The Twenty-first Century Agricultural Land Rush - The Oxford Topic of Food, Politics, and Society - page 826

exposing the instability of the global food system and heralding a new era of substan-
tially higher and more volatile food prices.12 Changing perceptions of structural condi-
tionsledactorstoupdatetheirpreferencesregardingtheorganizationofagricultural
production and trade, leading to a new wave of foreign land acquisition that brought
together investors seeking profits and governments seeking secure food and energy sup-
plies. The land rush was therefore triggered by the food crisis as one proximate cause,
but more generally it is indicative of the punctuated evolution of actor perceptions of the
changing structure of the political economy.13Insum,asaresponsetoperceivedinsta-
bility, the land grab is an effort to reconstruct a stable political-economic order, both
onthepartofinvestmentcapitalseekingtorenewaccumulationintheatermathofthe
inancialcrisis,andonthepartofpoliticalactorsandcompaniesseekingtostabilizethe
provisioning of food and energy necessary for economic and social functioning.
What is the geography of these land transactions? Who are the investors, and who
are the host countries? The spatial configuration of land grabbing can be conceived
as a function of the dynamic interaction between first-order or “local” phenomena,
third-order or “systemic” phenomena, and second-order or “state-level” phenomena
that mediate between the global system and the local context. At the local level, bio-
physical and domestic sociopolitical determinants of land “availability” are key deter-
minants of land deals. At the systemic level, the structural position of a country in the
global political economy is a primary concern. At the state level, domestic institutional
structures play a critical role in determining the nature of land transactions. The follow-
ing sections deploy this analytical framework of land availability, structural position,
and domestic institutions in order to explore the geographies of the land grab, first from
the side of investors, and then from the side of the host countries.
Who Are the Land Grabbers?
Privateinvestorsareotenmoreprominentthanforeigngovernmentsinthecurrent
wave of land transactions, and domestic capital may in many cases be more important
than foreign actors. At the same time, a focus on identifying home countries seeking out
foreign agricultural land is critical to understanding the geography of emerging global
transformations in production and circulation. This section discusses first the role of
private sector actors, then the role of governments and private-public linkages in the
rush for foreign farmland.
Private-sector actors seeking land generally take the form of either private companies
or investment funds, with private companies representing the most active category of
investoroverall(Anseeuwet al.2012,24).heinvolvementofinvestmentfundsinland
acquisition is related to the expectation of long-term price increases for land and agri-
cultural products, as well as to the desire to use land to diversify investment portfolios
andhedgeagainstinlation(Cotula2012,666).Whilethegrowingpresenceofinvest-
mentfundsinlandmarketsisindicativeofinancializationinagriculture,theresurgent