CHALLENGING CONVENTIONAL WISDOM: SMALLHOLDER PERCEPTIONS AND EXPERIENCE OF LAND ACCESS AND TENURE SECURITY IN THE COTTON BELT OF NORTHERN MOZAMBIQUE
Paul J. STRASBERG, Scott KLOECK-JENSON

ltc-uw@facstaff.wisc.edu

Working Paper, no. 48. Mozambique series
April 2002, 72 p., 664K bytes

Retrieve FULL TEXT in Adobe Acrobat format

To save document directly to your computer for later viewing or printing, hold down the <shift> key while you click on the above link.
Adobe Acrobat Reader software is required to read and print this document. If you do not have Acrobat Reader already, you can download free software now.

ABSTRACT: A new land law went into effect in January 1998 in Mozambique. The impetus behind these actions was the belief that a new legal and regulatory framework was necessary to reduce the frequency of land conflicts between largeholders and smallholders while simultaneously promoting much-needed investment in the agricultural sector. With empirical evidence presented in this report, based on smallholder survey data collected from 1994 to 1996, we challenge widely held beliefs about land tenure and access in the smallholder sector in Mozambique. Although the new land law may improve tenure security for smallholders who experience conflicts with largeholders, two key areas of policy concern have been neglected. First, while provisions in the new legal framework to safeguard local community land-use rights vis-à-vis outsiders are important, they will not be sufficient to eliminate and/or adjudicate land conflicts between smallholders themselves. Second, while much attention has been devoted to the legal and regulatory component of land tenure in Mozambique, research results reveal significant variation in the size of household landholdings even when controlling for household size. Further, land access was found to be closely linked to key welfare indicators such as income and calorie availability; a weak nonfarm economy heightens the importance of land for the welfare of rural families. These results are surprising and contradict views held by many in the policy community in Mozambique that land access is unconstrained for smallholders.

Keywords: Farms, Small -- Mozambique; Tenure security (Natural resources) -- Mozambique; Land use, Rural -- Mozambique; Land use, Rural -- Government policy -- Mozambique; Agrarian structure -- Mozambique; Farms, Size of -- Mozambique; Land conflicts -- Mozambique

Order paper copy
Return to Publications Page
Return to LTC Home Page

Full text document posted courtesy of AgEcon Search: Research in Agricultural Economics http://agecon.lib.umn.edu