Land Tenure System and Availability of Land

Land unavailability remains one problem facing agricultural practice in my community. This is occasioned by Land Tenure System practised in the area.
Land tenure is the system of land ownership by individual and community either for temporary or permanent use. In Nigeria, rights to use of land can be acquired through community, individual or Act of parliament. There is this Land Degree Act of 1978 saying that every land in Nigeria belongs to government. Nevertheless, individuals and communities still claim ownership over the land and so lease, rent or sell the land, while government give certificate of occupancy to land users, mostly in urban centres.
The various types of land tenure systems include Tenant at Government Will. Others are Community, Individual, Inheritance, Leasehold, Gift, Rent and Freehold tenure systems. All except Tenant at Government Will and Community Tenure System are being practised in my community.
For the ASACEI project we are, so far, able to acquire land by Leasehold and Renting.
In Leasehold system the lessee pays a refundable sum of money to the lessor (Land lord), to use the land until the lessor refunds the money to the lessee. This does not give room for land development and permanent cropping as the lessor can get back the land anytime he likes. Some lessors would even get it back just to frustrate your progress. In the case of Rent Tenure, you pay to use the land for only one planting season of annual crops. As in the case of Leasehold you cannot plan well or develop the land. Purchase or Freehold Tenure is the best option for our ASACEI project, but land is appreciating in Nigeria so much that to buy one Hectare of land you need up to thirty thousand US Dollars. For one to get one hectare of land at a stretch in my community is impossible due to land fragmentation as every farmland is an inheritance from past generations. Continuous fragmentation of land to share to the heirs of the dead is reducing the size of these plots of land to sizes too small for large scale farming.
These problems cannot throw us out of business, as we are going to concentrate on high yielding annual and biennial crops come next planting season using the fragmented land we leased or rented.
Planting of Pineapple has commenced. Many farmers prefer Pineapple production nowadays because most of our land that were not good for other crops are discovered to be good for Pineapple. Hence Pineapple suckers sell ten to twenty Naira each. We start with what we can afford to multiply to the budgeted number. Demand for Pineapple is expected to increase and profit maximised as a Cooperative Society in the village is exploring the possibility of introducing dried pineapple chips into the market. This is going to be entirely new to our local and national markets. Before now Pineapple was produced mainly for eating as fresh fruits.