The formalization fix? Land titling and land concessions in Cambodia

Issuing land titles to smallholder farmers has long been embraced as a way to promote lending and land markets, but is increasingly being reframed as a way to protect smallholders from irresponsible agricultural investment. This brief examines the case of Cambodia, where over the last decade extensive land titling efforts have occurred alongside a wave of large-scale land concessions. The problem, however, is that titling has failed to live up to the rhetoric of systematic coverage, and has often focused on areas where tenure was already relatively secure. Areas outside the titling zone, in contrast, have become formalized de facto through the process of granting land concessions to investors. This undermines pro-poor development significantly.

Publicness and Taken-for-granted Knowledge: A Case Study of Communal Land Formation in Rural Thailand

The lack of public-mindedness can cause problems in the social order of people’s daily lives, such as the tragedy of the commons and the problem of free riders. Some scholars such as Habermas assert that communicative rationality is the solution, expecting that individuals will communicate with each other to reach a consensus without being bounded by aspects of social background. Other scholars advocate the revitalization of traditional community culture. These arguments, however, are not based on reality. By using the case of communal land formation in rural Thailand, the author shows that collective action is neither a revival of tradition nor a result of communication free from social constraints. Rather, cooperation emerges because the people rationally respond to their present needs and have built, through daily social interactions, taken-for-granted knowledge about how they should behave for cooperation.

Development of land rental market and its effect on household farming in rural China : an empirical study in Zhejiang Province

This paper investigates the impact of land rental market development on the efficiency of labor allocation and land utilization in rural China. To test the hypothesis that the shadow wage of a rent-in household with limited off-farm opportunities will increase with the development of a land rental market for households, a statistical comparison between the shadow wage and the estimated market wage was conducted. The results showed that the shadow wage for both rent-in households and non-rent-in households was significantly lower than the market wage, but that the wage for the rent-in households was statistically higher than that for non-rent-in households in Fenghua and Deqing, the two counties surveyed in this study. In addition, the estimated marginal product of farmland for rent-in households was statistically higher than the actual land rent that those households paid, while a null hypothesis that the actual rental fee accepted by rent-out households is equivalent to the marginal product of farmland for those households was not rejected in Fenghua county where land transactions by mutual agreement were more prevalent. These results indicate that the development of the land rental market facilitates the efficiency of labor allocation and farmland utilization in rural China.

The Contribution of Agriculture, Forestry and other Land Use activities to Global Warming, 1990-2012

Date of Acceptance: 16/12/2014 Acknowledgements: This work was carried out with generous funding by the Governments of Germany (GCP/GLO/286/GER) and Norway (GCP/GLO/325/NOR) to the ‘Monitoring and Assessment of GHG Emissions and Mitigation Potential from Agriculture’ Project of the FAO Climate, Energy and Tenure Division. P. Smith is a Royal Society Wolfson Merit Award holder, and his input contributes to the University of Aberdeen Environment and Food Security Theme and to Scotland's ClimateXChange. J. House was funded by a Leverhulme Research Fellowship. The FAO Statistics Division maintains the FAOSTAT Emissions database with regular program funds allocated through Strategic Objective 6. © 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Land Reform in South Africa in Light of Emerging Urbanization, Industrialization, and Globalization Trends

Black South Africans experienced centuries of mistreatment and land dispossessions, leaving their population in dire poverty and dependence. The 1994 democratization of South Africa birthed a three-fold land reform program dedicated to land restitution, land redistribution, and tenure reform. The first decade of implementation left government goals unmet. The relevance of land reform is examined given modern-day urbanization, industrialization, and globalization. This paper affirms land reform is still relevant socially and is therefore relevant politically and economically. Improvements to program implementation are suggested in the following areas: implementing agency support; rural representation; information management; land market stimulation; beneficiary support; and agrarian reform. Land reform limitations are discussed, and industrialization is briefly explored as the more likely solution to poverty issues.

The Impact of the SFP System on Italian Farmland Prices and Tenure Contracts. Factor Markets Working Document No. 65, August 2013

EDITED VERSION TO BE PUBLISHED SOON. The aim of this paper is to contribute to the estimation of the potential effects of the CAP reform on propensity to transaction, particularly comparing the effect of different new instruments/policy settings with the current policy (CAP health check) used as a baseline. The work is focused on three of new policy instruments within the post 2013 CAP reform proposal: regionalization, greening and capping. The first and second are analysed in more detail. The analysis will be based on a survey of farmers in the Province of Bologna, Emilia Romagna, Italy. The questionnaire focuses on mechanism of access to land and related incentives towards different land use/economic behaviour. The survey includes information about respondent characteristics (farm, farmer, household and payments received) and stated intention about potential changes in land operated under alternative agricultural policy scenarios (particularly the post-2013 reform proposals).

How can land and urban development make houses healthier?

Traditionally, the main focus of the professional community involved with indoor air quality has been indoor pollution sources, preventing or reducing their emissions, as well as lowering the impact of the sources by replacing the polluted indoor air with "fresh" outdoor air. However, urban outdoor air cannot often be considered "fresh", as it contains high concentrations of pollutants emitted from motor vehicles - the main outdoor pollution sources in cities. Evidence from epidemiological studies conducted worldwide demonstrates that outdoor air quality has considerable effects on human health, despite the fact that people spend the majority of their time indoors. This is because pollution from outdoors penetrates indoors and becomes a major constituent of indoor pollution. Urban land and transport development has significant impact on the overall air quality of the urban airshed as well as the pollution concentration in the vicinity of high-density traffic areas. Therefore, an overall improvement in indoor air quality would be achieved by lowering urban airshed pollution, as well as by lowering the impact of the hot spots on indoor air. This paper explores the elements of urban land and vehicle transport developments, their impact on global and local air quality, and how the science of outdoor pollution generation and transport in the air could be utilized in urban development towards lowering indoor air pollution.

The role of land use and psycho-social factors in high density residents' work travel mode choices : implications for sustainable transport policy

Imperatives to improve the sustainability of cities often hinge upon plans to increase urban residential density to facilitate greater reliance on sustainable forms of transport and minimise car use. However there is ongoing debate about whether high residential density land use in isolation results in sustainable transport outcomes. Findings from surveys with residents of inner-urban high density dwellings in Brisbane, Australia, suggest that solo car travel accounts for the greatest modal share of typical work journeys and attitudes toward dwelling and neighbourhood transport-related features, residential sorting factors and socio-demographics, alongside land use such as public transport availability, are significantly associated with work travel mode choice. We discuss the implications of our findings for transport policy and management including encouraging relatively sustainable intermodal forms of transport for work journeys.

Early land grants and reservations : Any lessons from the Queensland experience for the sustainability challenge to land ownership

Environmentalists have called for a new property paradigm premised on the idea of land ownership as a delegated responsibility to manage land and resources for the public benefit. An examination of Crown freehold grants from the beginnings of settlement until the 1890s in Queensland shows that fee simple titles were granted subject to express conditions and reservations designed to reserve useful natural resources to the Crown, and to promote public purposes. Over time, legislative regulation of landowner’s rights rendered obsolete the use of express conditions and reservations in grants. One result of this change was that the inherently limited nature of fee simple ownership, and the communal obligations to which it is subject, are less transparent than in colonial times.

Developing a rural land investment performance index for New Zealand

Agricultural production is one of the major industries in New Zealand and accounts for over 60% of all export trade. The farming industry comprises 70,000 entities ranging in size from small individual run farms to large corporate operations. The reliance of the New Zealand economy to the international rural sector has seen considerable volatility in the rural land markets over the past four decades, with significant shifts in rural land prices based on location, land use and underlying international rural commodity prices. With the increasing attention being paid to the rural sector, especially in relation to food production and bio-fuels, there has been an increasing corporate interest in rural land ownership in relatively low subsidised agricultural producing countries such as New Zealand and Australia. A factor that has limited this participation of institutional investors previously has been a lack of reliable and up-to-date investment performance data for this asset class. This paper is the initial starting phase in the development of a New Zealand South Island rural land investment performance index and covers the period 1990-2007. The research in this paper analyses all rural sales transactions in the South Island and develops a capital return index for rural property based on major rural property land use. Additional work on this index will cover both total return performance and geographic location.

Emerging urban futures, land, water, infrastructure

This paper will examine the intersection of design research and problem‐based teaching through the process and outcomes of a four year long ARC funded research project: the Emerging Futures Project. Sustainability is central to the project; in its overall content as well as in the broad aim of determining better outcomes for urban consolidation.   

Current rural valuation practice : a survey of valuers and agribusiness managers on farm management and sustainable rural land use

Over the past 20 years the nature of rural valuation practice has required most rural valuers to undertake studies in both agriculture (farm management) and valuation, especially if carrying out valuation work for financial institutions. The additional farm financial and management information obtained by rural valuers exceeds that level of information required to value commercial, retail and industrial by the capitalisation of net rent/profit valuation method and is very similar to the level of information required for the valuation of commercial and retail property by the Discounted Cash Flow valuation method. On this basis the valuers specialising in rural valuation practice have the necessary skills and information to value rural properties by an income valuation method, which can focus on the long term environmental and economic sustainability of the property being valued. This paper will review the results of an extensive survey carried out by rural property valuers in Australia, in relation to the impact of farm management on rural property values and sustainable rural land use. A particular focus of the research relates to the increased awareness of the problems of rural land degradation in Australia and the subsequent impact such problems have on the productivity of rural land. These problems of sustainable land use have resulted in the need to develop an approach to rural valuation practice that allows the valuer to factor the past management practices on the subject rural property into the actual valuation figure. An analysis of the past farm management and the inclusion of this data into the valuation methodology provides a much more reliable indication of farm sustainable economic value than the existing direct comparison valuation methodology.

The role of rural land in mixed asset investment portfolios

Rural land has not always been considered as a major long-term investment with both institutional investors and absentee owners in countries such as U.K. and Australia. Although rural land is included in both single asset and mixed asset portfolios in the U.S, it is not at the same levels as either commercial or industrial property. Rural land occupies over 50% of the total area of Australia, and comprises over 115,000 economic farm properties (excludes rural residential, hobby farms and rural lifestyle blocks. However, less than 1.6% of the total economic farm numbers are actually owned by corporate or institutional investors. This low level of corporate involvement in the Australian rural property market has limited both the investment performance research and inclusion of this rural land type in both property and mixed asset investment portfolios. In the U.S. rural land is also the most extensive real estate type based on total area occupied. The United States Department of Agriculture statistics (1998) show that in 1997 there were 2.06 million farms in the U.S., covering 968 million acres, with a total value of $912 billion and generating an annual income of $202 billion. The level of corporate ownership of farms in the U.S. is also higher than the level of corporate farm ownership in Australia. This high level of institutional ownership in rural land in U.S has provided the opportunity for the rural property asset class to be analysed in relation to it’s investment performance and possible role in a mixed asset or mixed property investment portfolio.