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Abstract:
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"Poor agricultural productivity and food insecurity are persistent features of many less developed countries. Governments and international development agencies have therefore rightly considered agricultural intensification as the primary means for inducing technological change in developing countries that have high population pressure and low agricultural productivi-ty. Integral to this growing global interest in agricultural intensification is the issue of land tenure security. Because of the conventional view that traditional or 'customary' land rights impede agricultural development, many developing countries and major multilateral organizations have promoted formalization of land rights (in the form of registration and certification of land) as a top priority in their economic development agendas. In theory, there are three routes through which secure property rights may influence agricultural productivity. The first channel is by encouraging long term land investment and adoption of new technologies. According to this hypothesis, afraid of not recouping the investment made on land to which the user has access but no secure property rights, the user hesitates to spend resources on land-improving technologies (conservation, manure, fertilizer, etc.). As a result, the demand for productivity-enhancing investment declines and aggregate agricultural productivity suffers. Secondly, secure property rights also are thought to influence agricultural productivity because such rights encourage efficient resource use (factor intensity). This is so since the establishment of clear ownership of land lowers the cost and risk of transferring land, which improves factor intensity such that land will be reallocated to more efficient producers. Thirdly, it has also been claimed that secure property rights can stimulate efficient resource use as such rights should reduce land related disputes and may contribute to better access to credit if land can be used as collateral."
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