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Zimbabwe's fast-track land reform
Get PDFThe Fast-Track Land Reform Programme in Zimbabwe has emerged as a highly contested reform process both nationally and internationally. The image of it has all too often been that of the widespread displacement and subsequent replacement of various people, agricultural-related production systems, facets and processes. The reality, however, is altogether more complex. Providing new, in-depth and much-needed empirical research, and based on a broader geographical scope than any previous study carried out on the subject, Zimbabwe’s Fast-Track Land Reform examines how processes such as land acquisition, allocation, transitional production outcomes, social life, gender and tenure, have influenced and been influenced by the forces driving the programme. It also explores the ways in which the land-reform programme has created a new agrarian structure based on small- to medium-scale farmers. In attempting to resolve the problematic issues the reforms have raised, the authors argue that it is this new agrarian formation which provides the greatest scope for improving Zimbabwe’s agriculture and development. A landmark work on a subject of considerable controversy.Contents: 1. Understanding Fast Track Land Reforms in Zimbabwe -- 2. Land Occupations as the Trigger for Compulsory Land Acquisition -- 3. Interrogating Land Allocation -- 4. Juggling Land Ownership Rights in Uncertain Times -- 5. The Complexities of Production Outcomes -- 6. Accessing Services and Farm Level Investments -- 7. 'Revolutionary Progress' without Change in Women's Land Right -- 8. Social Organisation and the Reconstruction of Communities -- Conclusion: From a 'Crisis' to a 'Prosperous' Future?</p
Biofuels, Land Grabbing and Food Security in Africa
No full textEnergy crisis and climate change have generated global demands for alternative non-fossil fuel sources. This has led to a rapid increase of investments in production of liquid biofuels based on agricultural feed stocks such as sugar cane. Most African governments see biofuels as a potential for increasing agricultural productivity and export incomes and thus strengthening their national economies, improving energy balances and rural employment. At the same time climate change may be addressed through reduction of green house gas emissions. There are, however, a number of uncertainties mounting that challenge this scenario. Using in-depth African case studies this book addresses this knowledge gap by examining the impacts of large-scale biofuel production on African agriculture in regard to vital land outsourcing and food security issues. The surge for African biofuels has also opened space for private investors both domestic and external to multiply and network 'independently' of the state. The biofuel expansion thus generates new economic alliances and production relations, resulting in new forms of inclusions and exclusions within the rural population. An essential book for anyone wishing to understand the startling impact of biofuels and land outsourcing on Africa.Contents: -- 1. Introduction: Biofuels, Food Security and Land Outsourcing -- 2. Land Rights, Livelihoods Justice and the Internationalization of the Search for Food Security and Energy -- 3. Peak Oil, and the Push for Bio-fuel by Industrialized Nations -- 4. Suspending People’s Resource Rights: The Demand for Foreign Direct Investment in Africa in the Context of Innovations on Bio-fuels -- 5. Smallholder-Led Transformation Towards Bio-fuel Production in Ethiopia -- 6. Bio-fuel, Land Outsourcing and the Process of Environmental and Social Impact Assessment in Tanzania -- 7. The Push for Bio-fuels in the Context of the Political Economy Crisis in Zimbabwe -- 8. The Effect of the Spread of Jatropha Production on Food Security in Northern Ghana -- 9. Who Governs Bio-fuels?: Lessons and Reflections on Social Inclusion and Bio-diesel Policy in Brazil. What Can Africa Learn? 10. Lessons and Reflections on Brazilian Ethanol Development. What Can Africa Learn? -- 11. Setting A New Agenda for Smallholder Farmers in the Context of Bio-fuels: A Synthesis</p
Biofuels, Land Grabbing and Food Security in Africa
No full textEnergy crisis and climate change have generated global demands for alternative non-fossil fuel sources. This has led to a rapid increase of investments in production of liquid biofuels based on agricultural feed stocks such as sugar cane. Most African governments see biofuels as a potential for increasing agricultural productivity and export incomes and thus strengthening their national economies, improving energy balances and rural employment. At the same time climate change may be addressed through reduction of green house gas emissions. There are, however, a number of uncertainties mounting that challenge this scenario. Using in-depth African case studies this book addresses this knowledge gap by examining the impacts of large-scale biofuel production on African agriculture in regard to vital land outsourcing and food security issues. The surge for African biofuels has also opened space for private investors both domestic and external to multiply and network 'independently' of the state. The biofuel expansion thus generates new economic alliances and production relations, resulting in new forms of inclusions and exclusions within the rural population. An essential book for anyone wishing to understand the startling impact of biofuels and land outsourcing on Africa
Biofuels, Land Grabbing and Food Security in Africa
No full textEnergy crisis and climate change have generated global demands for alternative non-fossil fuel sources. This has led to a rapid increase of investments in production of liquid biofuels based on agricultural feed stocks such as sugar cane. Most African governments see biofuels as a potential for increasing agricultural productivity and export incomes and thus strengthening their national economies, improving energy balances and rural employment. At the same time climate change may be addressed through reduction of green house gas emissions. There are, however, a number of uncertainties mounting that challenge this scenario. Using in-depth African case studies this book addresses this knowledge gap by examining the impacts of large-scale biofuel production on African agriculture in regard to vital land outsourcing and food security issues. The surge for African biofuels has also opened space for private investors both domestic and external to multiply and network 'independently' of the state. The biofuel expansion thus generates new economic alliances and production relations, resulting in new forms of inclusions and exclusions within the rural population. An essential book for anyone wishing to understand the startling impact of biofuels and land outsourcing on Africa.Contents: -- 1. Introduction: Biofuels, Food Security and Land Outsourcing -- 2. Land Rights, Livelihoods Justice and the Internationalization of the Search for Food Security and Energy -- 3. Peak Oil, and the Push for Bio-fuel by Industrialized Nations -- 4. Suspending People’s Resource Rights: The Demand for Foreign Direct Investment in Africa in the Context of Innovations on Bio-fuels -- 5. Smallholder-Led Transformation Towards Bio-fuel Production in Ethiopia -- 6. Bio-fuel, Land Outsourcing and the Process of Environmental and Social Impact Assessment in Tanzania -- 7. The Push for Bio-fuels in the Context of the Political Economy Crisis in Zimbabwe -- 8. The Effect of the Spread of Jatropha Production on Food Security in Northern Ghana -- 9. Who Governs Bio-fuels?: Lessons and Reflections on Social Inclusion and Bio-diesel Policy in Brazil. What Can Africa Learn? 10. Lessons and Reflections on Brazilian Ethanol Development. What Can Africa Learn? -- 11. Setting A New Agenda for Smallholder Farmers in the Context of Bio-fuels: A Synthesis</p
Zimbabwe's new land crisis: Large-scale land investments at Chisumbanje
No full textZimbabwe’s investments in agriculture, after a
contested Fast Track Land Reform Programme
(FTLRP) underpinned by often violent land
occupations (these were largely contained by
the state by 2005), have triggered a debate
on the meaning and import of ‘international
land grabs’ (Matondi 2015). Internationally,
the debates have been increasing, with the
drive towards the cultivation of feedstock for
the production of renewable fuel being one
driving force. The mandatory blending of biofuels
in national fuel stocks has been accepted
and today 62 countries have introduced mandatory
blending, with South Africa introducing
a target of 2% blending in October 2014.
It is in respect of the emerging trends that
we sought to decipher the meaning of ‘land
grabs’, ‘international land grabs’ and ‘agricultural
investments’ as these mean different
things in different contexts
Beyond land transfers: the dynamics of socially driven markets emerging from Zimbabwe’s Fast Track Land Reform Programme
No full textThe central argument of this chapter is that newly emerging markets in Zimbabwe have been boosted by land reform. Since independence in 1980, the country has implemented a programme to redistribute land more equally and to restructure the agrarian sector. Land reform has then gone through different phases. This chapter explores the developments initiated by the recent Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP), which was set in motion not just by the state and experts. A range of other actors, e.g. landless people, people from communal areas and war veterans, seized the opportunity to access land. For them, the FTLRP represented a new set of opportunities. The most visible outcome of the FTLRP is the radical redistribution of land and the consequent reform, and in some cases complete disappearance, of some large-scale and commercial farms in the country. Many observers have commented in detail about the post-FTLRP in Zimbabwe (Scoones et al. 2010, Matondi 2012, Hanlon et al. 2013). This chapter adds to these analyses an examination of a hitherto hardly described phenomenon: the newly emerging markets in the southern part of Zimbabwe, the Lowveld, which is being repeated with similarities elsewhere in the country. A plethora of markets have mushroomed in the Lowveld to support the endeavours of numerous social actors to build, rebuild and enhance their livelihoods. These markets were not planned and can at best be understood as the unintended consequences of the fast track land reform programme. The construction of these new markets is significant in two ways. First of all, the markets that have emerged in the Lowveld in the wake of the FTLRP are new markets. These markets did not exist before as the previous landowners were embedded in markets designed and controlled by agribusiness companies and political interest groups. Second, the new markets are designed and constructed by new groups of actors (e.g. women from the neighbouring communal areas and landless people) who did not inhabit the area before as landowners. The analysis of the newly emerging markets shows the robustness of their experiences in constructing markets that fit their interests and how they are enhancing their livelihoods. We argue that these markets are structurally different from previously existing markets; the previous market structure of theLowveld that was predominantly attuned to the interests of a large-scale farming sector has largely disappeared. The new markets do not operate in a vacuum but incorporate experiences from the previously existing markets although reconstructed and following different livelihood calculi. This chapter is structured as follows. We first describe the situation and construction of markets before land reform reordered the agrarian landscape in the Lowveld. Then we will shortly describe the dynamics of FTLRP and how and when it came about. The last part of the chapter provides an account of the plethora of emerging markets, characterizing them as an outcome of the social struggles of a range of actors in the Lowveld to make a decent living for themselves and their families
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
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