Potential for village land use planning to support farmer investment in integrated landscape management

Land tenure is considered one of the most important factors in land management. How willing farmers and other land owners are to invest in improving the quality of their land depends on whether or not they believe they will see a return on their investment. Following on the Ecoagriculture Working Group’s work earlier in 2014 to explore the opportunities for developing a landscape label in Mbeya, we returned to work with our partners in Mbeya. The goal for this project was to understand the role that Tanzania’s commitment to conduct village land use planning has on land tenure security and, therefore, on farmers willingness to invest in practices to support more integrated landscape management. Our study focused on Mbarali District in Mbeya Region. We found that the government still has a long way to go before all villages have land use plans in place and these plans are being followed by villages. This work was led by CEWG member, Abigail Hart, along with colleagues from Agricultural Research Institute in Uyole, Tanzania Agriculture Partnership and the University of Dar es Salaam. The work was supported by the International Land Coalition under a grant to support farmer-centered approaches to governance.

To read more about what we learned, check out the full report and policy brief. You can also find a summary of the project in this blog post.