Oligarchs,megafarms and land reserves: understanding land grabbing in Russia

This paper seeks to unravel the political economy of large-scale land acquisitions in post-Soviet Russia. Russia falls neither in the normal category of ‘investor’ countries, nor in the category of ‘target’ countries. Russia has large ‘land reserves’, since in the 1990s much fertile land was abandoned. We analyse how particular Russia is with regards to the common argument in favour of land acquisitions, namely that land is available, unused or even unpopulated. With rapid economic growth, capital of Russian oligarchs in search of new frontiers, and the 2002 land code allowing land sales, land began to attract investment. Land grabbing expands at a rapid pace and in some cases, it results in dispossession and little or no compensation. This paper describes different land acquisitions strategies and argues that the share-based land rights distribution during the 1990s did not provide security of land tenure to rural dwellers. Emerging rural social movements try to form countervailing powers but with limited success. Rich land owners easily escape the implementation of new laws on controlling underutilized land, while there is a danger that they enable eviction with legal measures of rural dwellers. In this sense Russia appears to be a ‘normal’ case in the land grab debate.     

When rights collide: land grabbing,force and injustice in Uganda

The realisation of rights and enforcement of correlative duties through practice and politics legitimate the use of force against some, to protect and fulfil the rights of others. When a conflict occurs, whose rights and which rights should take priority require clarification. Land grabs represent a conflict not just between use and exchange values but also potentially between different types of rights – such as property rights and the right to the means of subsistence. In such cases, it seems that the dictum ‘between equal rights force decides’ seems to be particularly applicable. This paper explores recent experiences of displaced people in the Karamoja and Teso regions of North Eastern Uganda in order to examine this phenomenon. A socially inclusive and just epistemic perspective requires that we extend our gaze to take account of the local political dynamics and impacts on, and voices of, people who have been displaced and how their basic rights have been affected – ‘putting the last first’. The analysis suggests that the transition to formalised property regimes based on liberal conceptions of ‘rights’ represents a case where the language of rights is usurped to serve the interests of the powerful and privileged rather than challenging social injustice.     

The international political economy of the global land rush: A critical appraisal of trends,scale, geography and drivers

Over the past few years, agribusiness, investment funds and government agencies have been acquiring long-term rights over large areas of farmland in lower income countries. It is widely thought that private sector expectations of higher agricultural commodity prices and government concerns about longer-term food and energy security underpin much recent land acquisition for agricultural investments. These processes are expected to have lasting and far-reaching implications for world agriculture and for livelihoods and food security in recipient countries. This paper critically examines evidence of trends, scale, geography and drivers in the global land rush. While this analysis broadly corroborates some widespread assumptions, it also points to a more complex set of drivers that reflect fundamental shifts in economic and geopolitical relations linking sovereign states, global finance, and agribusiness through to local groups. Only a solid understanding of these fundamental drivers can help identify levers and pressure points for policy responses to address the challenges raised by large-scale land acquisitions.     

Challenges and methodological flaws in reporting the global land rush: observations from Tanzania

Since international awareness of a global rush for land has grown from 2008 onward, various databases and reports have attempted to provide an overview of the situation by compiling information on individual land deals. While providing such an overview is challenging owing to the dynamic and untransparent nature of the investments, flawed methods of using and citing data are aggravating that challenge and allowing dissemination of inaccurate information. The consequences are an unnecessarily blurred picture of the land deal situation and thus an inadequate basis for related political decisions or social actions and a misleading starting point for new research projects. In this article we demonstrate some of the flaws in the use of data and their consequences, with examples from fieldwork and literature on Tanzania. The paper illustrates and contributes to the evolving debate on appropriate research methodologies for studying the global land rush.     

Marginal lands: the role of remote sensing in constructing landscapes for agrofuel development

With the growth of the biofuel complex, the concept of ‘marginal land’ has emerged as a term commonly associated with the promotion of agrofuels. Remote sensing and other data are used to globally characterize land as marginal based on predominantly biophysical features that render it ‘non-competitive’ for the purpose of commercial food agriculture. This paper explores the limitations of current geospatial technologies in determining whether marginal land is appropriate for bioenergy crops given that (i) people often have intentions behind land use that are not reflected in most routinely collected remote sensing data and (ii) a remote (and spatio-temporally static) characterization of marginality is unable to capture the shifting character of what constitutes marginality in an economic sense and is therefore a non-sequitur for guiding land use decisions on the ground. This paper also explores the latent values embedded in the ontology of a macro-scale ‘marginal land’ land cover class and advances the notion that ‘marginal land’ as an artificial spatial construct serves to re-frame land in a way that neglects socio-ecological processes in order to re-frame it in support of principles based in resource productivism.     

Globalisation and the foreignisation of space: seven processes driving the current global land grab

The current global land grab is causing radical changes in the use and ownership of land. The main process driving the land grab, or ‘foreignisation of space’, as highlighted in the media and the emerging literature is the production of food and biofuel for export in the aftermath of recent food and energy crises. However, there are several other processes driving the land rush. In this article I argue that an analytical framework that focuses on only one or two processes that drive the global land grab offers a narrow perspective on this complex process. It will be unable to take into account the full range and extent of agrarian and social changes that occur in light of the land grab and their strategic implications for poor people's livelihoods. An important starting point is to identify the broad processes driving the current land rush, and trace their structural and institutional origins. To do so, I identify and examine seven factors that are giving rise to radical changes in landownership and land use in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Finally, ‘codes of conduct’ as proposed by several quarters in the context of global land grab are unlikely to work in favour of the poor.     

The new enclosures: critical perspectives on corporate land deals

The contributions to this collection use the tools of agrarian political economy to explore the rapid growth and complex dynamics of large-scale land deals in recent years, with a special focus on the implications of big land deals for property and labour regimes, labour processes and structures of accumulation. The first part of this introductory essay examines the implications of this agrarian political economy perspective. First we explore the continuities and contrasts between historical and contemporary land grabs, before examining the core underlying debate around large- versus small-scale farming futures. Next, we unpack the diverse contexts and causes of land grabbing today, highlighting six overlapping mechanisms. The following section turns to assessing the crisis narratives that frame the justifications for land deals, and the flaws in the argument around there being excess, empty or idle land available. Next the paper turns to an examination of the impacts of land deals, and the processes of inclusion and exclusion at play, before looking at patterns of resistance and constructions of alternatives. The final section introduces the papers in the collection.     

Looking back to see forward: the legal niceties of land theft in land rushes

This paper aims to make a modest contribution to an overdue need to locate the current land rush in its historical context, less as a new phenomenon than as a surge in the continuing capture of ordinary people's rights and assets by capital-led and class-creating social transformation. It aims to do so by looking back to earlier land rushes, and particularly to those which have bearing upon sub-Saharan Africa, the site of most large-scale involuntary land loss today. In particular, the paper focuses upon a central tool of land rushes, property law. The core argument made is that land rushes past and present have relied upon legal manipulations which deny that local indigenous (‘customary’) tenures deliver property rights, thereby legalizing the theft of the lands of the poor or subject peoples. Even prior to capitalist transformation this feudal-derived machination was an instrument of aligned class privilege and power, later elaborated to justify mass land and resource capture through colonialism. Now it is routinely embedded in the legal canons of elite-aligned agrarian governance as the means of retaining control over the land resources which rural communities presume are their own.     

The moving frontiers of genetically modified soy production: shifts in land control in the Argentinian Chaco

This article attempts to understand how control over land (power in practice) is built, achieved and contested in the context of land transfers involving pressures over possession rights in Santiago del Estero in northern Argentina. Here new forms of land control – due to expansion of the speculative, soy and cattle frontiers – are changing and involve new relationships while using novel mechanisms to gain and maintain control. The article adopts the notion of shifting ‘frontiers of land control’ as an analytical lens, following Lund and Peluso (2011). We can say that the process of soy and cattle expansion into the new frontiers happens through a group of different mechanisms which range from voluntary purchase to violent evictions. As shifts in land control in the frontier involve pressures on possession rights, we observe different mechanisms of control, mainly in the direction of dispossession and enclosure. The paper adds to the debate on ‘land grabbing’ by (a) showing how domestic investors operate to advance industrial agriculture and (b) showing how this frontier advances in a context of (rather unsecured) possession rights where rights are being shifted through transfers (sales, leases, evictions) and compensation mechanisms as well as conflict and judicial procedures.     

The gender implications of large-scale land deals

This article introduces a discussion of gender dimensions into the growing debate on large-scale land deals. It addresses the current information gap on the differential gender effects of large-scale land deals through (1) an overview of the phases of large-scale land deals and discussion of related effects on rural men and women based on new literature on large-scale land deals and past literature on the gender effects of commercialization and contract farming; (2) a presentation of further evidence using several case studies on the gender effects of large-scale deals; and (3) a conclusion that looks at knowledge gaps and areas for further research as well as broad recommendations for gender equitable large-scale land deals.     

Enclosing the global commons: the convention on biological diversity and green grabbing

‘Green grabs,’ or the expropriation of land or resources for environmental purposes, constitute an important component of the current global land grab explosion. We argue that international environmental institutions are increasingly cultivating the terrain for green grabbing. As sites that circulate and sanction forms of knowledge, establish regulatory devices and programmatic targets, and align and articulate actors with these mechanisms, they structure emergent green market opportunities and practices. Drawing on the idea of primitive accumulation as a continual process, we examine the 10^th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity as one such institution.     

Green pretexts: Ecotourism,neoliberal conservation and land grabbing in Tayrona National Natural Park,Colombia

While conflict-related dynamics are recognized as causes of land grabbing in Colombia, violent processes of exclusion and expropriation behind ‘greener’ projects are often seen as disconnected from them. The case of ecotourism in Tayrona National Natural Park makes it possible to explore the geographies of violence that sustain tourism in the area and their role in shaping everyday resource politics. This paper shows how green pretexts of paradisiacal spots in need of protection have contributed to privatization and dispossession. Furthermore, it details how land-grabbing dynamics have been enabled by processes of sociospatial demarcation that produce not-green-enough subjects as bodies-out-of-place.     

Armed conflict,land grabs and primitive accumulation in Colombia: micro processes,macro trends and the puzzles in between

Armed conflict is widely believed to disrupt agricultural production and ‘reverse’ development, but it may also involve the violent transformation of rural economies from subsistence to commercial agriculture. The case of Las Pavas, an estate in northern Colombia, provides further evidence that armed conflict created opportunities for violent land grabs and the expansion of commercial agriculture in Colombia. However, aggregate data suggest that primitive accumulation may be only part of the story behind the massive scale of forced displacement and dispossession. A research strategy that accounts for the diversity of subnational contexts, processes and outcomes is needed.     

The land question: special economic zones and the political economy of dispossession in India

Special Economic Zones (SEZs) have become the epicenters of ‘land wars’ across India, with farmers resisting the state's forcible transfer of their land to capitalists. Based on 18 months of research focused on an SEZ in Rajasthan, this paper illuminates the role of ‘accumulation by dispossession’ (ABD) in Indian capitalism today and its consequences for rural India. It argues that the existing theories of land grabs do not adequately explain why dispossession becomes necessary to accumulation at particular times and places, and seeks to reconstruct Harvey's theory of ABD to adequately account for it. It then shows the specific kind of rentier- and IT-driven accumulation that dispossession is making possible in SEZs and the non–labor-absorbing, real-estate–driven agrarian transformation this generates in the surrounding countryside. Land speculation amplifies class and caste inequalities in novel ways, marginalizes women and creates an involutionary dynamic of agrarian change that is ultimately impoverishing for the rural poor. Given the minimal benefits for rural India in this model of development, farmer resistance to land dispossession is likely to continue and pose the most serious obstacle to capitalist growth in India. The agrarian questions of labor and capital are, consequently, now rejoined in ‘the land question.’     

The men in the middle: a missing dimension in global land deals

Middlemen are largely absent from the literature and policymaking on land deals. Based on qualitative evidence from India, this paper shows a highly organised field of aggregators, brokers, touts, musclemen and others permeating the land economy. Biographical accounts provide glimpses of everyday work, career and aspirations. A high-definition narrative of middlemen as middlemen allows a shift away from instrumental analyses of bridges in global capitalist accumulation. Even as they reproduce larger structures, middlemen can be rule-makers who personalise, localise and actively shape the land economy. Global debates cannot afford to ignore these hitherto missing dimensions in land deals.     

Land grabbing and the making of an authoritarian populist regime in Hungary

ABSTRACT

How do authoritarian populist regimes emerge within the European Union in the twenty-first century? In Hungary, land grabbing by oligarchs have been one of the pillars maintaining Prime Minister Orbán’s regime. The phenomenon remains out of the public purview and meets little resistance as the regime-controlled media keeps Hungarians ‘distracted’ with ‘dangers’ inflicted by the ‘enemies of the Hungarian people’ such as refugees and the European Union. The Hungarian case calls for scholarly-activist attention to how authoritarian populism is maintained by, and affects rural areas, as well as how emancipation can be envisaged in such a context.     

Trajectories of land acquisition and enclosure: development schemes,virtual land grabs,and green acquisitions in Indonesia's Outer Islands

While the size and speculative nature of land transactions in the wake of energy, food and climate crises have surprised observers, the reasons for partial implementation of many land developments remain largely unexamined. This contribution investigates trajectories of land acquisition and enclosure by analyzing four acquisition processes in Indonesia – those associated with rice, oil palm, Jatropha and carbon sequestration – considering their implications for comparative studies elsewhere. The paper finds that current patterns of land usechange represent a continuation of ongoing land transformation processes. Itdescribes the logic leading to partial realization of large-scale schemes. Highlighting the importance of interactions between formal and vernacular rural land development processes, the essay concludes that many large-scale schemes are better understood as virtual land acquisitions.     

Power to make land dispossession acceptable: a policy discourse analysis of the Merauke Integrated Food and Energy Estate (MIFEE), Papua,Indonesia

The Merauke Integrated Food and Energy Estate (MIFEE) in Papua, Indonesia, is a state-led mega-project to transform local agriculture through large-scale corporate investment in food crops and biofuels for foreign markets. The project has led to extensive land dispossession, accompanied by devastating social and ecological impacts. This contribution analyzes how discourse regarding food and energy crises has been employed to release land from customary tenure to a coalition of state, corporate and local elite actors. The interests of these actors have converged on the state-led mega-project to transform local agriculture through large-scale corporate investment in food crops and biofuels in the name of national food security.     

The global farms race: land grabs,agricultural investment,and the scramble for food security

In a widely read paper, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, World Bank and others propose systematic property rights formalization as a key step in addressing the problems of irresponsible agricultural investment. This paper examines the case of Cambodia, one of a number of countries where systematic land titling and large-scale land concessions have proceeded in parallel in recent years. Cambodia's experience exemplifies the challenges of the ‘formalization fix’ – the proposition that property formalization constitutes a preferable front-line defense against land grabbing – and highlights formalization's uneven geography as an issue that has yet to generate adequate discussion internationally. Three dimensions of Cambodia's less-than-successful formalization fix efforts stand out: (1) the spatial separation of systematic land titling and agribusiness concessions that emerged during the 2000s and has only recently begun to be addressed; (2) the deployment of property formalization as a means of land grabbing, especially when applied selectively and unevenly; and (3) the political arena of efforts to legitimize ‘state land’. The paper questions the formalization fix as a policy solution, and argues for both greater spatial transparency in property formalization efforts throughout the global South, and greater attention to the problem of unmapped state land in general.     

Rubber plantations in the Northwest: rethinking the concept of land grabs in Vietnam

At first glance, rubber plantations in the Northwest of Vietnam do not appear so different from ‘large-scale land acquisition’, which is quite common in the Global South. However, when we closely examine how many processes in plantations work, we can see that there are many different processes at work besides those that take place in other countries where transnational or domestic corporations purchase or lease land for growing food, fibre or fuel crops. Rubber plantations have been strongly supported by the government and promoted as a way to industrialize and modernize the uplands, while claiming to narrow the economic gap between the uplands and lowlands. Drawing on fieldwork in two villages in Son La, and on a review of policy papers and documents, this paper identifies the political mechanisms and policies that have emerged as critical factors enabling the dispossession of land for the development of a market economy with a socialist orientation in Vietnam. The paper seeks to understand how institutional control over land and over the discussion of political subjects produces control. It argues that land grabs for rubber plantations in Northwest Vietnam are moves to strengthen state sovereignty. This land seizure has indeed created a new way of land governance that hitherto did not exist in Vietnam.