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Land Policy for the Next Generation

Posted on May 2, 2018 by Amrit Bhandari

Originally appeared on Agrilinks.

African governments increasingly recognize the potential for land-based development to feed the rural poor and growing urban populations and to promote equitable human development. Good land policy is central to productive land-based development across farm sizes and types. It enables inclusive, sustainable growth. Governance of, and access to, land is the most important policy choice facing Africa. This issue will determine whether Africa’s growing rural economies follow a Latin America model dominated by large heavily capitalized farms existing side by side with marginal smallholders or an Asian model dominated by smallholders who increased their prosperity and reduced rural poverty through increased agricultural productivity.

Should Africa favor larger-scale commercial production or the smallholder economy? Are low yields and the slow pace of rural transformation attributable to smallholder performance or to poor policy and investment choices?

Recent studies provide nuanced evidence on farm-size, growth and productivity. Productivity by farm size varies, and evidence often shows higher productivity on smaller farms. Even very small farms (less than 1 or 2 ha) can be productive, commercial and mechanized — including in Africa. Conversely, very large farm holdings can underutilize land. Mechanization at scale is most successful in places with extensive fertile land and very low population densities and is not as suitable for many African countries, where population densities are high and land is not particularly fertile.

Access to land, inputs, financial services and markets matter to the pace of growth and how it reaches the poor. Experience in large-farm biased systems such as Brazil’s Cerrado and small-farm biased systems found in Thailand illustrates the importance of broad access to these factors. Africa’s sustainable growth agenda calls for the inclusive results experienced in Thailand. Both cases offer insights into complementary policy needs, e.g., finance and education.

Smallholder commercial agriculture, scaled over time, can reduce poverty and create jobs. In China, Japan, Chile, Thailand and the U.S., smallholder-led agricultural growth based on recognition of small farmers’ land rights kick-started broader, more inclusive economic transformations. The land-related conflict and untenable social costs that preceded these transformations can be mitigated in Africa by learning from these countries’ earlier histories.

To read more about Land and Food Security along with some possible interventions visit https://www.land-links.org/issue/food-security.

What’s New on LandLinks – 27 April 2018

Posted on April 27, 2018March 9, 2023 by Amrit Bhandari

In lieu of our weekly scan of recent land tenure and resource management media items, we are highlighting the latest content on LandLinks at the end of each month. In case you missed it, here is a roundup of the new content on LandLinks, from USAID land-related project documents to blogs by our land experts, and more:

Tenure and Global Climate Change: Global (TGCC)

Indigenous people of Cagayan de Oro City receive land titles

Posted on April 27, 2018February 18, 2020 by Amrit Bhandari

Originally appeared in USAID SURGE Project’s Cities Development Initiative Newsletter.

“I am grateful to finally receive the title for the land where I was born, raised, and now where I live with my own family,” said Fernando Abungan, 34, from Barangay Tumpagon, Cagayan de Oro City.

Abungan and his wife are among the indigenous people who received land titles on February 5, 2018. Tumpagon is home to the Higaonon tribe, a rural village about 40 kilometers from the center of Cagayan de Oro City in Misamis Oriental, Northern Mindanao.

About 40 other residents of Baragay Tumpagon, and 21 informal settlers from Barangay Mambuaya also received land titles during the distribution ceremony at the Cagayan de Oro City Hall. In his dialect, Abungan recalled the difficulty he encountered to acquire a land title. Abungan, however, did not give up hope. He learned about the new project helping the city government with the land titling process.

The land title distribution is a success for the city government’s land titling program, which aims to improve land tenure strategies and property rights recognition to address challenges in ownership, land use, and spatial development. USAID’s SURGE Project introduced policy reforms in land administration in the city, and facilitated the creation of inter-agency Land Management Council and the Land and Asset Management Office, to support the land titling program and formalize land tenure in the untitled parcels in the city.

“USAID’s technical assistance greatly contributed in the initiation, implementation and continued progress of the city’s land titling program,” said Reuben Bonaoy, Project Coordinator of the Land Asset Management Office.

Facilitated by USAID/SURGE, the partnership between the city government and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) enables the efficient exchange of records and data including maps and survey records, joint conduct of land-titling activities, and training of city government officials to perform duties related to land administration and management processes.

As of end of March 2018, the city government awarded 189 land titles for residents of barangays Tumpagon, Mambuaya and Balulang. Cagayan de Oro City Mayor Oscar Moreno led the turn over of land titles with members of the council from the DENR, Department of Agrarian Reform, Bureau of Internal Revenue, National Commission on Indigenous Peoples, Land Registration Authority, and USAID/SURGE. Community-Based Forest Management certificates were also distributed to 68 farmers in Barangay Dansolihon. The city’s land titling program targets to award about 6,000 land titles this year.

Click below to read the full newsletter.

Cities Development Initiative Newsletter

News update from USAID CDI partner cities

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Results from the 2018 Investor Survey: You Asked, We Answered

Posted on April 19, 2018 by Amrit Bhandari

USAID LandLinks hosted “The Business Case for Land Rights: Results from the 2018 Investor Survey” on April 5, 2018. The webinar shared findings from the first voluntary Investor Survey on Land Rights and heard from the private sector about live investment projects seeking to create benefits for both shareholders and communities. There were more questions from the audience than could be covered during the webinar. Our panelists, Jeffrey Hatcher of Indufor North America, Finn Jacobsen of African Plantations for Sustainable Development and Oriane Plédran of The Moringa Partnership, along with our moderator Sarah Lowery from USAID, share answers here to some of the most interesting ones.

Question: Might anyone be willing to share the ‘topical outlines’ you may have prepared to guide participants doing participatory appraisals of land issues, in particular regarding mapping traditional land ownership and use? Especially useful might be those used in the West African Sahel/arid zones.

SARAH: LandLinks hosts the Mobile Applications to Secure Tenure (MAST) Learning Platform, which has great resources on the innovative technology tools and inclusive methods that use mobile devices and a participatory approach to efficiently, transparently and affordably map and document land and resource rights. Check out the MAST How It Works Infographic and the Technology Infographic, for example. This New America blog also has a helpful description of the MAST approach.

In West Africa/Sahel, USAID has piloted MAST in Burkina Faso with the National Land Observatory (ONF) with some impressive results: in only 25 days, 12 villagers used MAST to map and capture data on 2,708 rural land parcels. ONF’s local publication, “Zoom sur le foncier” (in French, also online), has a section on MAST.

USAID has also worked with MAST in Zambia with customary chiefs to increase tenure security for treatment households, and USAID has demonstrated significant increases in community land governance from participatory mapping, creation of bylaws and related activities under the Community Land Protection Program in Liberia.

Question: The civil society has been supporting the State and the private sectors to increase investment transparency by improving community consultations on land and other natural resources. What mechanisms should be created for local communities to be part of the investments using land as the counterpart?

SARAH: There are many investment models that can create benefits for local communities. These range from 1) lessor/renter agreements where individuals or the community as a whole receive regular payments for use of their land to 2) revenue-sharing arrangements in which the community receives a portion of the revenue or profit of the investment to 3) joint ventures, in which the community actively participates as an equity holder in an investment. The latter can even work if the community does not initially put up capital but borrows its equity stake, to be paid back via the profit from the investment.

FINN: This is a very important question but one with a certain ambivalence. Most of the land owners/caretakers have no or very little income from their land holdings. The main reason for this is that land matters are not managed well and the practice of giving out land plots to settler farmers, etc. is part of the informal economy. An annual lease fee payment will provide a fixed income for the tenure period. If well managed, this will improve their financial situation. Using the land as “equity” will make the land owners shareholders with all the obligations and risks involved, and if the company does not pay dividends the land owners will be stuck without an annual fixed income. I think that a two-stage processwhere they start as a lessor and then when the lease is to be renewed, a participation model could be negotiated, could be a good model. If the land is in the hands of government, an equity stake could certainly make sense.

JEFFREY: Community-centric approaches, such as participatory mapping of land, development of grievance mechanisms, community programs and support to local communities to receive land titles, are essential for diagnosing and addressing land tenure challenges. The level of success of these mechanisms depends on how well the approaches are implemented. Using external service providers or working with local NGOs can be a good way to ensure effective and inclusive community engagement.

Question: How can business approaches and intervention assist in curbing Land Tenure and Property Rights challenges?

JEFFREY: Businesses can integrate land and resource tenure risk assessments into investment decision-making processes to identify the types of risks and possible mitigation actions. Furthermore, they can ensure projects plan and budget to address land tenure challenges, such as recruiting and training qualified staff on best practices for community-centric approaches, including systematic stakeholder engagement, grievance mechanisms, community development programs and participatory mapping of land claims. Additionally, businesses can leverage their existing risk quantification approaches to include better estimates of the land tenure risk impacts on investment returns, as well as quantify the benefits of addressing land risks and engaging communities such as reductions in their cost of capital, increased share price, increased revenue, etc.

Question: A question that probably applies to most projects, but was specifically mentioned by Finn: I refer to the 4 communities of the 10 who responded to the question of what the company could contribute to their communities. I am wondering about your speculations are as to:

Why the other six communities did not respond? Was it distrust of an outsider, especially a corporate outsider?

FINN: No, it was not. In the area where we are developing the project, the level of poverty is high and the education level is also below average. We concluded that they actually did not know what to ask for as their needs in general have been so low and they have very limited knowledge of what is possible. Further, the lack of a regular income leads to a passive approach from the local citizens.

The request of four for hospitals and schools, even though they had such facilities or access to such. Do you think expected employment was the reason for request of the infrastructure—or something else?

FINN: It was simply the easiest way to answer our request.

Question: I missed how the 5,000 contacts were whittled down into about 75 respondents for Survey 1, and about 100 for another of the surveys. That could cause enormous self-selection, if a result of other companies not bothering to respond…OR some other sort of selection bias, if a result of someone choosing the respondents by criteria other than those listed. I would much appreciate your explaining the selection process.

JEFFREY: For Survey 1, an initial list of approximately 40,000 relevant companies was generated using publicly available sources, which the survey team used to collect contact information for approximately 4,900 individuals working in relevant positions in those companies. The survey team sent personalized invitations to those individuals asking them to complete the survey and followed up with several reminders. A link to Survey 1 was also posted on relevant list-servs and USAID outreach communications.

In total, 143 respondents completed Survey 1. After screening the responses against the qualification criteria, 75 of these respondents were deemed qualified, and their responses to Survey 1 are included in our analysis. These 75 respondents were selected to participate in the second-round survey. Of those 75 qualified respondents, 35 completed Survey 2. Those 35 organizations provided in-depth information regarding 102 projects worldwide, including 39 rejected and 63 undertaken projects in agriculture, forestry and renewable energy. The individuals responding to the survey on behalf of their organizations were all senior executives (C-suite or sustainability officers).

Given the aim and scope of the survey, it is very likely that the organizations that responded to the voluntary survey would have a pre-existent interest, concern or commitment to responsible land-based investment. Additionally, the number of respondents from Asia and Oceania was relatively small compared to those from other regions. This report, therefore, only makes claims regarding the organizations that participated in the survey. It should not be interpreted as representative of organizations outside the sample, nor does it try to draw generalizations about land-based investment as a whole.

Despite numerous efforts to generate as many participants as possible, the final sample size of the survey was modest. The response rate may have been affected by several factors. Given that this is the first edition of the survey, there was no reference point for potential respondents. The request for detailed operational information and length of Survey 2 may also have dissuaded some potential respondents. In addition, the timing of the survey—launching in late 2017 with data analysis in early 2018—coincided with several holidays, and the short timeframe limited possible follow-up efforts. The branding of the survey from USAID—a public institution—might have dissuaded some private company responses due to the sensitive nature of the questions. Lastly, many emails bounced back, ended up in spam folders or were never opened. It is notable, however, that once the survey was started, 77 percent of potential respondents completed the survey.

Question: Work needs to be from the ground, the “bottom-up” approach with “top-down” support. However, in our experience, the chiefs were not sufficiently “on the ground.” Much too often, their personal benefits took precedence over those of the community. Did you encounter problems of chieftaincy corruption and [if so,] how did you deal with it?

FINN: The level of corruption in the areas we are operating is low. We also informed all stakeholders from the beginning that we have a no corruption policy. In the beginning they still tried to ask for certain personal favors which we always declined. If they asked us to grade the road in a community, however, we agreed to do that. All stools have no approved mapping of the stool area, and previously the boundaries were described by large trees, creeks, large stones etc., but most of these “landmarks” have disappeared. It is always a challenge on how to split up the lease fee paid by African Plantations for Sustainable Development. The stool itself and the traditional council receives approximately 40 percent of the gross lease fee. One of our Stools has agreed to split the fee in three parts, one third each to the traditional council, the community and the youth organization.

Question: Could you please explain how you can or do attempt to work with customary or traditional stakeholders to partner with them so they can become better stewards of the environment in Ghana?

FINN: This is a huge challenge and we are talking about changing old habits and bad agricultural practices. Where we find these high levels of poverty there is no understanding [of or concern for the] environment, conservation and reduced burning. Our concept is to show as many farmers and stakeholders as possible that it is possible to do agricultural activities without destroying everything around you, but it certainly takes time. As I stated in the webinar, there is much talk about land use, but almost none concerning land abuse and the latter is a more serious challenge. Climate smart agriculture is one of the key concepts but that will also take time as it is still too much patchwork and not enough solid concepts around.

Question: What would you consider as the main responsible land business standard? It seems that the Interlaken Group consider the VGGT as the primary one.

JEFFREY: Indeed, the Interlaken Group has defined its view on company responsibilities to uphold the VGGT in commercial settings through its release of the Interlaken Guide on Respecting Land and Forest Rights. In addition, almost all governments have committed to the VGGTs, which require them to respect legitimate land rights.

However, Indufor does not consider one guideline as the main responsible one, since the different guidelines focus on different aspects of land-based investments, such as agricultural projects, or inclusion of human rights. Overall, the challenge is for companies, operating in a variety of governance contexts, to put these guidelines into practice and internalize the guidelines’ principles. To do so, Indufor sees a need to iteratively improve these guiding principles over time, rather than calling for project abandonment as currently outlined in some of the guidelines and frameworks.

SARAH: Similar to Jeff’s response, USAID does not see one particular guideline as better than others. I personally like the Analytical Framework for Responsible Land-Based Investments in African Agriculture because it is succinct (~16 pages), clear and practical. Of course we also have the USAID Operating Guidelines for Responsible Land-Based Investment.

However, I would argue that it is much more important that investors and businesses are seeking to create projects that respect local land and resource rights and that benefit local peoples. If guidelines are helpful in achieving that end, fantastic.

Question: What tools are available to support global business operating in weak land governance context to adopt full land and property rights due diligence strategy?

JEFFREY: There are several tools to assist any company to perform a due diligence assessment. Some of these tools might be required by law, such as environmental and social impact assessments (ESIAs), and are often conducted by a third party. Other tools are additional, including an initial diligence assessment, participatory mapping, checking titles and land rights documents, which can also be performed by a third party.

In the Investor Survey, we found that of the tenure risk mitigation strategies reportedly used in undertaken projects, those perceived as being successful in more than half of reported projects focused on stakeholder engagement, community development programs, participatory mapping of land rights, establishment of grievance mechanisms and support to local communities to obtain land titles. The strategies that succeeded in fewer than half of reported projects included working with government authorities, installing guards to protect plantations, employment of local community members and building fences around plantations. Approaches used in the case studies include providing impartial legal assistance to local stakeholders for contract negotiations and providing technical assistance to strengthen farmer interest and participation in out-grower models.

A Look Back at the 2018 World Bank Land and Poverty Conference

Posted on April 18, 2018 by Amrit Bhandari

Last month’s Annual World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty brought together over 1,200 participants from across the globe—including representatives from governments, academics, civil society and the private sector. It includes discussions of new research, innovations, practices and policies to strengthen land and resource governance.

USAID presented on key findings and lessons learned in land matters from across the globe, including responsible investment, land and customary tenure, sustainability, economic growth, women’s empowerment and much more. You can view the presentations and download papers from USAID and our implementing partners on this event page.

Blogs from USAID and our Partners Published for the 2018 Land Conference:

USAID also participated in a high-level round table discussion entitled “Regularization of Rural Rights: Lessons Learned from Ethiopia, Liberia and Zambia” that featured speakers from USAID, the Ethiopian Ministry of Agriculture, the University of Zambia, Namati and the Liberia Land Commission.

Highlighted below are three of the posters that hung during the conference, featuring additional cutting-edge research and key-findings from USAID projects across the globe.

Data used in the posters and the presentations and papers can be found on LandLinks and is available in the Evaluations and Research section of the site.

Additionally, be sure to view this data visualization from a rigorous impact evaluation of the Tenure and Global Climate Change (TGCC) project in Zambia (2014-2017).

USAID Posters Presented at the 2018 Land Conference:

Evidence of Women's Economic Empowerment

Gender, Resource Rights, and the Role of Customary Authorities: A Multi-Site Study of Women’s Empowerment in Customary Settings

By Heather Huntington, Adi Greif

This poster explores the relationship between customary governance, customary tenure security and women’s empowerment using two large-scale representative surveys from Zambia and Ethiopia.

Untenable Hypothesis: Does Insecure Tenure Deter Investment?

The Role of Property Rights in Technology Adoption: Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial

By Heather Huntington, Ajay Shenoy

This poster provides rigorous, microeconomic evidence on whether weak property rights prevent households from adopting new technology. We evaluate USAID’s Tenure and Global Climate Change (TGCC) intervention in Zambia that cross-randomized an agroforestry extension with a program to secure customary land tenure to smallholder farmers.

Evidence to Inform Liberia’s Land Policy: Evaluation Findings from Namati’s Community Land Protection Program

By Kate Marple-Cantrell, Heather Huntington, Alexandra Hartman

This poster presents midline results from a rigorous evaluation of the Community Land Protection Program (CLPP) in Liberia. CLPP supports communities to leverage community land documentation processes for positive intra-community changes, leading to enhanced local empowerment, resource governance, and livelihoods.

USAID Improves its Innovative Technology to Strengthen Land Tenure: MAST

Posted on April 18, 2018March 9, 2023 by Amrit Bhandari

USAID’s Land Technology Solutions Project (LTS) has recently completed a comprehensive update to Mobile Applications to Secure Tenure (MAST) which uses innovative technology, including GPS enabled phones and tablets, to efficiently and effectively document land rights. Countries, communities and companies interested in meeting their commitments to establish deforestation-free value chains, boost agricultural productivity, quickly inventory land and document holdings or clarify and document land uses can now harness a much-improved suite of tools to expedite their work.

LTS now provides a suite of integrated support services to USAID Missions to promote and scale the use of MAST worldwide. LTS services focus on meeting the needs and interests of USAID Missions and their implementing partners to achieve host country strategic development objectives, including those outlined in the Global Food Security Strategy, the USAID Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment Policy, and the USAID Biodiversity Policy. The tool is yet another example of how USAID works as a catalyst to help others, including civil society, corporate partners and other governments, expedite their efforts to achieve development goals and create a durable path out of poverty.

What is MAST?

USAID’s MAST is a suite of innovative technology tools paired with inclusive training and approaches that use mobile phones and tablets to efficiently, transparently and affordably map and document land and resource rights. MAST can help people and communities define, record and register local land boundaries and important information, such as the names and photographs of people who use the land and information about how they use it. MAST combines an easy-to-use mobile phone application with a participatory approach that empowers citizens in the process of understanding, mapping and registering their own rights and resources.

The MAST application provides a suite of tools to support the collection and management of land rights information, including a mobile application to capture land rights information in the field and a back-end land rights data management application with tools to manage an inventory of land information. MAST Mobile is an Android mobile application.

Since 2014, MAST has been used by stakeholders in Tanzania, Zambia and Burkina Faso, to clarify and document claims to land. In these countries, MAST has provided transparent and effective mechanisms to improve land governance, build institutional capacities, engage citizens and help them understand their rights and responsibilities.

Enhanced Technology

Over the last eight months, LTS has refined and improved MAST technologies and approaches. LTS has updated key components of the MAST software application framework and upgraded the MAST data model from Social Tenure Domain Model (STDM) to more common standard Land Administration Domain Model (LADM). With an updated Data Model, MAST is now more compatible with models used in larger, more formal land administration or registration systems.

Enhanced Land Record Management

A more robust land registration module has been integrated into MAST based on feedback and lessons learned in Tanzania and Burkina Faso. In these countries, users identified the need for a land registration module. This has been integrated and configured to manage a series of prototypical subsequent land registration transactions such as transfers, sales, leases and mortgages. The modular nature of its integration into MAST provides enhanced functionality, and an important base for country-specific customization, but doesn’t reduce its flexibility and responsiveness for community mapping.

Improving Efficiencies and Eliminating Errors

To improve data capture of individual land holdings, a tasking and data collection manager has been implemented in MAST. The tasking manager does away with the need to manually assign work areas to surveyors and uses integrated geospatial tools. Integrated tools allow users to define and assign work allocation units to surveyors to increase efficiencies and avoid capture of redundant data. To further address issues associated with online data management and mapping tools on slow and unstable internet connections, a QGIS plugin has been modified to be used with MAST. Integrating QGIS tools allows administrators the ability to download geospatial data, utilize QGIS to edit data in offline mode and to sync data back to the main MAST database. Such editing functions have been augmented by the integration of topology tools that can be used to flag and check errors.

Extending Tools for Resource Management

The MAST mobile application has also been updated. The parcel mapping tool has been extended to incorporate tool sets derived from USAID’s Land Tenure Assistance program in Tanzania, which extended MAST to include more robust data editing functions and to document new, existing and/or disputed claims to land. MAST mobile has also been linked via Bluetooth connection to several consumer-grade GPS tools to improve accuracy of mapping available on native mobile devices. Most importantly, MAST Mobile has recently been extended to include a resource mapping module. The resource mapping module uses a hybrid land classification system to collect resource information such as point of interest, road networks, forest areas or water bodies to enrich the base data in MAST and the availability of data to communities.

Continued Deployments, Continued Refinements

These improvements to MAST will enable users to capture and process land and resource rights more efficiently, although MAST still requires technical knowledge and advanced skills to set up and configure.

As the suite of tools is used in other geographies and for new purposes, LTS will incorporate new features and/or improve existing ones. And as an open source project, MAST will be continually improved upon and updated. LTS will maintain a core MAST platform and incorporate the best of these improvements.

LTS will continue to work across organizational boundaries to make MAST a truly global tool, and an empowering experience, to address land tenure insecurity.

Chengue Dances

Posted on April 17, 2018December 24, 2020 by Amrit Bhandari

A 2016 land restitution sentence brought little solace, but when government agencies began delivering on orders, despair turned to joy and inspired a party in this forgotten village.

Originally appeared on Exposure.

For the last seventeen years, residents of Chengue have found few reasons to dance. They fled their small village in the heart of the tropical hill country of northern Colombia after living through a bloody massacre perpetrated by a group of paramilitaries in 2001. That day, 60 uniformed killers ended the lives of 27 villagers with hammers, rocks, and machetes, and burned down dozens of houses. They told the survivors to never return, because from that point forward.

FIESTAS PATRONALES

In 2017, hundreds of Chengueros proved their attackers wrong and organized the first fiestas patronales in more than 20 years. On the same plaza where their fathers, brothers, uncles, and cousins were killed, residents danced to the local rhythms of porro and gaita music. The historic festivities—held in the first week of July—were colorful scenes of people dancing, women stirring pots of sancocho (turkey soup), poker-faced elders playing cards and drinking beer, excited children flipping marbles on the roads, and agile horseback riders on display.

The fiesta was the latest attempt by Chengue families to show one another that their former lives are not gone—rather, those two-day bacchanals that once made Chengue famous are back with the same pomp and pageantry of days past.

Chengue is located in the region known as Montes de María, where, following the demobilization of Colombia’s brutal paramilitary groups in 2008, the government began the slow process of land restitution and reparations for victims. A decade after the massacre, the government created the Land Restitution Unit (LRU), which has set out to recognize the land rights of victims, provide reparations, and allow victims to return to their homes and their lives. More than 10,000 people who survived the violence and were forced to leave their homes have since processed land restitution claims with the LRU.

By the time the LRU was created, the more than 300 Chengueros had nearly lost all hope for any justice related to the massacre, a tragedy that, in their eyes, seemed tethered to a corrupt and bureaucratic system. In 2006, a local judge determined that the police and the Colombian armed forces did not do their job to prevent the attack, awarding a settlement of more than US$1 million. Eventually, approximately 100 surviving families were paid around US$10,000 each, a paltry sum compared to the amount the court originally awarded. Then In 2008, the man who had ordered the massacre, Juancho Dique, was sentenced to just eight years in prison as part of the government’s paramilitary demobilization program; He was released in 2015.

Announcing the Release of LandPKS 3.0

Posted on April 16, 2018March 9, 2023 by Amrit Bhandari

The Land Potential-Knowledge System (LandPKS; landpotential.org) team is happy to announce that we have released a new and improved version of the LandPKS app. This new version is a result of months of hard work for everyone on our team, as well as helpful feedback from our users around the world. The LandPKS app helps users make more sustainable land management decisions by assisting users to collect geo-located data about their soils, vegetation and site characteristics; and returning back to users useful results and information about their site. It also provides free cloud storage and sharing, which means that you and others can access your data from any computer from our Data Portal at portal.landpotential.org. The LandPKS app does not require a data connection to be used, and users can upload their data when they next have connectivity. The LandPKS app includes two modules: LandInfo and LandCover. The LandInfo module walks a user through how to determine the texture of their soil, which is critical information for smallholder farmers and can help them plant crops suitable to their soil type. The LandCover module walks a user through how to collect vegetation cover data, important for vegetation monitoring and ecosystem restoration. The LandPKS app Version 3.0 is free and available now on the Google Play Store and iTunes Store.

What’s New?

Updated and improved user interface
Easy navigation between data input and report (results) screens
Graphical LandCover results including cover trends over time
Graphical LandInfo results with a table of texture and rock fragment volume by depth
Available Water Holding Capacity and Infiltration calculations for your soil
Upload data to the Data Portal at any time by hitting the “Synchronize Now?” button

Other Improved Features Include:

A simple, primarily graphics-based interface that minimizes language and literacy requirements
Embedded tutorials and explanations to guide the user through the app
Offline data collection
Unlimited access to stored data via our Data Portal at http://portal.landpotential.org

Learn more about the LandPKS app on the landpotential.org website. Training resources, including guides and online trainings, are also available on the website. The LandPKS app was developed by the LandPKS Team for the Land-Potential Knowledge System (LandPKs) with support from USAID and USDA-ARS. Please contact us at contact@landpotential.org with any questions, comments or feedback.