Introduction

There are many poor people in the world. Poverty is a persistent problem. Poor people often live in so-called less developed countries and the most poor of these live in rural areas of those countries. Mass media regularly remind the people that these people live with continuous food shortages. Consulting activities in economics, geodesy, and law carried out mainly in poorer rural areas in the world made one aware of such food insecurity as daily reality, not as a passing news item. The common expectation in the food insecure countries was that a change in land tenure would lead to higher food production, and thus to less food insecurity, a textbook, desktop-based, food insecurity reduction method. A divergence quickly grows between Western textbook food insecurity alleviation or theoretical economic development paradigms and political interests, practical pressures, and constraints 'on site.' This chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.