How not to think of land-grabbing: three critiques of large-scale investments in farmland
- 24 March 2011
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Taylor & Francis Ltd in The Journal of Peasant Studies
- Vol. 38 (2), 249-279
- https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2011.559008
Abstract
Large-scale investments in farmland have been criticized, chiefly, because of questions about the capacity of the countries targeted by these land deals to effectively manage these investments in order to ensure that they contribute to rural development and poverty alleviation. This article questions the idea that this is the only or even the main problem raised by such investments. If weak governance were the only problem, then appropriate regulation—and incentives to manage such investments correctly—would indeed be a solution. However the real concern behind the development of large-scale investments in farmland is that giving land away to investors, having better access to capital to ‘develop’, implies huge opportunity costs, as it will result in a type of farming that will have much less powerful poverty-reducing impacts, than if access to land and water were improved for the local farming communities; that it directs agriculture towards crops for export markets, increasing the vulnerability to price shocks of the target countries; and that even where titling schemes seek to protect land users from eviction, it accelerates the development of a market for land rights with potentially destructive effects on the livelihoods, both of the current land users that will face increased commercial pressure on land, and of groups depending on the commons—grazing and fishing grounds, and forests. The article maps these various levels of critiques. It concludes that we need to do more than impose a discipline on land-grabbing: we need a real alternative to this kind of investment in land.Keywords
This publication has 26 references indexed in Scilit:
- Global land use change, economic globalization, and the looming land scarcityProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2011
- Contemporary Discourses and Contestations around Pro‐Poor Land Policies and Land GovernanceJournal of Agrarian Change, 2009
- The2008 World Development Reportand the political economy of Southeast Asian agricultureThe Journal of Peasant Studies, 2009
- Land tenure, land law and development: some thoughts on recent debatesThe Journal of Peasant Studies, 2009
- Eliminating market distortions, perpetuating rural inequality: an evaluation of market-assisted land reform in GuatemalaThird World Quarterly, 2007
- De Soto and land relations in rural Africa: breathing life into dead theories about property rightsThird World Quarterly, 2007
- Poverty and the Distribution of LandJournal of Agrarian Change, 2002
- Review of de Soto's The Mystery of CapitalJournal of Economic Literature, 2001
- The Economic Effects of Land Registration on Smallholder Farms in Kenya: Evidence from Nyeri and Kakamega DistrictsLand Economics, 1998
- The Problem of Social CostThe Journal of Law and Economics, 1960