Pembinaan sumberdaya alam merupakan salah satu faktor penting dalam pembinaan wilayah transmigrasi. Wilayah pemukiman transmigrasi yang sebagian besar berasal dari hutan primer memerlukan penanganan khusus dan teliti dalam masalah pemanfaatan lahannya. Mata pencaharian pokok transmigran umumnya sebagai petani, oleh karena itu usahatani yang dilakukan di awal masa penempatan merupakan usahatani tanaman pangan semusim. Untuk keperluan penunjang lainnya para transmigran berorientasi pada pemanfaatan hutan sekelilingnya. Dengan pengelolaan yang baik pola usahatani kehutanan dapat bertindak sebagai daerah penyangga bagi hutan-hutan sekitarnya dan perbaikan kondisi kapasitas lahan itu sendiri. Keterpaduan usaha pengelolaan harus ditunjang oleh landasan ilmiah yang mantap khususnya bagi wilayah-wilayah agro ekosistem yang khas.

Optimal allocation of available water in a middle Himalayan watershed by a linear programming model for maximizing production from crops and livestock, after meeting the present and future demands of human and environmental flows, was analyzed. Present and future water availability under different environmental scenarios at various locations in the watershed was considered. Rice Equivalent Production from the watershed was found to improve by 207% (to 919 tonnes) and Rice Equivalent Yield by 58% (to 4427 kg ha⁻¹) through optimal allocation of available water resource. Occurrence of drought of 60% intensity would limit production to 737 tonnes. Environmental degradation by 2025 would though reduce production marginally, the surplus water available within the watershed would, however, decrease significantly during January to March. Future competition for water would adversely affect economy of the watershed and the region. The government should, therefore, undertake water resource development programmes after making a proper inventory of available resources at watershed level by analyzing the current and future supply and demand scenarios.

Soil and water conservation technologies are critical in reducing drought and soil erosion risks and increasing crop yields and incomes. Yet, there is limited empirical evidence on the extent and impacts of adopting soil and water conservation technologies in Tanzania. The study’s objective is to evaluate the adoption (as well as the duration of adoption) and the impacts of soil and water conservation technologies on income and food security in Tanzania. The study employs a control function approach and the instrumental variable quantile treatment effects model to survey data from 575 households to estimate the average and distributional impacts of adoption. The results show that the adoption and duration of adopting soil and water conservation technologies had significant and positive effects on the total value of crop production and household income. Moreover, we find that the adoption and its duration had a significant and positive impact on the food security indicator—household dietary diversity. The results from the instrumental variable quantile treatment effects model also show that the impacts of adopting soil and water conservation technologies on the outcome variables are positive and significant, although they vary significantly across the income and food security distributions. The results indicate that even though adoption benefits households in both the lower and upper quantiles of the income and food security distributions, the marginal impacts of adoption are generally more significant for the households in the upper quantiles. The paper concludes by discussing the policy options for increasing and sustaining the adoption and impacts of soil and water conservation technologies in Tanzania.