This PhD study aims to assess the relations between land tenure security, farmland use and agricultural productivity. Using a locally-defined research approach, the study explores those relations from a review of the literature to a case study in Rwanda. Therefore, the case study includes four research sites: Gatwe, Nyabubare, Rusebeya and Rutemba, and it follows three research periods within the period 2006-2017. First, considering land registration as the initial activity that guarantees legal tenure of land, this study carried a review of the scholarly literature on the effect of land registration on these relations. 85 studies were included. The review focused on the regular claim that land registration’s facilitation of formal documents-based land dealings leads to investment in a more productive agriculture. I found this claim problematic for three reasons. First, most studies offer no empirical evidence to support this claim. Second, there are suggestions that land registration can actually threaten ‘de facto’ tenure security or even lead to insecurity of tenure. Third, the gendered realization of land registration and security may lead to uneven distribution of costs and benefits. These effects are however often ignored. Next to suggesting the importance of land information updating and the efficiency of local land management institutions, this review also found that more research with a combined locally-set approach is needed to better understand any relation(s) between land tenure security and agricultural productivity. In the second part, this study attempted the first and the last problems listed here above by the literature review. I have designed a locally- defined Farmland Tenure Security Index (FLTSI) and applied it to the four case studies in Rwanda. On the basis of a data set collected from four research sites over the course of three agricultural years (2006/2007, 2012/2013, 2016/2017), this study empirically assessed the relations between land tenure security and smallholder farms’ crop production in Rwanda. We show that the general assumption that secure land tenure improves farm level harvests, is not found for smallholder farms in Rwanda. My FLTSI is based on plausible threats as conveyed by smallholder farmers at each research site. The findings additionally indicate that the harvest of main crops did neither statistically correlate with this index, nor show differences from the mean at all research sites. Instead, factors mainly related to the ongoing crop intensification program, though threatening tenure security, contributed to the increase of small farm harvests. Lower land tenure security did not affect farmers satisfaction of the crop intensification program Most of them claimed that in the end what matters most is that their harvests continue to increase. The second part concluded that in Rwanda, a new wave of agriculture strategizing contributed to increasing small farms’ harvest of prioritized crops and decreasing farmland tenure security simultaneously. Third, motivated by the previous conclusion in part two, this study assessed the effect of farmland use change on agriculture production. It sought to determine which of the fragmented or consolidated farmland use earn higher yields for the smallholder farmer in Rwanda. When the agricultural reform started in 2007, the country introduced the Crop Intensification Program (CIP) which promotes farmland Use Consolidation (LUC). Using data collected at the four research sites and considering the three agriculture years, the study confirmed that the CIP/LUC program led to conversion of perennial crops, mainly banana plantations, into seasonal crops prioritized by the program. Overall, this shift in farmland use has created an increase in both harvest and monetary yield of prioritized crops. However, within that general trend, I observed differences: farmers with smaller and/or less farm plots did not realize as much yield increase as those who joined the CIP/LUC program with larger and/or multiple farm plots. Furthermore, this study made a first attempt to understand the implication of the studied relations on food security. The link between yield and meals per day allowed to demonstrate the farmer’s household food access. However, the available data did not allow to extend the analysis to include the nutritious values of the food. Nevertheless, I clearly showed that following the start of the CIP/LUC program, farmers increased their yield and number of meals per day. Future research is need to study the types of food available on the market. The locally-defined research approach designed for this study combined statistical and qualitative analysis of the information collected from interviews and focus group discussions at a local level. I argue that this approach has contributed to an understanding of those relations that would be overlooked if the research used larger entity setting and econometric methods. This research recommends that a similar approach be applied while studying locally-defined assessment of the relations between land tenure security, farmland use and agricultural productivity. Future research needs to be concentrated on examining these relations from a more operational perspective, taking into account local social-economic and institutional patterns at work. There is a need for a mixed methods approach utilizing experiments as well as randomization, where feasible, in combination with increasing flows of spatial and time-series data from diverse sources. Household-farm panel data collected over long periods of time, combined with simulations, can also provide valuable insights about the relations between land tenure security, farmland use and agricultural productivity.@en

The year 2007 marked the beginning of a journey to secure food in Rwanda. The country introduced the Crop Intensification Program (CIP), which promotes the farmland use consolidation (LUC). This study assesses the effect of farmland use changes on the agriculture production. We collected data at four research sites and considered three agriculture years to assess the effect of the fragmented or consolidated farmland use on the harvest. The study confirms that the CIP/LUC program converted perennial crops, mainly banana plantations, into seasonal crops, which were prioritized by the program. Overall, we conclude that the shift in farmland use has created an increase in both the harvest and monetary yields of the prioritized crops. However, within that general trend, we observe differences: farmers with smaller and/or fewer farm plots did not realize as great a yield increase as those who joined the CIP/LUC program with larger and/or multiple farm plots. While contributing to an understanding of the ongoing agriculture transformation program in Rwanda, this study followed a statistical approach that could be used by new studies assessing the benefits and outcomes of development policies. @en

On the basis of a data set from four research sites over the course of three agricultural years (2006/2007, 2012/2013, 2016/2017), this article empirically assesses the relations between land tenure security and smallholder farms’ crop production in Rwanda. We show that the general assumption that secure land tenure improves farm level harvests, is not found for smallholder farms in Rwanda. We defined a farmland tenure security index based on plausible threats as conveyed by smallholder farmers at each research site. Our findings indicate that the harvest of main crops did neither statistically correlate with this index, nor show differences from the mean at all research sites. Instead, factors mainly related to the ongoing crop intensification program, though threatening tenure security, contributed to the increase of small farm harvests. Lower land tenure security did not affect farmers satisfaction of the crop program, most of them claiming that in the end what matters most is that their harvests continue to increase. Therefore, in Rwanda, a new wave of agriculture strategizing contributes to increasing small farms’ harvest of prioritized crops and decreasing farm land tenure security simultaneously.

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This paper reviews the scholarly literature discussing the effect(s) of land registration on the relations between land tenure security and agricultural productivity. Using 85 studies, the paper focuses on the regular claim that land registration's facilitation of formal documents-based land dealings leads to investment in a more productive agriculture. The paper shows that this claim is problematic for three reasons. First, most studies offer no empirical evidence to support the claim on the above-mentioned effect. Second, there are suggestions that land registration can actually threaten 'de facto' tenure security or even lead to insecurity of tenure. Third, the gendered realization of land registration and security may lead to uneven distribution of costs and benefits, but these effects are often ignored. Next to suggesting the importance of land information updating and the efficiency of local land management institutions, this paper also finds that more research with a combined locally-set approach is needed to better understand any relation(s) between land tenure security and agricultural productivity.

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