Land Tenure and Land Management Technology: A Case Study from the Central Ethiopia

Land in Ethiopia is a public property. Farmers have use right to transfer or lease use rights of agricultural land. Thus, land tenure systems under the existing public ownership of land derive from official allocation by local government authorities and/or through transfer of land use rights. Farmers' practice of leasing agricultural land in the country is mostly limited to a few years, for instance to maximum of three years in one agreement. The common types of transaction of agricultural land include inheritance, cash renting, sharecropping and gift. The process and act of land transfer among land users, however, is often non-transparent. The transaction usually takes place informally. The land lease market (sharecropping and cash rental) is constrained, inter alia, by lack of clear rules and regulations for secure and transparent land lease transaction. Such situation is therefore expected to influence farmers to differentially manage leased-in and own land parcels in terms of application of sustainable land management technologies. On the other hand, however, most of the agricultural land in Ethiopia requires conservation-based land management technologies. The objective of this paper is to analyze land tenure systems and examine the impact of land tenure systems on the use of land management technologies and draw policy lessons.