Hold the Land, Heal the Soil
Globally, only about a quarter of land is formally recognized. Land degradation reflects systemic underinvestment in land, often rooted in insecure land tenure.
Farmland has long been one of the most important sources of security across generations. Writing about China nearly a century ago, Pearl S. Buck noted in The Good Earth, “If you will hold your land, you can live.” That holds true today. When farmers own land, they invest in it. When they don’t, they extract what they can today without thinking of tomorrow.
This household-level decision becomes a structural problem at scale: land degradation — today, 1.7 billion people live in areas of declining agricultural productivity — reflects systemic underinvestment in land, often rooted in insecure land tenure. The good news is that this means reforming and enforcing land tenure can be a powerful tool to combat land degradation and food insecurity.
Globally, only about a quarter of land is formally recognized. In sub-Saharan Africa, where customary systems dominate landholding, communities have been exposed to encroachment, weak dispute resolution, and exclusion from services and finance. More than 1.1 billion people believe they could lose rights to their land in the next five years. This perceived insecurity has intensified amid rising financial pressure and displacement.
Evidence from Ghana and Malawi shows that farmers with informal or seasonal rental agreements are significantly less likely to invest in soil restoration, water management, or productivity-enhancing practices. This is because they could lose access to the land before those investments generate returns over multiple years. Without land as collateral, farmers also struggle to access credit, insurance, and financial services needed to finance such improvements.
Customary systems have persistently disadvantaged women, who make up half of smallholder producers, in inheritance and transfer rights. Globally, women hold only 15 percent of agricultural land, and even when they do, they are susceptible to losing it in case of divorce or death of a spouse.
Limited legal access to land, combined with weak access to credit, insurance, and inputs, has reinforced cycles of low productivity, land degradation, and vulnerability for women farmers.