Land administration for food security : selected results from a synthesis
Rockson, Georgina, Rohan Bennett & Liza Groenendijk
Food security remains an ongoing global concern: the challenge of ensuring food availability, access, and utility for all, at all times, is yet to be met. The body of literature relating to food security is growing immensely. Land administrators are part of the discourse. Their arguments are spread disparately across academic and professional publications. The distinction between scientific work and political rhetoric is increasingly blurry: the role of land administration needs to be more concisely articulated. This paper provides a new synthesis on the link(s) between land administration and food security. It undertakes a review of land administration literature relating to food security. It aims at crystallizing understandings of how land administration supports, or fails to support, food security at conceptual, strategic, and operational levels. The link between land administration and food security appears to be conceptually agreed, however, at management and operational levels the link is less evident. Conceptually, land administration can deliver secure land tenure and appropriate land uses. This secures subsistence farming, development of local agricultural sectors and markets, and wealth creation that might enable access to non-local food markets. In general, the literature tends to focus on problem identification rather than system design. Additionally, the large amount of positivism needs better validation in many cases. Future work might concentrate on examining the utility of land information and geospatial tools for food security, extracting lessons from the land administration systems of developed contexts, and examining the links in a more quantitative fashion. This paper is an abstracted version of a more extensive work submitted to an academic journal.
Event: FIG Working Week 2012 : Territory, environment, and cultural heritage
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