The Twenty-first Century Agricultural Land Rush - The Oxford Topic of Food, Politics, and Society - page 822

A Political Economy Approach
Given the nascent state of knowledge in this area, the purpose of this chapter is to situ-
ate the global land grab in its historical context and to explore some of the contours of
the land grab phenomenon, especially in the dimension of the global political economy.
Duetotheintimateinterconnectionsamongvariousactorsandprocesses—foreignand
domestic capital, investment and food security land grabbing, agrofuel and agri-food
production—BorrasandFranco(2010b)advocatefocusingonthe“natureandterms
of agrarian change” in the context of the “emerging global agro food-energy complex,”
as opposed to focusing on the transnational character or nationality of home and host
countriesforlanddeals(2010b,21).BorrasandFranco'sapproachisusefulinitsattention
to systemic developments in the global economy that drive land acquisitions through a
variety of different concrete processes, but it elides the political geography of agrarian
change. The identities of home and host country actors are key to the global structures
of power and circuits of capital through which an “agro food-energy complex” is emerg-
ing. Consequently, the empirical and theoretical issues associated with land grabbing as
seen from the standpoint of the global political economy, which comprehends the sym-
biotic relations of power and wealth, are integral to a complete understanding of agrar-
ian change. This chapter therefore seeks to present a political economy approach to land
grabbingsensitivetothe(trans)nationalidentitiesoftheactorsinvolved.5
The chapter begins by exploring what is “new” about the twenty-first century land
rush. The first section describes the magnitude of the phenomenon, and the following
section situates it in a historical context of political-economic change and crisis. The
basic contention is that in response to the perceived instability of the global political
economy, land grabbing represents an effort to reconstruct a stable political-economic
order, both on the part of investment capital seeking to relaunch accumulation in the
wake of the financial crisis and on the part of political actors and companies seeking to
secure stable supplies of food and energy necessary for economic and social function-
ing. The next sections look at land grab investors and hosts, considering private sector
and state investors followed by an examination of host countries. These sections pres-
ent an analytical framework for understanding the geography of the land grab through
the interrelated variables of land availability, the structural position of a country in the
globaleconomy,andacountry'sdomesticinstitutionalstructure.Finally,asectionis
devoted to sketching the main theoretical positions in the debate over land deals, and
to exploring their linkages to different political positions on what is to be done with
regard to large-scale land transactions. The conclusion offers a general view through
a political economy lens on the theoretical and practical implications of the land grab
phenomenon.