Land Control, Land Grabs, and Southeast Asian Crop Booms

This paper argues that research into dynamics of land control in the contemporary  land grab‘ can benefit from engagement with the literature on booms in the production of crops like cocoa, coffee, fast-growing trees, oil palm, and shrimp in Southeast Asia. This literature can help us to answer three key questions: for whom land becomes more valuable when world market prices for a crop rise; how would-be producers bring to bear regulatory power, market power, force, and legitimation to gain control over land; and how rapid increases in export-oriented crop production differentially affect areas with secure and insecure land control relations.

Paper presented at the International Conference on Global Land Grabbing 6-8 April 2011