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Land Grabbing

What rural dwellers in the Global South experience as land grabbing, tends to be seen in the Global North as ‘agricultural investment’. The World Bank has been at the forefront of a drive to legitimate these investments, convening to win support for a code of conduct based on Responsible Agricultural Investment (RAI) principles. Many key civil society groups reject the proposal for a code of conduct, objecting to the top-down process by which it was formulated and arguing that it was more likely to legitimate than prevent land grabbing. Instead, these groups stood behind the FAO’s Voluntary Guidelines for Responsible Land Investment, which had been under development since the International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development in 2009 and had proved a much more inclusive process.
Call for papers: Landgrabbing II
March 2012

LDPI is organizing a second workshop on ‘Global Land Grabbing’ in October 2012 in New York. Among the keynote speakers is new Director-General of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization José Graziano da Silva. You are invited to send in papers that offer rigorous and innovative analysis.

The War on Colombia’s Poor
January 2012
Ross Eventon

The EU's proposed free trade agreement with Colombia will worsen the already serious human rights violations in the country, as its drive to access to cheap raw materials for European corporations means forcing local people off their land.

Global Land Grabbing and Trajectories of Agrarian Change: A Preliminary Analysis
December 2011
Jennifer Franco
Jun Borras

The politics of change in land use and in property relations linked to cases of land grabbing are not well understood, and yet are crucial to a deeper understanding of the phenomenon; this paper explores these topics, providing a preliminary analysis.

Land grabbing in Latin America and the Caribbean in broader international perspectives
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December 2011
Jun Borras
Jennifer Franco
 Cristobal Kay, Max Spoor

A critical re-assessment of a UN FAO study on land grabbing finds that a too-narrow definition has obscured evidence of land grabbing on a wider geographical scale than previously thought; this research includes new evidence of cases in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Land, conflict and the challenge of pro-poor peace-building
October 2011
Jennifer Franco
Jun Borras

There is a lot of contention over approaches to land reform policy, in terms of how to involve the state, the market and communities; but what matters most for a socio-economically and politically sustainable solution, is that the policy is genuinely 'pro-poor'.

Land tenure and International Investments in agriculture
August 2011
Jun Borras

In the midst of a raging famine in the Horn of Africa and continuing expansion of land grabbing across the Global South, a new and critical report has been released by the High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition, of the Committee on World Food Security.

Conflict, poverty and marginalisation
July 2011
Amira Armenta

Since the 1990s, the Curvaradó and Jiguamiandó communities have specifically been the target of violence and subsequent displacement.

Meeting the challenge of feeding the world and cooling the Earth
July 2011
Jun Borras

Two papers analysing the recent experience of Latin America, and Cuba in particular, support arguments that a shift from industrial-large scale farming to small-scale farming can bring environmental, economic and political benefits.

The Politics of Agrofuels and Mega-land and Water deals
June 2011
David Fig
Jun Borras
 Sofía Monsalve Suárez

The Procana Bioethanol project in Mozambique is a clear example of how agrofuel investments contribute rather than mitigate climate change, and are often accompanied by dispossession and impoverishment caused by landgrabbing.

Why so-called "Responsible Agricultural Investment" must be stopped
April 2011

Wealthy interests are pushing to normalise the concept of "responsible agricultural investment" but this corporate lingo masks the mass appropriation of land at the cost of local inhabitants (often forcibly removed), the destruction of livelihoods and the environment.

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