Abstract:
Ensuring secure access to land among rural inhabitants for ending the vicious cycle of poverty and natural resources degradation is a global challenge. Two important measures of secure land access include the ability to acquire tenure rights and benefits gained from the land, yet available studies have given them little attention to date. This study drew data from 267 households in Morogoro region of Tanzania using a questionnaire. In addition, focus group discussions and key informants were employed to explore the means and processes through which farmers in densely and sparsely populated areas—Mgeta division and Mlali division, respectively—derive a living from land. The study employed a cross-sectional research design to collect qualitative and quantitative data, the latter of which was analyzed using SPSS, whereby descriptive and inferential statistics were determined. Results showed that most of the households acquire farmland through inheritance and purchase. Nonetheless, more than one third of the households in both sites were without secure access to land. We found that access to arable land in Mgeta was constrained by soil erosion and repeated fragmentation, compelling farmers to excessively apply fertilizers, to expand farms through seasonal migration, and to trek up to 6 hours to reach their farms. In addition, lack of irrigation water discouraged many from settling in land-abundant areas, since, in Mgeta, water was readily available from nearby catchments. Access to land in Mlali, in contrast, was found to be limited by land grabbing perpetuated by weak tenure security, monetary poverty and non-compliance to land laws. Consequently, land-constrained households cope by borrowing farmland and by trekking up to 12 hours to reach their farmland. Binary logistic regression results showed that while high-income levels and productive assets influenced access to land positively, location had a negative significant influence (p < 0.05). In conclusion, lack of formal land titles and irrigation water in land aboundant villages, monetary poverty and soil erosion as well as non compliance to the land law together contributed to limit secure access to land in the study area. Tanzanian government is advised to encourage land-constrained households from land scarce areas to settle in land abundant areas, through investing in irrigation infrastructure. It additionally could speed up formalization of land titles and create awareness on tenure security, also invest in soil fertility, and projects that can increase household income and asset portfolios. The government may probably enforce compliance to land law.
