Landesa’s Issue Briefs provide a closer look at how land rights can improve lives and have a positive impact on the world’s most persistent challenges.
This issue brief establishes the link between improved land rights, particularly for women, and subsequent benefits in improved household food security and nutrition. When farmers, especially women, have more control over assets like land, they are better equipped to grow and purchase nutritious food for their families.
Property rights to land represent the key institutional asset on which rural people build their livelihoods. The nature of farmers’ property rights to land substantially impacts their willingness and ability to adopt productivity-enhancing inputs and investments.
Developing countries are moving toward corporate farming as a way to boost production and jump-start agricultural development. But the basis of their strategy, the assumption that bigger farms are better farms, is one of the most enduring myths influencing agricultural development policy around the world.