Smallholder farms may hold the answer to issues of hunger and poverty in Africa, according to Thom Jayne, professor of international development from Michigan State University, who presented his research Thursday evening as part of the Global Food Policy and Food Security Symposium Series.

“The ironic thing is that Africa, which is the most food insecure and impoverished continent in the world, also has the greatest supply of unutilized arable land in the world,” Jayne said.

Despite the perception of Africa as a land-rich continent, studies of where the people live reveal a different situation, Jayne added.

“Much of rural Sub-Sahara Africa is sparsely populated, but a high proportion of the rural people in the continent do live in densely populated areas,” Jayne said, referencing population histograms.

Jayne used Zambia, the country in which he currently runs a policy program, to illustrate the negative effects of living at the population threshold. Sixty-seven percent of Zambia’s population is not selling maize or other crops due to their lack of access to land. Jayne argued this leads to urbanization problems.

“Some of the problems of urban slums… are linked in some respect to the problem of inability to earn a livelihood,” Jayne said, highlighting the farmers in the bottom tier who do not produce maize.

Jayne used evidence from maize farming in Zambia to illustrate that agricultural growth does not necessarily lead to poverty reduction. Following a maize subsidy in the mid-2000s, maize production in Zambia doubled, but rural poverty remained at 78 percent.

“How can you have that kind of growth and not have any impact on poverty reduction?” Jayne asked.

According to Jayne, the answer lies in the size of farms. Maize production increased dramatically on large farms of 10 to 20 hectares. Forty-one percent of households, however, live on farms of less than one hectare. Jayne argued that solutions to poverty therefore must be based in smallholder farms, especially since individuals with political connections typically control the large farms.

“There are elements of this story that are similar to what’s going on in the United States,” Jayne said, referencing how large land owners are able to support subsidies to continue accumulating wealth.

Jayne concluded that policies aimed at poverty reduction and agricultural development must address these land inequalities, physical infrastructure and public investments.

“There needs to be a public investment strategy that will expand access to land in areas that are currently underutilized to allow some kind of natural migration to be going into these areas, to relieve the population pressures,” Jayne said.

Following Jayne’s speech, Derek Byerlee, director of the 2009 World Development Report, provided additional commentary. He agreed with Jayne’s main points and, in addition, emphasized the need to address the current system of land markets and land rights. At present, 80 percent of the land is under customary rights and under this informal system transactions are not recorded. Byerlee argued for the need for transparency in these transactions, and like Jayne presented the tie between land rights issues and other social problems.

“I think it’s going to be really critical for maintaining peace and reducing conflict. I think a lot of the big conflicts we’ve seen in Africa, trace them back, and they reduce to problems of land,” Byerlee said.