Subdivision and fragmentation of land holdings and their implication in desertification in the Thar Desert, India

Ram, Kesha; Tsunekawa, Atsushi; Saha, Dipnarayan; Miyazaki, Tomomi

doi:10.1006/jare.1999.0495

Cited by 30 publications

(24 citation statements)

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“…Whether in a dominantly subsistence-oriented economy like the mountains of Nepal (Thapa and Weber, 1990) or in a commercialised economy as in Thailand (Routray et al, 1996), small farmers complain about labour shortage. This might partly explain why, as found by Ram et al (1999), recently the inverse relationship between farm size and productivity has weakened. The problem of labour shortage is likely to aggravate in the future as farming populations are gradually shifting to non-framing occupations because of the relatively low income from agriculture and the high return from non-farming activities (Preston, 1989).…”

Section: Land Fragmentation and Agricultural Development: Conceptual mentioning

confidence: 85%

“…However, some follow-up studies have revealed a positive relationship between landholding size and productivity (Ellis, 1989:198;Ram et al, 1999:469;Nguyen et al, 1996). This, according to Ram et al (1999) is attributed to increasing adoption of size-neutral technology, such as improved seeds and fertilizers, more sophisticated management input, and use of farm machinery, which have substituted the human labour considerably, eventually allowing the large farmers to make efficient use of their landholdings.…”

Section: Land Fragmentation and Agricultural Development: Conceptual mentioning

confidence: 93%

“…Irrespective of their position, most scholars such as Berry and Cline (1979), Ellis (1989), Ram et al (1999) and van Dijk (2003) have assumed that a landholding is a single parcel and that there is no effect on accessibility to individual farmers' share of land when it is subdivided. These assumptions are not true in the context of South Asia, where fragmentation of a holding leads to fragmentation of several parcels of different characteristics comprising that holding (Niroula, 2005).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

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Impacts of land fragmentation on input use, crop yield and production efficiency in the mountains of Nepal

Niroula¹,

Thapa²

2007

Land Degrad Dev

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Amidst the growing concern about agricultural underdevelopment in developing countries, this study addresses the causes and trends of land fragmentation. It analyses the impact of land fragmentation on input use efficiency, crop yield and production efficiency, especially with reference to a mountain district in Nepal. Necessary information was obtained from discussions with groups and individual land users and a questionnaire survey covering 184 households representing different degrees of land fragmentation. The analyses focused on two staple crops, namely, maize and paddy. The analysis revealed an increasing trend in the number of land parcels and a decreasing trend in the size of land parcels, primarily due to the heredity tradition of equal division of land among the inheritors. Other factors such as land purchase have also contributed to land fragmentation. Yield analysis revealed that small parcels are more productive than large parcels, because of higher applications of inputs. Consistent with this, small parcels also appeared to have a higher production efficiency than large parcels-considering both benefit and cost of purchased inputs-indicating a positive impact of land fragmentation on farmers' income. However, an analysis considering also the cost of inputs produced on the farm revealed an opposite trend, that is, on large land parcels, production is more efficient than on small parcels. In view of the need to also recover the cost of the inputs produced on-farm, it is concluded that land fragmentation-leading to small plots-has a negative impact on production efficiency, thereby constraining agricultural development.

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Section: Land Fragmentation and Agricultural Development: Conceptual mentioning

confidence: 85%

Section: Land Fragmentation and Agricultural Development: Conceptual mentioning

confidence: 93%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

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Impacts of land fragmentation on input use, crop yield and production efficiency in the mountains of Nepal

Niroula¹,

Thapa²

2007

Land Degrad Dev

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“…Yates, 1960;Thompson, 1963;Karouzis, 1971;Falah, 1992), it is a problem that has been studied in many other countries and regions around the world (e.g. Soltow, 1983;Goland, 1993;Ram et al, 1999;Verry, 2001;Wan and Cheng, 2001;Blaikie and Sadeque, 2000;Nguyen et al, 1996;Kjelland et al 2007). FAO statistics from 1986 to 2004 for six continents (113 countries) reveal that the smallest average holding size is found to be less than 5 hectares (ha) in 20 out of 24 Asian and 16 out of 20 African countries respectively.…”

Section: A Global Picture Of Land Fragmentationmentioning

confidence: 99%

A new methodology for measuring land fragmentation

Demetriou

Stillwell

See

2013

Computers, Environment and Urban Systems

113

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The presence of land fragmentation implies that the existing land tenure structure is defective. It is a major problem in many regions because it restricts agricultural development and reduces the opportunities for sustainable rural development. Whilst policies to counter land fragmentation require reliable measurement indices, current fragmentation indices have significant weaknesses which prevent adequate representation of the land fragmentation problem. In particular, they ignore critical spatial variables such as the shape of parcels as well as non-spatial variables such as ownership type and the existence or absence of road access for each land parcel. Furthermore, there is no flexibility for users to select the variables that they think appropriate for inclusion in the fragmentation index, and no variable weighting mechanism is available. The need for a new methodology for measuring land fragmentation is therefore apparent so the aim of this paper is to introduce a new 'global land fragmentation index' that combines a multi-attribute decision-making method with a geographic information system. When applied to a case study area in Cyprus, the new index outperforms the existing indices in terms of reliability as it is comprehensive, flexible, problem specific and knowledge-based. The methodology can be easily applied to assess the quality of any existing system for which evaluation criteria can be defined with values ranging from the worst to best conditions.

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“…'Diversification of income sources' was taken as a proxy for non-farm income because financial capacity may result in longer-term adaptation planning (Deressa et al 2008;Mulatu 2013), 'agricultural land' as a proxy for farm income and farm surplus (Hussain and Thapa 2015; Garrett and Ruel 1999;Ram et al 1999), and 'insurance facility' as a proxy for institutional services which may influence farmers' behavior on adaptation (Tiwari et al 2014). 'Household size' was taken as a variable based on the expectation that having more household members might increase the likelihood of taking adaptation actions (Abid et al 2015).…”

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confidence: 99%

Climate change-induced hazards and local adaptations in agriculture: a study from Koshi River Basin, Nepal

et al. 2018

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Changes in climate, associated hazards, local adaptations in agriculture, and socioeconomic factors affecting adaptation were investigated using data from a large survey of 2310 households (HHs) in the Koshi River Basin (KRB), Nepal. More than 80% of HHs had perceived changes in climate in the 10 years preceding the survey, and 20-40% had perceived increases in the occurrence of droughts, dry spells, floods, and livestock diseases. Around 36-45% of crop-growing HHs perceived a decline in the production of staple crops such as paddy, wheat, maize, and millets, which was mainly attributed to climate change and related hazards. The decline in local food production meant that HH dependence on external sources for food had increased. Only 32% of HHs had taken some form of adaptive actions in agriculture to address these challenges; actions included not planting certain crops, introducing new crops, changing farming practices, not rearing certain livestock species, and investing in irrigation. The factors affecting the likelihood of a household undertaking adaptive actions included literacy of the head of household, household size, size of owned agricultural land, diversification of income sources, and insurance. Based on these findings, the study has suggested some approaches in the KRB which could contribute to building agricultural resilience to climate change.

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Subdivision and fragmentation of land holdings and their implication in desertification in the Thar Desert, India

Cited by 30 publications

References 1 publication

Impacts of land fragmentation on input use, crop yield and production efficiency in the mountains of Nepal

Impacts of land fragmentation on input use, crop yield and production efficiency in the mountains of Nepal

A new methodology for measuring land fragmentation

Climate change-induced hazards and local adaptations in agriculture: a study from Koshi River Basin, Nepal

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