Leasehold estate

About: Leasehold estate is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 1589 publications have been published within this topic receiving 21480 citations. The topic is also known as: leasehold & tenancy.

Labor Contracting in Turn-of-the-Century California Agriculture

Abstract: During the course of U.S. economic development, the institutions used to organize agricultural labor have undergone interesting and sometimes puzzling transformations. The transitions from wage contracting to tenancy observed in the post-bellum South and in nineteenth-century Iowa have been studied extensively.2 This paper evaluates the relatively neglected transition from wage labor to tenancy that occurred in the California fruit orchards during the period 1900–1910.3 Before 1903 Chinese and Japanese orchard workers were organized via the padrone system of wage labor, but in an abrupt series of events there ensued a shift into tenancy so dramatic that by 1909 contemporary observers noted that virtually all orchards were under tenant control. The fact that the new tenants were recent Japanese immigrants prompted investigations by the Immigration Commission as well as other agencies so that this particular shift into tenancy is documented in greater detail than those occurring in the South and in Iowa.

Land Law in Chinese History

Abstract: Although land law or “real property law” is but one of several branches of what scholars commonly call “economic law,” or laws that regulate everyday economic activity, its history has drawn, over the past several decades, an unusually large amount of attention from legal theorists, economists, and comparative scholars of all methodological orientations. This has been especially true within the field of Chinese legal history: few scholars outside the field have any clear sense of pre-modern, early modern, or even modern Chinese family law, the law of personal injury, or even criminal law, but a much larger number will likely have some impression of historical Chinese land law, and may even have an educated opinion about it. This is not because land law was any more important to everyday socioeconomic life than those other bodies of law, but rather because land law has played a much larger role in theoretical and comparative scholarship, particularly in scholarship that seeks to explain global economic divergence—specifically, the divergence between China and the West in the 18th and 19th Centuries. Although this literature has perpetrated its share of myths about Chinese property institutions, much progress has been made over the past few decades, to the point where something approaching an academic consensus on core institutional features has emerged. This chapter outlines these core features of Chinese land law, focusing primarily on the late imperial era, and provides a short summary of how the field arrived at them. Whereas it was once thought that Chinese property rights were comparatively less secure or less alienable than Western European property rights, it now seems unlikely that major differences existed at this general level. They did exist, however, in the finer institutional details of tenancy law and collateralization instruments, and potentially in inheritance law as well. In these latter features, Chinese land law tended to produce institutional incentives that leveled and fractured the pattern of rural landholding, thereby reinforcing the economic dominance of household-level production throughout the late imperial era, and well into the 20th Century. The chapter then discusses relatively recent trends in the academic literature, reaching back to 1970s and 1980s, when the study of Chinese land law became deeply intertwined with debates over economic divergence. It concludes by briefly pondering the costs and benefits of such intertwinement, and what it means to study “the history of Chinese land law” as a consolidated subject.

Tenancy and Agricultural Productivity in Southern India: Nature, Extent, Trends and Determinants

Abstract: The study reconfirmed prevalence of reverse tenancy in dryland agriculture in Southern India in recent years (2009-10 and 2011-12) as was in the mid-seventies. Household level panel data collected from six villages by ICRISAT under its Village Level Studies (VLS) and Village Dynamics Studies (VDS) programme were analysed. Area under tenancy has increased in recent years, mostly in the form of sharecropping. Panel Data Probit analysis revealed that likelihood of a household to be a tenant is positively linked with bullock ownership and large farm size while age and education of the household head, and dependence on non-farm income had a negative association. Determinants of extent of tenancy (rented in area) were measured through Panel Data Feasible Generalised Least Square (FGLS) regression analysis. Results indicated that an additional bullock increased rented-in area by 0.22 ha. On the other hand, large farmers had 0.47 ha more area under rented-in compared to other tenants. There was negative relationship between rented-in area and age and education of the household head indicating that educated and elderly people participated less in the tenancy market. Input use level, crop yield and profitability were generally higher in own land than that of rented-in land in the mid-seventies. In recent years, we observed mixed (inconclusive) outcome for input use, crop yield and profitability. Reduction of production risks in one of the study villages has not only reduced tenancy but also abolished reverse tenancy.

Transhumance, Climate Change and Conflicts: Reflections on the Legal Implications of Grazing Reserves and Ruga Settlements in Nigeria

Abstract: In recent times, clash after clash has arisen between herdsmen and farmers in Nigeria. These conflicts were linked to the effects of climate change in northern Nigeria, but have been exacerbated by other factors including ethno-religious sentiments. Herdsmen forced to migrate southwards face intense competition for arable and grazing land with the farmers in Nigeria's middle belt. This invariably leads to conflicts, often resulting in gruesome murder and carnage. Thousands have died, many more have been maimed and millions displaced because of this crisis. As a solution, the Nigerian government proposes to set up grazing reserves and rural grazing area settlements in all states of the federation. The problem with this proposal is how and where to obtain the land. This article reflects on the legal implications of the proposal and argues in favour of grazing reserves and ranching on the basis of a private freehold / leasehold tenure arrangement, not through the compulsory acquisition of land by the government.

Private sector agricultural tenancy arrangements in Europe : themes and dimensions, a critical review of current literature

Abstract: Although there is widespread support for the "ideal model" of agricultural production being based around the owner-occupier farmer, it is recognized that, for a variety of reasons, this ideal is neither always attainable nor desirable. There is also a need to ensure that farming becomes competitive when exposed fully to world markets. This means that farmers are likely to require the flexibility to expand their businesses in circumstances where they may not have the capital to purchase the additional assets. The need to find suitable systems for agricultural tenancy reform remains paramount as a means both for sustaining rural communities generally and for establishing mechanisms suitable for matching the demand for and supply of private land for rent. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) recently commissioned a study of agricultural land tenure systems in order to identify elements of good practice in existing arrangements for the leasing of private sector agricultural land. This report is confined to a consideration of and commentary on the existing literature on tenure and tenancy arrangements as a basis for identifying examples of good practice. For the purposes of establishing good practice, this report concentrates on the market economies of northern and western Europe, predominantly the fifteen current member states of the European Union, while being aware of the principal dimensions of land reform in central and eastern European and former Soviet Union countries.