Given appropriate environmental conditions and access to the factors of production, farmers must have adequate incentives to engage in agriculture. Farmers' perceptions of the socio-economic incentives for production and of the appropriate allocation of scarce resources do not necessarily correspond with those of governments, as expressed in land, marketing, credit, and pricing policies. In this way, governments' attempts to influence the pattern of land use may not always achieve the desired results. The papers presented in this volume reveal a number of similarities and differences in the agricultural development and land policies of the nations of eastern and southern Africa. Major similarities include the following.
All countries have a colonial history.
In most countries, independence did not bring any immediate or drastic change in land policy. Furthermore, among the various interest groups in the newly independent countries, there were those whose concerns largely coincided with those of the previous colonial regimes. All these considerations were influential in the subsequent course of land policy and agricultural change. Most countries in the region have developed some form of dualism in their agricultural sector. Communal use under collective tenure, consisting mainly of small holders aiming at subsistence and constrained by numerous factors to low productivity coexists with a private sector comprising a relatively small number of enterprises aiming at producing surpluses of cash crops.