This dissertation examines the emergence and implementation of a new intermediary mechanism of farmland tenancy in Japan with a focus on farmers’ perspectives. Japan’s government introduced the Farmland Bank (FB) program in 2014 in an attempt to avoid further farmland abandonment and revitalize the farming industry. By design, the program gives more power to prefectural authorities to accommodate new actors and resources in tenancy arrangements even without farmland owners’ consent so as to expedite farmland aggregation and generate better economies of scale. This is a major turning point since the postwar agrarian reform where owners have been given a primary decision-making role in private farmland use. The research draws on semi-structured interviews with farmers, government officials and experts, which were conducted intermittently between 2016 and 2018. By taking a multi-level governance approach, the study shows a change in the farmland governance model from the centralized control of individual property to the decentralized, multi-level coordination for collective tenancy arrangements, to which farmers actively contributed along with the interlocking institutional transitions of farming families and villages. With the decline in the life security function of farmland, they have increasingly disengaged from farming and allowed for political and conceptual shifts of farmland from owner-oriented to user-driven and from family property to the commons of the society. The study finds that despite a massive budget injection, the FB program has only marginally facilitated farmland aggregation. Yet, the case study of two communities reveals that the program has been driving a ‘soft’ coercion of farmers’ land-use practices via economic rationality. Moreover, it has disconnected owners from farmland but failed to enshrine tenants’ commitment to long-term farmland management. Complementary attention to subjective, intangible and cultural aspects of farmland would help to avoid possible one-time profit seeking land-use.

Bibliography : leaves 281-290. / xii, 290 leaves : maps ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of Anthropology, 1994?

Thesis (Ph. D. in Economics)--Vanderbilt University, Aug. 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 120-128).

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Food security continues to be an area of concern worldwide. In Canada, our ability to feed ourselves has diminished significantly and on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, we produce less than 5% of the food we consume. A number of factors have influenced this decline including the globalization of food systems and an increase in regulations. Cities have an opportunity by way of by-laws to increase local food security. In this case study, The City of Colwood has little functional agricultural land but a significant opportunity to expand its urban agriculture activities. Although the community supports such initiatives, the local government has not yet implemented supportive policies and by-laws. This municipal government has the ability to increase local food security through the use of its legislative abilities.

Agriculture is an important enterprise in Africa and indeed in Tanzania where it is one of the major economic sectors, embracing all its population. Agriculture contributes about 60% to the Gross Domestic Product, generates about 75% of the total export earnings and employs 84% of the Tanzanian active labour force. Information plays a critical role in agricultural development in most countries. However, one of the most serious reasons adduced for the low agricultural production in Africa is the limited access to adequate information support to all stakeholders in agricultural production. This affects all sectors of research, extension and training. Inadequate access to and use of agricultural information by research scientists undermines the potential to fulfil their information needs. They often lack access to current, relevant and timely information. This results in duplication of research efforts. Lack of access to scientific literature in the agricultural field in Tanzania has been attributed to the ineffectiveness of the various information providers in the country, among which the key ones are agricultural libraries and documentation centres. Studies by agricultural information specialists and international organizations have established that agricultural libraries and documentation centres in Less Developed Countries have not excelled in providing agricultural information to users. This has been attributed to several reasons. The major one being the non-implementation of policies, strategies and recommendations advanced by scholars, international organizations and consultants for more availability, accessibility and use of agricultural libraries' services and facilities. The main objectives of this study were to establish the extent to which Tanzania has implemented the key policies, strategies and recommendations for enhancing accessibility and use of agricultural libraries and documentation centres' services and facilities. Some of the key policies and strategies recommended by scholars include; increasing the libraries' capacity in human, financial and material resources. Such policies and strategies include, among many others: library staff development, cooperation and networking among agricultural libraries and documentation centres at national regional and international levels and formulation of national information policies to give guidance to agricultural information acquisition, organization, management and provision. They also include formulation of Information and Communication Technologies' policies for standardization in operating systems and data formats. Two main data collection instruments were used in the study namely; a self administered questionnaire and an interview schedule. The instruments were supplemented by on site observations of the libraries' operational activities. The sample size comprised 34 agricultural libraries and documentation centres located in all seven agricultural zones and 18 interviewees from the Ministry of agriculture, agricultural institutions and research stations. The Statistical Product and Service Solution (SPSS) for Windows version 9.0 was used to analyze the quantitative and qualitative data. The problems facing agricultural libraries and documentation centres in Less Developed Countries today are many and varied, and differ from one country to another. In Tanzania, the study findings established that these problems can be classified into six major categories: lack of adequate resources/materials; inadequate number of qualified personnel at managerial, professional and technical levels; lack of cooperation and coordination among existing libraries and documentation centres; limited financial resources; lack of explicit and operational training programmes for library personnel and lack of a national information policy per se. Tanzania has a number of sectoral policies in place, related to information, technology and research. These "little sectoral policies" are fragmented and need a policy framework to provide the missing coordination. The study established that the number of skilled information staff in the national agricultural library system was small. Libraries and documentation centres in many agricultural institutions and research stations were poorly equipped and lacked professional trained staff. Furthermore, operational budgets were limited and hence lack of current and relevant library materials including Subscriptions to scientific journals. Contacts of agricultural information personnel with regional and international circuits on development were found limited. The study findings also revealed that the agricultural library information system in Tanzania was lacking in efficiency and effectiveness in meeting the diversified information needs of agriculturalists, particularly the research scientists. To this effect, where information was abundantly available, it was often inaccessible due to lack of technical know-how in documentation, organization and management for awareness of its availability to users. The study assumed that the global Information and Communication Technologies (lCTs) and current technological developments in the publishing industry could facilitate effective agricultural information organization and management, including repackaging of information for extension personnel and farmers, and resource sharing via electronic networking. However, the poor economic growth of Tanzania, as in other Less Developed Countries, has posed limitations to the full utilization of ICTs through lack of resources, policy guidelines and frameworks for the implementation of such policies. The study concluded that there has not been an effective and efficient implementation of policies, strategies and recommendations for access and use of agricultural information in Tanzania due to a number of problems, the main ones being: lack of awareness of the policies and strategies among the libraries, parent organizations and policy makers and lack of capacity of the libraries and documentation centres to implement the policies, strategies and recommendations. The study recommended that agricultural libraries and documentation centres in Tanzania be given priority in budget allocation for acquisition of basic equipment, such as photocopiers and microcomputers and for training library personnel at all levels. The more affluent libraries, such as the Sokoine National Agricultural Library and the Division of Research and Development library of the Ministry of agriculture, should audit their resources to determine the best ways to assist the documentation centres in remote research stations to organize and adequately present the required information to users. Agricultural libraries' managers and information specialists should become more assertive, focused, and committed in finding out about the policies and recommendations and eventually working out the requirements for their implementation and monitoring. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2001.

The communal (former homeland) areas of South Africa are characterised by high concentrations of black people many of whom live in extreme poverty. In recent years this has been exacerbated by the collapse of state-run farmer assistance schemes, which has resulted in very low levels of agricultural production in these areas. The new South African government has proposed the revitalisation of small-scale agriculture as an important mechanism for uplifting rural livelihoods here. This research was undertaken in the former homeland of Ciskei, in what is now central Eastern Cape Province. Here agricultural decline has resulted in large areas of land designated for crop production lying fallow in the long term. Livestock production offers greater livelihood potential in this region, and it was therefore posited that this essentially abandoned cropland might be better utilised as a permanent grazing resource for livestock, particularly cattle. The research sought to characterise current levels and patterns of utilisation of arable land by livestock and how this land might be more effectively managed as a grazing resource and thereby improve levels of livestock production. Enormous variation was found in the contribution made by arable land allocations to cattle production systems in communal areas of this region. From a social perspective grazing management systems were found to depend largely on the availability of grazing resources. Where these were plentiful, control was exercised at a communal level although this tended to devolve to the individual level as grazing areas became overutilised. Considerable variation was also evident at the ecological level. Pasture quantity and quality was largely dependent on local ecotopes and land management strategies. This in turn exerted a strong influence on cattle foraging behaviour and the extent to which they could satisfy their nutritional intake requirements and thereby maintain bogy condition. Recommendations are advanced for improving cattle production systems, which take adequate account of the social and ecological heterogeneity of the central Eastern Cape region.

During the last two decades two major government policies aimed at bringing structural changes in the system of land tenure in Iran have been implemented. The first was the Land Reform of 1962-66, which transferred the ownership of the land from the large landlords to the peasant and tribal producers. But during the late-sixties and the seventies a second major structural change in the system of land tenure was proposed by the government, this time aimed at the destruction of the already existing peasant, tribal and capitalist producers and the creation of very large-scale agricultural corporations. As the main objective of this policy was to bring about substantial increases in agricultural production and productivities, it is the purpose of this dissertation to examine whether these very large-scale corporations are more productive systems than the already existing autonomous producers. As the proponents of the very large-scale farms argue in terms of gains from economies of scale in very large units and of the superiority of the trained and skilled corporate managers to the family managed peasant farmers, in this dissertation an attempt has been made to examine the effect on productivity of (a) farm size and (b) management system. The following procedure has been adopted to examine the subject. [continued in text ...]

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The objective of this thesis is to examine price performance, and estimate the aggregate export and food crop output response to output price and non-price variables in tropical Africa and its four main agro-climatic regions. The analysis of real producer prices indicates that there are more countries that exhibited a statistically significant decrease in real producer prices than a significant increase. Moreover, nominal protection coefficient analysis shows that African crop exporters, on average, received a small proportion (50 to 60 percent) of border prices. Using pooled cross-section and time series data, a partial adjustment model was then specified to estimate agricultural export and food output response. The results show that aggregate agricultural export and food supply responses to output prices in tropical Africa are both positive and significant but inelastic. The price elasticity for the export crop output in Tropical Africa is 0.02 in the short run and 0.04 in the long run, and for the food crop output 0.05 in the short-run and 0.07 in the long-run. The responsiveness of agriculture varies, however, across the main agro-climatic regions in tropical Africa. The estimated coefficient of the price variable and price elasticity estimates regions reveal that producers in the Eastern and Southern Africa, and Western Africa regions were responsive to price incentives, while producers in the semi-arid Sudano Sahel and Central Africa regions were not. The trend variable, as proxy of technology, is positive and significant in most regions, suggesting that the provision of non-price factors along with favourable price incentives, could be very effective in raising agricultural production in these regions.