Governing the Global Land Grab
Competing political tendencies
The rise of flex crops—crops with multiple uses across food, feed, fuel and industrial complexes—has far-reaching implications for global land governance.
Reports of land grabbing from various parts of the world continue to come in: land grabbing for agriculture to produce food, feed, biofuels and other industrial products; “green grabbing” or land grabbing for environmental ends; and water grabbing for the irrigation of large-scale monocultures, hydroelectricity and other corporate uses. Understanding contemporary land grabs requires grasping the changing context in which they occur: the emergence of “flex crops”, the rise of BRICS and middle-income countries, and the revalued role of nation-states. This brief provides crucial context for understanding land grabbing and discusses three political tendencies in global land governance. In order for transnational movements to carry out more effective advocacy campaigns against land grabbing and influence global governance, they should understand these competing tendencies, and reassess and adjust their political framework.
This brief is the first in the Land & Sovereignty in the Americas series, co-published by Food First and the Transnational Institute.
About the series:
The Land & Sovereignty in the Americas series pulls together research and analysis from activists and scholars working to understand and halt the alarming trend in "land grabbing"-from rural Brazil and Central America to US cities like Oakland and Detroit- and to support rural and urban communities in their efforts to protect their lands as the basis for self-determination, food justice and food sovereignty.
The series--which includes short issue briefs and books--is a project of the Land & Sovereignty in the Americas (LSA) activist-researcher collective, coordinated by Food First.
For media inquiries about this series, or to arrange an interview with an author, please contact land@foodfirst.org or call +1 510 654-4400, ext. 234.
About the authors
Jennifer Franco
Jennifer Franco is a researcher working on land and rural politics issues. After receiving a PhD in politics in 1997 in the US, she began working with the Philippine solidarity group in the Netherlands, and with local peasant organizations, rural community organizing and human rights groups, and research outfits in the Philippines in two regions faced with extreme landlord resistance to redistributive agrarian reform. She began working with TNI in the mid-2000s, on several projects on various topics involving local peasant movement and rural reform activists, human rights activists, and activist researchers from various countries and regions. In 2010 she joined the College of Humanities and Development (COHD) at the China Agricultural University in Beijing as an adjunct faculty and travels there twice a year to give seminars and work with junior faculty and MA and PhD students. She has lived in the US, Philippines, Canada and the Netherlands.
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).
Recent publications from Agrarian Justice
Bittersweet HarvestA European Union (EU) trade initiative intended to reduce poverty in the world’s poorest countries has driven thousands of Cambodian farming families into destitution and led to serious human rights violations. This report assesses the human rights impacts of the EU’s ‘Everything But Arms’ (EBA) trade scheme in Cambodia. |
The Sugarcane Industry and the global economic crisisAn examination of ethanol production in Brazil, highlighting the role of financial capital, the territorial expansion of agribusiness and the impacts on labour relations and indigenous peoples and peasant farmers. |
A foreseeable disasterWhy despite ten years of accumulating evidence on the social and environmental cost of agrofuels, does the European Commission persist with its failed policies? An analysis of the EU's bioeconomy vision, how it is fuelling land grabs in Africa, the agrofuels lobby that drives policy, and the alternative visions for energy that are being ignored. |
UPDATE: Land concentration, land grabbing and people’s struggles in EuropeLand issues and 'land grabs' are mostly associated with the global South, however 13 country studies in this updated landmark report reveal an accelerating grab and concentration of land across Europe. |
