Conference Agenda

I examine the effectiveness of individual state-granted land right on in- creasing inorganic fertilizer adoption in a setting with considerable risk of output loss. The risk of output loss considered is presence of mobile livestock. Relying on within household variation and on an interaction term I separate the effect of owning a legal title from the effect of other mediating factors linked to both inorganic fertilizer adoption and for- malization. Results show that, presence of mobile livestock, proxied by the Euclidean distance to the relevant grazing area, is negatively correlated with inorganic fertilizer adoption. Facing the threat induced by mobile livestock, farmers owning plots with and plots without legal title do not favor substantially the former in inorganic fertilizer adop- tion.

Our study provides evidence on land tenure related issues in India. We use the Village Dynamics in South Asia (VDSA) panel dataset for the years 2010 to 2015 covering 1129 households in 9 states of India. We specifically test two hypotheses: 1) plot size is positively related to farm productivity; 2) owner operated lands have higher farm productivity. We calculate Hierarchical Mixed Effects Models in order to take the nested structure of the data into account. Transformation parameters are included in order to accommodate non-linear relationships between our variables. Our results confirm a positive relation between the average plot size and the agricultural productivity from cultivation. They provide supporting arguments for key aspects of ongoing land reform processes in India. In particular the land consolidation and ceiling policies should support an increase in agricultural productivity.

The last decade has seen a huge surge in land acquisitions by foreign companies. What are the impacts of such investments? To date there has been little rigorous quantitative evidence on the issue. We examine the economic impacts of a large-scale biofuel plantation in Sierra Leone. We conduct a difference in difference analysis using three waves of a large n survey in both communities directly affected by the plantation and those outside the catchment area. We find a large average drop in income, mainly driven by lower income from agricultural activities. We argue this is caused by a labour demand shock, reducing agricultural production. Spillover analysis suggests that the impacts are at least partially transmitted by a shock to the local economy. Households that are employed at the plantation benefit: their incomes and assets increase. As a result, village-level inequality increases.

This study attempts to identify factors that motivate community for adopting sustainable land and forest management. Data collection was conducted in 2015-2016 at Indonesia, Peru and Uganda by interviewing 2550 households.using a structured questionnaire. The study found that majority of tenure reform members adopted sustainable land management technologies in Indonesia and Peru. In Uganda, most nonmembers of tenure reform adopted sustainable land management technologies as compared to members. The perceptions of tenure security tend to motivate individuals to invest in sustainable land management practices as they are likely to reap the benefits if their investments. On such lands, community use and management is conditioned on the adoption and maintenance of sustainable land management practices. In sum, these results suggest that forest tenure reforms implemented in Indonesia, Peru and Uganda have had a positive outcome, regardless of whether rights granted were control and ownership or merely management rights/responsibilities.