This paper seeks to add to the growing literature on land concessions by examining a recent, high-level concession as a means of understanding three aspects related to concessionary investments: (1) the process by which concessions are awarded and implemented; (2) the intricate relationship between land use, land tenure, and land ownership in the face of concessions; and (3) the way in which village and household livelihoods are impacted due to such massive land use and ownership changes.

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.

In recent years Laos has experienced rapid changes in land and resource use and tenure. Of those, the allocation of expansive land concessions for rubber production has been amongst the most significant. While rubber is being developed in various ways in Laos, large rubber concessions in southern Laos have frequently overlapped with agricultural and forest lands of importance to local people, replacing them and thus dramatically affecting agrarian livelihoods.

The food and financial crises of 2008 ignited a massive round of “land grabbing” in the Global South, with foreign agribusinesses leasing and buying large tracts of land to produce both food and fuel crops for export. Despite the canceling of a few highly controversial leases, these land deals have continued largely unabated, with international institutions increasingly trying to re-frame them as potential development opportunities.

This document, available in French, English, Spanish and Portuguese http://www.agter.asso.fr/article480_en.html, considers the meaning of ‘investment’ and the types of investment the world needs to achieve food security and protect the environment, distinguishes the privatisation of common resources from the concentration of lands that are already recognised as private property, and identifies new elements of land appropriation and concentration.

An interesting research carried out by AgroParisTech Students, and researchers from AgroParisTech and Terres d’Europe-Scafr. The interventions during the AGTER thematic meeting were articulated around the following points: 1. Duality of Ukrainian agriculture: micro-farming and agribusiness 2. Economic and social performance of different models of agriculture, future perspectives 3. The revitalization of agriculture through land reform Very interesting data to understand the real nature of agrobusiness and the efficiency of small-scale farmers.

As governments in the global North look to diversify their economies away from fossil fuel and mitigate climate change, plans for biomass energy are growing fast. These are fuelling a sharp rise in the demand for wood, which, for some countries, could outstrip domestic supply capacity by as much as 600 per cent. It is becoming clear that although these countries will initially look to tap the temperate woodlands of developed countries, there are significant growth rate advantages that may lead them to turn to the tropics and sub-tropics to fill their biomass gap in the near future.

Le Sénégal pays agricole essentiellement composé d’agriculteurs, de paysans est situé à l’extrême Ouest du continent africain avec une superficie totale de 196 720 km 2. La superficie totale cultivable est estimée à 3,8 millions d’ha soit 19 pour cent de la superficie totale.

Almost two-thirds of farming families from ethnic Ta’ang communities in Burma’s northern Shan State have lost land to the country’s powerful military, according to a new report.

The Ta’ang Students and Youth Organization, or TSYO, says 63 percent of farming families from the Ta’ang community in the area have had land confiscated by the military. The Ta’ang are also known as Palaung.

[From IRIN - Humanitarian news and analysis] JUBA, 12 December 2011 (IRIN) - Land deals done in newly-independent South Sudan “threaten to undermine the land rights of rural communities, increase food insecurity, entrench poverty, and skew development patterns” in the resource-rich but poor nation, a new report says.