Land tenure and food security : a review of concepts, evidence, and methods

Abstract

This paper attempts to build on a conceptual analysis of both land tenure and food security to set various links in a dynamic framework that captures both the effects of access to resources on food security and the effects of food security on access to and use of resources. This framework is used to examine a range of issues arising in empirical research and to discuss their implications for future research related to land policy and food policy. The paper first reviews the conceptual literature on both land tenure and food security and suggests a new conceptual framework that incorporates the dynamic linkages between the two. Second, it reviews the existing empirical literature to raise for discussion a number of issues that mediate suggested linkages and briefly examine a limited number of cases of empirical research in which such linkages have been investigated. Finally, the paper discusses the implication of findings presented here for both land and food policy and for future empirical research. Methodological problems which result from seeking to examine empirical linkages between two very dynamic and fluid conceptual domains are considered in an appendix.