Land is the basic economic, social, political and cultural resource in Ethiopia. This makes land policy the real source of power for successive Ethiopian governments and the core of controvertial policy debate in the country. While the critics of the current state-owned land tenure system in Ethiopia argue for land privatization, the government maintains that privatization could lead to a nightmare senario of millions of landless smallholders. Thought the aim of this research is not to suggest how to make land policy, for that is an ideological matter, it has been believed that the link between land tenure issues and smallholder food security needs to be explored for better understanding and better measure as it affects the life of almost all Ethiopians. In addition to doing such exploration on the link, the study has also attempted to identfy the land tenure policy options of smallholder farmers in Ethiopia, where the finding was indifferent. The applicability of the land tenure policy options currently revolving on polically overloaded debate is also under ? in the eyes of the smallholder farmers.

Autorentext

Birhanu Megersa is a Lecturer at Ambo University, department of Sociology and Social Work. He has attended his Masters degree in Sociology at Addis Ababa University and graduated with very great distniction in 2009. Birhanu`s research interest area is Social Institutions (Land Tenure) and Sociology of Health and Illiness.