riskscapes and risk governance to analyze the tensions between land use for food (farms) and energy (dams) in Southwest Ethiopia. We analyze the linkages between risk perception, risk assessment and risk management for local and non-local actors. We distinguish, after empirical analysis, as main riskscapes the riskscapes of landlessness, food and energy insecurity and siltation. For the Ethiopian case, and more generally, we reflect on the potential of spatial planning as a site of risk governance, where risk perception, assessment and management can be discussed in their linkages, where different actor-related and topical riskscapes can encounter, can be deliberated and result in policy integration. We finally reflect on the ethical implications of our perspective and reconsider the idea of social cost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the evolution of the Landless Movement’s practices with respect to legislation and public policy from the 1980s to the Temer government, which took power after Dilma Rousseff was removed from the Presidency in 2016. The main argument is that the movement has learned over time, from viewing government with hostile skepticism, to understanding its relationship with different administrations in terms of strategic utilization. Central to this argument is that instead of the government’s use of repression contributing to demobilization, a variety of acts initially intended to suppress the movement subsequently provided the Landless Movement with knowledge on institutions, policies, and laws. Such lessons contributed to the movement’s ability to address a variety of its internal weaknesses. How lessons have been acquired, as well as how the movement has altered its approach with respect to the state, becomes apparent in subnational comparisons and in charting developments in the movement’s approach to federal legislation over time. Actual changes in the movement, most notably in terms of leadership, organization, and tactics, have taken place, making it well-prepared to confront the Temer administration’s efforts to suppress mobilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines landlessness among Palestinians as a facet of colonial policy in Mandate Palestine before the 1936 revolt. The growth of what was sometimes called a ‘landless class’ came into official view after the violence of 1929. Subsequent investigations indicated that landlessness was a significant problem and that it threatened to destabilize the Mandate. The effort to ameliorate the crisis of landlessness, however, clashed with the dominant colonial conception of settler developmentalism, the notion that Jews, not Arabs, were the agents of modern economic development in Palestine. The first part of this examination revisits the contest over the 1930 White Paper, focusing on its relationship to the advent of mass landlessness. The rapid defeat of the new policy via the MacDonald letter left the landlessness problem to fester while simultaneously obscuring it. As the situation in the Arab countryside continued to deteriorate, the onset of the fifthaliyatemporarily reinforced erroneous assumptions about the potential to rectify the problem through theyishuv's development.By the time mass landlessness was ‘rediscovered’ and new land controls designed to protect Arab smallholders were on their way to promulgation in 1935–1936, the Palestinian countryside was just months away from determined revolt. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Measuring the precise nature and causes of land inequality is critical for addressing and implementing policy initiatives related to agricultural productivity, rural development and within-country income distribution. In this study, we argue that measuring land inequality solely among land owners does not provide a complete picture of land allocation among agricultural actors. We analyze land inequality (with or without the inclusion of landless peasants) as well as landlessness to present a holistic picture of land inequality across all districts of Pakistan. We employ data on 152,582 farm households from two rounds of the district-representative Pakistan Social and Living Standard Measurement Survey to construct Gini and Mean Logarithmic Deviation (MLD) indicators of land inequality and decompose it into within- and between-district inequalities. We found that inequalities measured without including landless peasants portray different picture of land disparities than that based on measures of inequality including landless workers. Our main findings are four-fold: 1) Land inequality measured including landless peasants is much higher (Gini = 0.84) than that without them (Gini = 0.67), and has increased much more between 2007 and 2015 when landless peasants are included (6%) than when measured without them (1%). 2) In 22% of the districts, land inequality without landless peasants decreased between 2007 and 2015 while that measured without them increased. The opposite is true in 5% of the districts. 3) Land inequality without landless workers is higher in irrigated and humid regions with better soil quality and rough terrain while inequality with landless workers is higher in more arid and semi-arid districts. Districts with rough topography face less landlessness in the presence of predominantly-smallholder farms, whereas more fertile soil is associated with higher landlessness. 4) Districts based on Pashtun tribal ancestral land distribution rights have the lowest rates of landlessness (20%) while districts with pre-colonial Zamindari-based land distribution show the highest incidence of landlessness (66%). The findings highlight the need for robust tenancy reforms in districts with humid climate, higher land inequality and lower landlessness in order to provide land tenure security to landless tenants and protect them from force eviction by powerful landed elites. Use of information technology in registering land rights through geo-coordinates can be helpful in improving land security and the expansion of the agricultural land markets. Besides, there is a greater need of land redistribution in the southern and south-western districts where landlessness is high despite relatively low extent of land inequality. • Land inequality measured only between landowners does not provide a complete picture of land allocation among farm actors. • In 22% of districts in Pakistan, land inequality among landowners fell while that including landless workers increased. • Growth in land inequality in the arid and semi-arid districts stems mainly from landlessness. • Land inequality among landowners is higher in humid regions with fertile soil while including landless workers is higher in arid districts. • Districts with pre-colonial Zamindari-based land distribution have the highest incidence of landlessness (66%). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study an African proverb or saying, Mapfeṋe hu ḽa mahulwane (literally, “The baboons who get to eat are the big ones”), the tenor of which is that the ones who tend to benefit from the system are those in position of power while the rest have to eat the crumbs or nothing at all, is utilized as a lens to engage the issue of the exclusion of the Levites from owning land. Utilizing the proverb of our interrogation as a lens, the Joshua story (especially Jos 14, 16–17) is read in dialogue with the Joseph story. This paper, therefore, argues that the Levites’ loss of land was due to a coup by the Joseph tribes under the leadership of Hoshea (Joshua) son of Nun from the tribe of Ephraim. The Levites’ exclusion from land, thus, reflects the privileging of those in power at the expense of the tribe of Levi, which was relegated to lower class. The paper also engages the current South African political-economic context, in which those in political power enrich themselves by grabbing what they can while they can at the expense of the ordinary citizens.