•Large farm establishment had short-term spillovers on neighboring small farmers.•The positive spillover increased adoption of new practices and access to inputs.•The negative spillover decreased ...perceived well-being.•There is no significant spillover on output market participation and crop yields.•The benefits cannot overcome under-investment in Mozambique’s agricultural sector.
Almost a decade after a spike in land demand following the 2007–08 commodity boom, evidence on impacts of this phenomenon remains limited and mostly case study based. We show that information on location and start data of large farms, combined with existing smallholder farm surveys, allows to complement this with a difference-in-difference approach to systematically assess spillovers from large farm establishment. Illustrative application to Mozambique suggests positive short-term effects from newly established large farms on adoption of agricultural practices and input use by small farms less than 50km from newly established large operations. Robustness checks for crop farms only also suggest job creation in the proximity of newly established crop, but not livestock farms. Yet, large farm establishment decreased perceived well-being within a 25-km band and, in the time horizon considered here, did not lead to better access to output markets, cultivation of larger areas or, once other factors are controlled for, higher yields. This allows us to reject the notion of negative spillovers from large farm establishment but casts doubt on the wisdom of large unconditional subsidies to attract investors. In addition to drawing policy conclusions for Mozambique, we highlight the methodology’s wider applicability and scope for expansion.
We evaluate the short-term impact of a pilot land regularization program in Rwanda using a geographic discontinuity design with spatial fixed effects. Three key findings emerge from the analysis. ...First, the program seems to have improved land access for legally married women (about 76% of married couples) and prompted better recording of inheritance rights without gender bias. Second, we find that the program was associated with a very large impact on investment and maintenance of soil conservation measures. This effect was particularly pronounced for female headed households, suggesting that this group had suffered from high levels of tenure insecurity which the program managed to reduce. Third, land market activity declined, allowing us to reject the hypothesis that the program caused a wave of distress sales or widespread landlessness by vulnerable people. Implications for program design and policy are discussed.
Agriculture made major contributions to China’s growth and poverty reduction, but the literature has rarely focused on the institutional factors that might underpin such structural transformation and ...productivity. Drawing on an 8-year panel of 1,200 households in six provinces, we find that land tenure insecurity, measured by past land reallocations, discourages households from quitting agriculture, and the recognition of land rights through formal certificates encourages the temporary migration of rural labor. A sustained increase in nonagricultural opportunities will reinforce the importance of secure land tenure, a precondition for successful structural transformation and continued economic attractiveness of rural areas.
Resurgent interest in agriculture raises issues about agrarian structure and the balance between large and small farms that have thus far been addressed mainly from a smallholder angle. We identify ...economic and policy factors that contributed to episodes of large farm growth, their impact, and ways in which these may have changed recently. An analysis of recent land demand from large investors suggests that greater clarity in the definition of property rights, attention to employment effects and technical viability, and mechanisms to re-allocate land from unsuccessful ventures to more productive entrepreneurs will be critical to facilitate better developmental outcomes.
Although the importance of land rental for overall economic development and development of the non-agricultural economy has long been recognized in theory, empirical evidence on factors that can ...promote or impede operation of such markets and their productivity and equity impacts, especially in rapidly developing economies with rather equal land endowments, remains limited. A large household level panel is used to illustrate the large contribution of land markets to occupational diversification, productivity of land use, and household welfare. Factors affecting land market participation are derived from a household model with transaction cost and individual ability. Results suggest that, by transferring land from less able and more affluent households who joined the non-farm sector to poorer ones with ample family labor, land markets are critical not only for non-agricultural growth but, by allowing more effective use of potentially idle land can contribute to significant productivity gains. Policy implications are derived.
While scholars long recognized the importance of land markets as a key driver of rural non-farm development and transformation in rural areas, evidence on the extent of their operation and the nature ...of participants remains limited. We use household data from 6 countries to show that there is great potential for such markets to increase productivity and equalize factor ratios. While rental markets transfer land to land-poor and labor-rich producers, their operation and thus impact may be constrained by policy restrictions. Their functioning may also be constrained by ill-defined or insecure rights that may arise from failure to fully compensate existing rights in cases of expropriation, a failure to implement more broadly land policies or to do so in a gender sensitive manner. Methodological and substantive conclusions are derived.
Whether the negative relationship between farm size and crop productivity that is confirmed in a large global literature holds in Africa is of considerable policy relevance. Plot-level data from ...Rwanda point toward constant returns to scale and a strong negative relationship between farm size and crop output per hectare that is robust across specifications and emerges also if profits with family labor valued at shadow wages are used but disappears if family labor is valued at market rates. In Rwanda, labor market imperfections, rather than other unobserved factors, seem to be a key reason for the inverse farm-size productivity relationship.
What Drives the Global "Land Rush"? Arezki, Rabah; Deininger, Klaus; Selod, Harris
The World Bank economic review,
01/2015, Letnik:
29, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
We review evidence regarding the size and evolution of the "land rush" in the wake of the 2007-8 boom in agricultural commodity prices, and we study the determinants of foreign land acquisition for ...large-scale agricultural investment. The use of data on bilateral investment relationships to estimate gravity models of transnational land-intensive investments confirms the central role of agro-ecological potential as a pull factor. However, this finding contrasts the standard literature insofar as the quality of the destination country's business climate is insignificant, and weak tenure security is associated with increased interest for investors to acquire land in the country. Policy implications are discussed.
•The methodology contributes to the debate on large-scale agricultural investment.•70% of Malawi’s agricultural estates have leases expired.•140,000 ha of land under agricultural estates are subject ...to overlapping claims.•Expired leases and overlapping claims reduce revenue by US$ 35 mn a year.•Large farms underperformed small ones and failed to generate positive spillovers.
We use data from the complete computerization of agricultural leases in Malawi, a georeferenced farm survey, and satellite imagery to document challenges and opportunities of land-based investment in novel ways. Covering some 1.35 million hectares or about 25% of the country’s arable area, agricultural estates are an important part of Malawi’s rural economy. However, the analysis shows that 70% of these estates have expired leases, reducing government revenue from ground rent by up to US$35 million or 5% of the total public spending annually. The low quality of spatial records, as indicated by the fact that some 140,000 hectares under estates are subject to overlapping claims could preclude the land market participation, especially under longer-term contracts. Data from a 2006/07 survey suggest that estates’ yield, productivity, and intensity of land use are below those of small farms. While the recently passed land laws create a basis for low-cost systematic demarcation and registration of rights to customary land, our analysis suggests that, to maximize their likely contribution to increasing productivity and welfare rather than conflict, such efforts need to be preceded by a clarification of boundaries and lease status of existing estates and ideally a more detailed study of the reasons underpinning the low productivity.
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