Indicators in the study sites

Table of Contents

1. Compilers and contributors
2. Introduction
3. Climate indicators
4. Water indicators
5. Soil indicators
6. Vegetation indicators
7. Water runoff indicators
8. Forest fires indicators
9. Agriculture indicators
   1. Farm ownership
   2. Farm size
   3. Land fragmentation
   4. Net farm income
   5. Parallel employment
10. Cultivation indicators
11. Animal husbandry indicators
12. Land management indicators
13. Land use indicators
14. Water use indicators
15. Tourism indicators
16. Human characteristics indicators
17. Institutional indicators
18. Conclusions
19. References

Farm ownership

Farm ownership can affect land management practices. Usually farmers do not apply measures for land protection from degradation since they seek temporally only maximum profit. Farmers without a steady perspective in the property of the land are not encouraged to invest in soil conservation measures or make long-term investments. UNCCD has emphasized the importance of improvement of the institutional and regulatory framework of natural resource management to provide security of land tenure for local populations. Farm ownership represents a fundamental factor for decision- makers for addressing political measures to individual farmers or to more effective public level.

Farm ownership has been defined in this project as the percentage of rented agricultural land in the owner-farmed agricultural area. In each study field site the ownership status was identified by contacting the land user. Agricultural land is the sum of arable land, kitchen gardens (horticulture), permanent pastures and meadows and permanent crop. According to the EUROSTAT CODE the utilized agricultural area is classified as following: (a) owner-farmed, agricultural land being farmed by the holding which is the property of the holder or farmed by him as usufructuary or inheritable long-term lease holder or under some other equivalent type of tenure; (b) tenant-farmed, land rented by the holding in return for a fixed rent agreed in advance (in cash, kind or otherwise), and for which there is a (written or oral) tenancy agreement; (c) shared-farmed, land (which may constitute a complete holding) farmed in partnership by the landlord and the sharecropper under a written or oral share-farming contract, the output (either economic or physical) of the share cropped area is shared between two parties on an agreed basis; (d) state farm, and (e) other modes.

Based on the collected data, land ownership has been identified in 1291 field sites, corresponding to 15 study sites (Table 7). As Fig. 50 shows, 59.9% of the field sites described were owner-farmed corresponding mainly to the study sites of Secano Interior-Chile, Nestos Basin Maggana-Greece, Boteti Area-Botswana, Konya Karapinar plain-Turkey, Santiago Island-Cape Verde, Mamora Sehoul-Morocco, Eskisehir-Turkey, Zeuss Koutine-Tunisia, Guadalentin Basin Murcia-Spain, Cointzio Catchment-Mexico, Gois-Portugal, Crete-Greece, and Mação- Portugal. The following important class of land ownership was shared-farmed, in which the farmed land is in partnership by the landlord and the sharecrop farmed under a written or oral share-farming contract. Such type of ownership has been identified in 14.6% of the study field sites, corresponding to all cases of the study site of Djanybek-Russia, and in some cases in the sites of Santiago Island-Cape Verde, Mamora Sehoul-Morocco, Novij Saratov-Russia, and Zeuss Koutine-Tunisia. State farm has been defined in 14.5% of the study field sites, corresponding to Secano Interior-Chile, Santiago Island-Cape Verde, Mamora Sehoul-Morocco, Zeuss Koutine-Tunisia, Konya Karapinar plain-Turkey, and Crete-Greece. Tenant-farmed has been identified in 6.0% of the study field sites, corresponding to Novij Saratov-Russia, and Santiago Island-Cape Verde sites.

Fig. 50. Distribution of farm ownership categories identified in the study sites