TNI -Sponsored land grabbing side event at the FAO Food Security World Committee session, Rome 2010

Competing Views and Strategies on Global Land Grabbing

3 November 2010
Jun Borras
Lucia Goldfarb
Twitter Facebook Forward Print HTML

Leading academics discuss key issues regarding 'the global land grab' and how this is linked critically to official policies, like 'Responsible Agricultural Investment' (RAI), considering how small farmers are being dispossessed and incorporated into the agro-food-feed-fuel complex.

A number of experts - Philip McMichael and Wendy Wolford (Cornell University), Ian Scoones (University of Sussex), Oane Visser (Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen), Ben White (International Institute of Social Studies, the Hague), Ruth Hall (Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies) joined the TNI-sponsored side event to the Rome summit. Below you can download their notes and presentations from the event.

TNI-Sponsored side event: Competing Views and Strategies on Global Land Grabbing, Event Programme (download .pdf)

 

Download the notes / presentations from our speakers at the event:

Ben White
"Who will own the countryside? Corporate land deals and the future of farming" (download .pdf)
"Who will own the countryside? Land grabbing and the future of farming in Southeast Asia" (download powerpoint presentation, .ppt)

Ruth Hall
"Land grabbing in Africa: available evidence on its scale and character and insights of relevance to policy makers" (download presentation .pdf)

Philip McMichael
"Agrofood-feed-fuel complex as context and cause of land grabbing" (download .pdf)
"Agrofood-feed-fuel complex and the land grab" (download powerpoint presentation, .ppt)

 

Other documents from the session:

FAO-VG Principles (English, download .pdf); Español (.pdf); Français (.pdf)

Why We Oppose the Principles for Responsible Agricultural Investment (RAI, download .pdf); Español (.pdf); Français (.pdf)

About the authors

Jun Borras

Saturnino 'Jun' M Borras Jr. is a political activist and academic who has been deeply involved in rural social movements in the Philippines and internationally since the early 1980s. Borras was part of the core organising team that established the international peasant movement La Via Campesina and has written extensively on land issues and agrarian movements. Jun is also Adjunct Professor, COHD at China Agricultural University, Beijing; a Fellow for Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy in California and Coordinator for Initiatives in Critical Agrarian Studies (ICAS).

Lucia Goldfarb

Lucia Goldfarb received an MA in Development Studies with a minor in Environment and Development from the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague in 2006. In 2007-2008 she joined TNI as a Next Generation Scholar. Formerly co-coordinator of the CREPE-TNI agrofuels project, Goldfarb regularly consults with TNI's Agrarian Justice team, is a founding member of the Dutch section of the Foodfirst Information and Action Network (FIAN-Netherlands) where she co-authored a report on agrofuels in Brazil in 2008, and is currently a PhD Researcher in International Development Studies at the University of Utrecht.

Recent publications from Agrarian Justice

A Landmark Victory for Justice: Biowatch’s Battle with the South African State and Monsanto

Published by  Biowatch South Africa, this is a book about access to information, the right to know, and action in the public’s interest – a must-read for anyone campaigning for environmental or social justice.

The right to say no

As European Union (EU) member states consider the implications of environmentally risky shale gas development (fracking), negotiations are underway for a controversial EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) which would grant investors the right to challenge governments’ decision to ban and regulate fracking.

Land concentration, land grabbing and people’s struggles in Europe

Land grabbing is widely assumed to be happening only in the global South, but an in-depth analysis by a team of researchers shows that land grabbing is also expanding into Europe.

Sons and Daughters of the Earth

In the face of violent dispossession and incorporation into an exploitative labor regime, indigenous peasant families in northern Guatemala are struggling to access land and defend their resources as the basis of their collective identity.