Land tenure and agroforestry in southeastern Nigeria

This document contains excerpts from the above titled thesis.

The thesis of this paper is that a multidimensional framework for understanding land tenure is needed; once this has been established, it will be argued that communal land tenure does not inherently inhibit agricultural production in general, or agroforestry in particular. The study will focus on two Igbo villages, Ndubia and Umuokele, in southeastern Nigeria. It will illustrate that indigenous land tenure is not only plastic and complex, but that it is not an independent variable dictating land use. This is evidenced in the fact that in Ndubia, communal tenure dominates, while in Umuokele, individual land holding arrangements are most common; nonetheless, farming systems between the two villages are relatively homogenous. (author)