Land administration for food security: A research synthesis

Food security remains an ongoing global concern: the challenge of ensuring food availability, access, and utility for all, at all times, is yet to be met. The body of literature relating to food security is growing immensely. Land administrators are part of the discourse. Their arguments are spread disparately across academic and professional publications. The distinction between scientific work and political rhetoric is increasingly blurry: the role of land administration needs to be more concisely articulated. This paper provides a new synthesis on the relationships between land administration and food security. It undertakes a review of land administration literature relating to food security. It aims at crystallizing understandings of how land administration supports, or fails to support, food security at a conceptual level, and also the strategic and operational levels of land administration systems. The relationship between land administration and food security appears to be conceptually agreed upon; however, at operational levels the link is less evident. Conceptually, land administration is argued to deliver (and sometimes not deliver) secure land tenure, support for implementation of agricultural policies, access to credit, less litigation, easier land dealings, land taxation, land inventories, and land transaction controls. This enables (or undermines) subsistence farming, development of local agricultural sectors and markets, credit to access to non-local food markets, farm subsidization, more efficient land utilization, fairer international investments, and national food planning strategies. In general, the examined literature tends to focus on problem identification rather than system design. Additionally, the large amount of positive viewpoints need better validation in many cases. Future work needs to concentrate on examining the utility of land information and geospatial tools for food security, extracting lessons from the land administration systems of developed contexts, and improving the links at an operational level.