IngentaConnect Arable Land Tenure in Afghanistan in the Early Post-Taliban Era

Abstract:

This paper presents hitherto unavailable information about the farm land tenure structure of Afghanistan after more than two decades of civil war and the downfall of the Taliban regime, based on recent countrywide surveys plus other relevant sources. About 1.28 million farms with arable land were estimated to exist in the country; the mean holding of arable land per farm was 5.1 Ha. About 73% of farms were below 5 Ha and the top 5.4% of farms with size exceeding 20 Ha controlled 30% of irrigated land and 46% of rain-fed land, suggesting significant though not extreme concentration of farm sizes. Tenancy is not dominant, as most farms are run by their owners. Only 9% of irrigated land and 6% of rain-fed land is cropped by tenants. Only 10% of farmers had mortgaged about 3% of the arable land in 2002, but only 1% had mortgage burdens in 2005 after several years of economic recovery. Many tenants also have land of their own. Most rented land (where the prevailing arrangement is sharecropping) is owned by other farmers living in the same village, though there are also some absentee landlords. The data do not substantiate the idea of high and increasing farm size inequality or land ownership concentration, at least as regards arable land. This paper does not deal, however, with public or communal grassland, which has been the object of some disputes and land grabbing in recent times.

Keywords: AFGHANISTAN; AGRICULTURE; LAND TENURE; AGRARIAN STRUCTURE

Document Type: Research article

DOI: 10.1163/156921007X180578

Affiliations: 1: Research Institute in the Social Sciences, School of Social Science, Universidad del Salvador, Buenos Aires, Argentina

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