Who Controls the Land? Tenure, Governance and Food System Transformation

Access to and control over land underpin every stage of food system transformation. Who holds land, on what terms, and under whose authority determines what is produced, by whom, and who eats. Yet sustainable food systems research has tended to treat land as a biophysical input rather than a contested social and political terrain. Since the price shocks of 2007 to 2008, successive waves of large-scale land acquisition have moved across Africa, Asia and Latin America, driven now as much by carbon offsets, conservation finance, renewable energy and urban expansion as by food and biofuels. Over the same period, titling and registration programmes have reshaped customary and communal tenure, often unevenly for women, youth and pastoralists. How these pressures are governed will determine whether food system transitions prove sustainable, equitable and durable, or become another round of dispossession.Land tenure security, large-scale land acquisition, and the governance arrangements that mediate them remain under-examined within sustainable food systems research. Agrarian political economy has produced a substantial literature on land grabbing, and land administration scholarship has documented tenure reform in detail, but neither speaks directly to the food systems transformation agenda. The result is a transformation literature that specifies desirable outcomes, such as agroecological production, dietary change and shortened and safe value chains, without asking who controls the land on which those outcomes depend. This Research Topic addresses several questions including: How do land tenure regimes and land governance arrangements enable or obstruct transitions toward sustainable and equitable food systems? How are those arrangements themselves being reshaped by the transition, particularly by climate mitigation finance, conservation targets and renewable energy claims on land? And which legal and institutional designs have delivered more secure and equitable access, under what conditions, and for whom? The timing is deliberate. Net-zero commitments, voluntary carbon markets and the Global Biodiversity Framework are generating a new round of claims on land, while two decades of tenure formalisation now provide enough evidence for comparative assessment.The collection covers the political, institutional and social dimensions of land control in agri-food transformation, across regions, scales and tenure systems. Contributions may address:• Large-scale land acquisitions, domestic and transnational, and their consequences for food security, livelihoods and land-use change• Customary, communal and indigenous tenure systems and their interaction with formal state or market-based land governance• Land reform policies and their effectiveness in advancing equitable access for smallholders, women, youth and marginalised groups• Legal and institutional frameworks governing land rights, land registration and land-use planning in sustainability transitions• Conflict and contestation over competing land uses: food production, conservation, biofuels, urban expansion and carbon offset schemesSeed systems, power dynamics and seed sovereignty in food transformation• The role of international institutions, investors and finance in shaping national land governance and land markets• Climate change adaptation and mitigation policy as a driver of land-use pressure and tenure insecurity• Gender, class and ethnicity dimensions of land access and control in food systems• Comparative and regional case studies of success and failure in land governance reformInterdisciplinary submissions that connect land governance to the Sustainable Development Goals, particularly SDG 1, SDG 2, SDG 10, SDG 15, and SDG 16, and offer actionable insight for policymakers, land governance institutions, and civil society are especially welcome.Manuscript types: Original Research, Review, Systematic Review, Perspective, Policy and Practice Reviews, and Data Report. Topic editors: Sandra Bhatasara, Manase Chiweshe Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/86333/who-controls-the-land-tenure-governance-and-food-system-transformation