The sub-Saharan Africa region recorded the fastest conversion of forest land to agriculture in the past 20 years. The region also has the widest yield gap and together with Latin America and Caribbean has the largest unused arable land. However, there are wide variations across countries and...

In Vietnam, all lands belong to the state, who assigns usufruct rights to those lands to individuals and households. In 1993, the state gave 20-year usufruct rights to growers of annual crops, and 50-year usufruct rights to growers of perennial crops. In 2013, as the usufruct rights of growers...

Since 1999, China has spent RMB 50 billion (about US$7 billion) to implement the Grain for Green programme, the largest land retirement programme in the developing world. From 1999 to 2003, over 7.2 million hectares of agricultural land were retired under the programme. However, many farmers...