For nearly thirty years, the question of land reform has occupied Ukrainians. The current stalemate on land policy seems unbreakable. This article considers how the ‘land question’ has developed over the past three decades, where we stand today, and what we can expect in the future.

Can a president institute radical popular change alongside structural inequality and a militarized elite? The Brazilian case suggests that a progressive political party requires more social movement mobilization, not less.

Sacrifice zones – abandoned, economically shattered places – are spreading in historically white rural areas and small towns across the United States. Rural decline fosters regressive authoritarian politics.

Religion, gender dynamics, place and cultural identity – all inform rising authoritarian populism in rural areas, alongside class interests and inequalities. Mobilising alternatives to capture by regressive political forces is not straightforward.

'Climate smart agriculture' has become the buzz phrase at high level international policy discussions.  Will it be the latest manifestation of greenwashing of  unsustainable industrial agriculture or the basis for developing real, grassroots-led, resilient food systems?

In this article, Ian Scoones discusses the implications and challenges for how we think about agrarian issues in the context of authoritarian populism.

ERPI is starting a Working Paper series, supported by a limited number of small grants, to allow for the writing up of original research. In parallel they are inviting short contributions in a variety of media that help to map out responses and alternatives. The Initiative will hold a major international conference, bringing this work together, with the aim of thinking together about new directions, both for academic research and practical action.

A call for papers and proposals for workshops as part of the annual colloquium on food and agriculture to be held in 2017 April 24th / 26th in Basque Country. 

The release of the draft policy, part of a process towards enacting a new National Land Law and “harmonising” existing legislation, was greeted with objections and criticism from farmers’ organisations and ethnic minority groups throughout the country.

On World Fisheries Day, fisher peoples and their allies are taking to the streets and beaches to fight against ocean grabbing in all its forms - including Marine Protected Areas imposed without consultation that rob and criminalise local communities and benefit only privileged outsiders.

Much of agricultural policy is rooted in a view that considers small farms as inefficient. Efficiency and productivity in agriculture, it is argued, can only be delivered by consolidating land, using advanced technology, investing in large-scale irrigation and massive fertilization, and encouraging monoculture in big-scale farms.

Governments must shift subsidies and research funding from agro-industrial monoculture to small farmers using 'agroecological' methods, according to Hilal Elver,  UN's Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food. Her call coincides with a new agroecology initiative within the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation.

A special issue of the Canadian Journal of Development Studies introducing a previously under-explored geographic region into the emerging land grab literature. Available for free till end of May.

Land grabs do not always play out the way the investors and their government backers expect, and people are mobilising to resist them.

Want to hit the ground running on the issues of biofuels, land rights in Africa and the global land grab? Here are some excellent reading suggestions. 

Social movement representatives are in Rome this week for the final UN negotiations to adopt voluntary guidelines that would regulate the use and possession of land and other natural resources.