070415 FARApaper-Anderssonetal.doc 1 Land, productivity, and agricultural research: Towards an understanding of the multiple meanings of land Jens A. Andersson*°, Wayne Twine*, Amon Murwira !! , Ken E. Giller°, Arnold B. Mashingaidze ! , Maja Slingerland° Abstract In academic and policy thinking, competing claims on land are often viewed in terms of conflicting interests over productive resource use. Within this line of theoretical argumentation tenure security is a prerequisite for increases in productivity, while a lack of it is assumed to be a major impediment to the development of African smallholder agriculture as such farming usually takes place under communal land tenure regimes. This paper challenges this generalized perspective, arguing that the role of agriculture - including its productivity - in the livelihoods of rural people should be understood in relation to other sources of income. Land has different meanings; it is not always the basis of rural livelihoods or a productive resource in which to invest. Land has multiple uses and is valued for both productive and non-productive considerations. Building on empirical material from South Africa and Zimbabwe, it is hypothesized that despite rural peoples' dependency on natural resources and the omnipresence of farming activity in communal areas, few depend centrally on farming for their livelihood. Productivity increases in communal area agriculture are therefore not likely to result from tenure reform alone. Rather than focusing narrowly on tenure reform and agricultural productivity, agricultural research should adopt a wider perspective on land use, and focus on peoples’ land use practices and the different meanings of land in rural livelihoods. Thus, better insight is gained in different stakeholders’ - including smallholder farmers’ - claims on land, which enable more meaningful scientific contributions to agricultural policy and more productive and/or equitable land-use options. Keywords: land tenure, land claims rural livelihoods, remittances, Zimbabwe, South Africa, agricultural research Paper for the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA) meeting in Johannesburg, 2007: Promoting the productivity & competitiveness of African agriculture in a global economy. Sub-theme (i): How can agricultural research contribute to pro-poor enabling land policies? * School of Animal, Plant and Environmental Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand; ° Plant Production Systems group, Wageningen University, ! Department of Crop Science, University of Zimbabwe; Department of Geography and Environmental Science, University of Zimbabwe. The authors wish to thank Judith de Wolf for assistance in data gathering and compilation of this paper.