Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
also substantial gaps between de jure and de facto rights in most countries, due to poor
implementation of laws and social barriers, including male bias in bequeathing prop-
erty within families.13 Exceptions include countries such as Bhutan, where women own
an estimated 70% of the land (FAO n.d.-b.), and Sri Lanka where most women from
landed families inherit some land, even if unequal to men (Agarwal 1994). The effective
implementation of laws will require not only transforming social norms and attitudes,
but also spreading legal literacy, providing legal aid, and gender-sensitizing land regis-
tration officials and the judiciary.
In countries in which land access is dependent on customary practices and mediated
via clans or families, as is common in many communities of sub-Saharan Africa, and
where women (as noted) are among the main food producers, increasing security of ten-
ure on an individual basis is likely to prove more difficult (see also Saito, et al. 1994). Here
efforts at creating group rights for women (as discussed later) may be more effective.
The state and the market are important additional sources of immovable assets
for women. At present, agricultural land distributed by governments under their
anti-poverty, land reform, or resettlement schemes goes largely to men, and only lim-
itedly to women, either individually or jointly with husbands. Land titles transferred
solely to women could go some way toward compensating for male bias in inheritance.
Governments can also facilitate women's market access to land through subsidized
grant-cum-credit schemes for purchasing or leasing in land. In particular, facilitating
land leasing for women who are still dependent on agriculture is important, as men
move to nonfarm jobs and educated children want to leave farming. For this, innova-
tive institutional arrangements will be needed, since formal land leasing is often dif-
ficult, especially due to laws that bar such leasing (as in many states of India), or due to
fears by landlords that tenants, if formally recognized, will acquire rights over their land.
Typically, small tenants, therefore, depend on informal leasing of small plots, for short
periods, on exploitative terms. Here alternative types of institutions would help.
For instance, a Public Land Bank (PLB) could be established at the level of a village
council, as recommended in India by the Twelfth Five Year Plan “Working Group on
Disadvantaged Farmers, including Women” which I chaired. Under this proposal (see,
Agarwal and Sharma 2012), owners wanting to lease out their land would “deposit” it in
the PLB for a specified period (say, a year or more), on a voluntary basis, with the free-
dom to withdraw the land with due notice. They would get a small payment on deposit
(varying by period of deposit), and a share of the rent if the land got leased out. The PLB
could lease out the land to designated categories of vulnerable farmers, such as marginal
farmers and women (but not to large farmers or the corporate sector). It would provide a
guaranteed lease for a defined period, and (where possible) in a consolidated plot of rea-
sonable size; a calibration of rent with land quality; and a reduction of the uncertainty
faced by poor farmers in negotiating leases, sometimes from several owners, to get a via-
ble area. The PLB would, thus, reduce individual transactions costs for both lessors and
lessees, help match land demand and supply, and especially benefit women who tend to
get exploited in an unregulated lease market. In could also facilitate land development.
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