The Twenty-first Century Agricultural Land Rush - The Oxford Topic of Food, Politics, and Society - page 834

the human right to food would be violated if people depending on land for their
livelihoods, including pastoralists, were cut off from access to land, without suitable
alternatives; if local incomes were insufficient to compensate for the price effects
resultingfromtheshittowardstheproductionoffoodforexports;oriftherev-
enues of local smallholders were to fall following the arrival on domestic markets
of cheaply priced food, produced on the more competitive large-scale plantations
developed thanks to the arrival of the investor.
(2009,para.4)
Since he argues that in the majority of cases, large-scale land acquisitions and leases
willresultintheserightsviolations,DeSchutter(2011,250)usestherights-basedframe-
work to argue for an “alternative program for agricultural investment” to support small-
holder agriculture. Outlines of this program include public goods provision to improve
productivity and market access, institutional developments such as cooperatives or
contractfarming(properlymanaged)toincreasefarmerrevenue,andequitableaccess
to land through land reform coupled with comprehensive rural development policies
(262-263).
Dovetailing with the rights-based approach is the “food sovereignty” approach of
activistorganizationsledbyLaVíaCampesina.Aglobalnetworkofpeasantmovements,
LaVíaCampesinahascalledforrejectionoftheRAIprinciples,thesuspensionofall
large-scalelandtransactions,andredirectionofinvestmenttowardfoodsovereignty—
understood as “the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced
through sustainable methods and their right to define their own food and agriculture
systems”(ViaCampesina2011c).Inadditiontosupportinglocalresistancetolanddeals
(e.g.,througha“GlobalAllianceagainstLand-Grabbing”[LaVíaCampesina2011a]),
actors taking a human rights or food sovereignty orientation toward land grabbing
have sought to establish their position at the international level through the “Voluntary
GuidelinesontheResponsibleGovernanceofTenureofLand,FisheriesandForestsin
theContextofNationalFoodSecurity,”developedthroughtheFAO'sCommitteeon
World Food Security. These guidelines, which received input from governments and
internationalorganizationsaswellasindependentexpertsandcivil-societyorganiza-
tions(DeSchutter2011,255),weresubstantiallyinluencedbyahumanrightsperspec-
tive,andtheiradoptioninMay2012providesafurthertoolforthoseseekingpractical
political action in response to the rising trend of large-scale farmland transactions.
Conclusion
This chapter has sought to develop a political economy perspective on the current wave
oflarge-scalefarmlandacquisitions—the“globallandgrab”—andtoreviewthemain
theoretical and political positions that have emerged around this phenomenon. The dis-
cussion has also highlighted a number of the potential implications of the land grab for