Social+Factors+affecting+food+productivity


 * Social Factors affecting food productivity [[image:modelfrag.JPG align="left"]]**


 * land fragmentation** is the division of a farmer's land for his sons equally. This method is usually used among some traditional societies and the did this because of religion or belief. Such practice causes the big piece of land that the farmer own to get smaller. this process continues from generation to generation, dividing the land into smaller pieces everytime. after some generation, the land that is originally large, becomes smaller and may become too small for then to get enough output. buying more advance and expensive machinery may not bring profit and may even result in bankrupcy as the land is unprofitable. hence the productivity is low as much labour is required to work on the piece of land.

Land Fragmentation has encouraged the excessive subdivision of land into plots of small sizes belonging to separate individuals. Since the sizes of farms are not large enough, they neither provide farmers with enough sustenance nor do they enable farmers to achieve a surplus. In fact, the small size of farms does not provide farmers with enough income to satisfy their basic needs.Also the small sized holdings do not permit farmers to be engaged in farming activity throughout the year since they(farmers) always abandon farming activity for leisure once their small plots of land are cultivated.

Land Fragmentation has also encouraged the scattering of holdings into different locations. Though the fragmentation of land is seen by farmers as essential for meeting their land needs, but it is inhibiting the optimal use of land resources. For instance, the dispersal of holdings which fragmentation entails makes many farmers to plant different crops on several distant plots. And since planting is not staggered, it is preventing land from being productively used as it creates bottlenecks such as non flexibility in the use of labour time. Moreover, efficient use of the land is compounded, as the shifting system of cultivation encourages extensive use of land which is abandoned only after few cropping.Particularly, the scattered nature of the plots makes farmers to waste precious hours that would have been otherwise put to agricultural activity traveling between distant plots. Moreover, the scattered nature of the plots equally makes the transportation of inputs and crops to and from the farm a serious problem to the farmers.


 * Advantages of land fragmentation :**


 * 1、**It allows farmers with scattered plots to benefit from risk management through the use of multiple eco-zones and the practice of crop scheduling.
 * 2、**It enables farmers to disperse and reduce risk by a variety of soils and other micro-climatic and micro-environmental variations.
 * 3、F**armers able to grow a variety of crops that mature and ripen at different times.
 * 4、** Farmers can concentrate their labour on different plots at different times thereby avoiding household labour bottlenecks.


 * Disadvantages of land fragmentation:**

3、Hindering agricultural modernization 4、making it costly to modify adverse effects by consolidation schemes 5、operational difficulties and foregone investment to individual farmer
 * 1、**It constrains agricultural development.
 * 2、**Creating inefficiency

Case Studies (This study analyze the impact of land fragmentation on agricultural development in Nigeria) :

Nigeria is endowed with enormous arable land. Yet, agriculture is dominated by small holder farmers who operate several small and scattered farms. The small size and scattered nature of the farms is because of land fragmentation which is a logical consequence of inheritance practices. It is through inheritance procedures that land is fragmented in Nigeria.

In Nigeria, small sized farms are characterized by low level of operation, low literacy of operators, and a labour intensive production technology with hired labour cost constituting about 60% of the total cash cost of production. Agricultural development in Nigeria is therefore constrained by a myriad of factors especially land fragmentation. Land fragmentation has severe consequences for agricultural development; it leads to scattering of plots, little incentive for improvements, lack of security of tenure, restricted scale of operations etc.In spite of these associated costs, land fragmentation is still persistent and wide spread in Nigeria agriculture.


 * Land tenure** is a derivative of the concept of natural resource tenure, which in essence refers to the terms and conditions under which natural resources are held and used The concept of ‘tenure’ is a social construct that deﬁnes the relationships [[image:eating-australia-cartoon.jpg align="left"]] individuals and groups of individuals by which rights and obligations are deﬁned with respect to control and use of land.

land tenure plays a major role in the performance and development of the food sector by influencing the land ownership and use patterns as well as the productivity of the land.

Land tenure and property rights affect the application of technologies for agricultural and natural resource management. Secured property rights give sufficient incentives to the farmers to increase their efficiencies in terms of productivity and ensure environmental sustainability. It is natural that without secured property rights farmers do not feel emotional attachment to the land they cultivate, do not invest in land development and will not use inputs efficiently.

However, there are still have some advantages for land tenure. Firstly, the presence of property rights eliminates the anxiety and uncertainty of expropriation that encourage the farmers to make long term investment decision on land and to adopt the best cropping system. Secondly, the title of land makes it easy for farmers to use the land as collateral for credit.

Case Study:

There are two distinctly tenure systems in Swaziland, Traditional Customary Tenure (TCT) and Title Deed Tenure (TDT). Of the total land area, arable land covers 1910 km 2, TCT and TDT occupy 57.6 and 42.4%, respectively of this land(West, 2000). TCT is land held in trust by the King for the Swazi Nation, hence it is called Swazi Nation Land (SNL).

Study shows that the yield per hectare of maize cultivated on TDT is much higher than those cultivated TCT. TDT farmers have better education, more land, more off-farm income than TCT farmers. As a result yield on TDT is almost double that on TCT. While TDT farmers planted a pure stand, TCT farmers practiced intercropping. Farmers are exposed to different constraints and have different immediate requirements. TDT farmers need water for irrigation and lucrative markets, while TCT farmers need finance and land. The TDT farms were highly mechanized when compared to TCT farms.

The results of the recursive models show that credit, land-specific investment and maize productivity values between TDT and TCT differ significantly, TDT being higher in all aspects than TCT. This shows that property rights to land contribute significantly to the observed differentials in accessibility to credit, high investments to land and high maize productivity in the study area, hence the hypothesis that land tenure has no effect on maize productivity is rejected. Moreover, farm capital contributes 63% towards maize productivity in Swaziland.

There have two excellent researches done by ©Maxwell Scientific Organization For land fragmentation : [] For land tenure : []

Hope these resources would be useful to you :D