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indicate long-term duration rights. All farmers, save several with 14-year leaseholds on State
Land, believed they could cultivate their land indefinitely. The only conflicting evidence
concerning long-term use of land was a hesitation of Southern province farmers to leave land
idle for long periods.
► Households claim exclusion rights except in the case of livestock grazing. The vast majority
of households reported that they can exclude nonhousehold members from engaging in crop
or tree growing activities. There was less privatization of land when the subject of off-season
grazing was raised.
► Transfer rights exhibit the lowest level of privatization. The percentage of households who felt
empowered to unilaterally make decisions over permanent transfers of land was low relative
to other types of rights and relative to other countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Only about 40
percent of households claimed to have the ability to transfer land to someone outside the
family. This demonstrates the continued corporate control over land by chiefs and their
communities.
► There is a wide variation among households as to whom they believe is the rightful owner of
their land. Nearly 60 percent of households believed that the farmland is their own. This view
is consistent with the fact that most have inherited their land from ancestors and plan to
bequeath it to descendants. On the other hand, a sizeable number of respondents believed that
the land was owned at higher levels such as the extended family, the community, or the chief.
The legal position, that land is owned by the State, is simply not felt by rural households.
► More than half of sampled households have obtained formal credit and very few use land or
land title as collateral. It is more often the case that livestock or crops were used by farmers.
Past credit use was facilitated by the state cooperative system under which loans were made,
inputs delivered, and outputs sold. This may not be feasible under liberalization.
► Evidence was found indicating that agricultural development was lacking somewhat more on
land acquired matrilineally than by other means in Southern province. The indicators which
were influenced by acquisition method were use of credit, presence of oxen, use of organic
fertilizer, incidence of earthwork structures, and planting of fruit trees. At the same time, no
single method of acquisition emerged as being superior to all others.
► Households that perceived themselves as owners of their farmland tended to adopt more
development measures. Household "owners" were more likely to make earthwork
improvements in both provinces, to plant fruit trees and have oxen in Eastern province, and
to use credit in Southern province. Claims of ownership were found to be related to wealth
indicators suggesting that wealth may be an important underlying variable explaining tenure
perceptions and development indicators.
► There was little relationship between the right to alienate land and agricultural development.
In most cases the land-rights variable was insignificant in regression analyses while it had
opposite effects in the three cases where it was significant.
► Farm size was a key variable in explaining adoption of productivity measures by households
in Eastern province. There was a positive and significant relationship between the size of farm