The Twenty-first Century Agricultural Land Rush - The Oxford Topic of Food, Politics, and Society - page 827

preference of private companies for direct control over land and the agricultural pro-
ductionprocessrelectsabasictransformationinthelogicofagriculturalvaluechains.
Inthepostcolonialperiod,theagriculturalsectorhasbeencharacterizedbythedisso-
ciation of capital from primary production and a concentration of capital in processing
and distribution.14 The movement of agro-industrial capital into production responds
toashitingcalculusoftheownershipofproductiveassetsversusvaluechaincoordina-
tion(Cotula2012,665).Wherethe2007-2008foodcrisissignalsincreasedsupplyinse-
curity and price volatility for agricultural commodities, private companies are moving
tostabilizetheirsupplychainsandproitfromrisinglandandcommodityprices.
The line between private- and public-sector actors in land deals is frequently blurred,
however,andthepublicsectorotenprovidescrucialsupporttoinvestorsinprivate
landdeals.Cotula(2011)highlightsgovernmentfundsprovidingservicessuchassub-
sidies,loans,guarantees,andinsurancetocompaniesengagedinagriculturalFDI,as
well as informational, technical, and diplomatic support from government agencies and
government-to-government investment treaties facilitating private-sector land invest-
ment. The involvement of a national government in foreign land acquisitions, and the
publicorprivatemodalitiesitemploystorealizetheseinvestments,canbeunderstood
as a function of land availability, the structural position of the country in the global
economy,andthecountry'sdomesticinstitutionalstructure.Landavailabilitydeter-
mines the need for foreign farmland, structural position determines whether the state
has sufficient resources to become involved in offshore land deals, and the domestic
institutional structure determines the modalities of state involvement.
The origin countries for land deal investments include emerging market countries
suchasChina,SouthKorea,andIndia;NorthAfricancountries(e.g.,Libya,Egypt)and
membersoftheGulfCooperationCouncil(GCC)(UAE,Bahrain,SaudiArabia,Oman,
Qatar,Kuwait);andtheindustrializedcountriesoftheGlobalNorthsuchastheUnited
States,EUmemberstates,andJapan(GRAIN2008;UNCTAD2009;DanielandMittal
2009;Anseeuwet al.2012).
Landavailabilityisafunctionofbothbiophysical(hydrological,pedological)sup-
plyandsociopolitical(demographic,dietary,industrial)demand.15 he United States
andEuropeanUnionhaveabundantlandandwaterresourcesandheavilysubsidized
agriculture, obviating the need for foreign food security investments. As a result, US and
EU foreign land investments are primarily carried out by private companies (Anseeuw
etal.2012),otenproducingfuelandlexcropstotakeadvantageofbiofuelmandates
in their home countries. On the biophysical side, the presence of a number of North
African and Middle Eastern states on the list of investor countries is supportive of the
observationthatthelandgrabisalsoawatergrab(Brown2009;Vidal2010;seealso
Woodhouse2012).Wheredomesticwaterscarcitylimitstheproductivepotentialof
large-scale agriculture, acquisition of farmland abroad responds to food scarcity while
conservingdomesticwaterresources—atthesametimethatwaterusebyofshoreoper-
ationsmaywellconlictwiththewaterneedsofthelocalpopulationinthehostcoun-
try. On the sociopolitical side, emerging market countries and the North African and
Gulf states, many of which already suffer from biophysical constraints to agriculture,