The paper discusses the recent developments of FDI in land in developing countries. Three issues are analyzed: the first is the available evidence on the so called “land grab” and the associated question of the role of control on land in the internationalisation of developing countries agricultural production. The focus is on multinational enterprises in agriculture, although analysis of shifting FDI strategies requires value chain considerations. The second issue is the problem of the risks of such large land deals in the context of complex and insecure land rights.

"One of the lingering effects of the food price crisis of 2007–08 on the world food system is the proliferating acquisition of farmland in developing countries by other countries seeking to ensure their food supplies. Increased pressures on natural resources, water scarcity, export restrictions imposed by major producers when food prices were high, and growing distrust in the functioning of regional and global markets have pushed countries short in land and water to find alternative means of producing food.

"Land grabbing" or, less emotionally charged, large-scale land acquisitions (LSLA), which occur mainly in the Global South, have become the center of a heated political and academic debate. So far, economists have mostly abstained from this debate. This may possibly be explained by the fact that they view these kind of deals in land property primarily as an opportunity for improved local economic development in poor countries. Arguably, foreign investors are then assumed to be able to utilize arable, but mostly idle land more efficiently than locals (cf., e.g., Deininger/Byerlee, 2011).

The term “ocean grabbing” has been used to describe actions, policies or initiatives that deprive small-scale fishers of resources, dispossess vulnerable populations of coastal lands, and/or undermine historical access to areas of the sea. Rights and access to marine resources and spaces are frequently reallocated through government or private sector initiatives to achieve conservation, management or development objectives with a variety of outcomes for different sectors of society.

We study the effect of large-scale land acquisitions on the risk of ethnic tensions for a sample of 133 countries for the 2000-2012 period. Running a series of fractional response models, we find that more land grabbing activity is associated with a higher risk of ethnic tensions, indicating that the negative effects of land deals outweigh their potential benefits. In addition to that, we also show that democratic institutions may moderate the relationship between land deals and ethnic tensions.

Over the past several decades, land investments have dramatically increased to meet global food and biofuel demands, produce industrial commodities, protect environments and develop urban centres. Scholars and media actors have labelled this phenomenon “land grabbing”, owing to its many negative impacts. Since existing knowledge was generated from individual case-studies, global land grabbing patterns are relatively underexamined, and broader extrapolations of results to inform land grabbing theories are limited.

Foreign land grabbing is acknowledged as a phenomenon that generates disempowerment and dispossession of local farmers, human rights violations. Previous studies have revealed the lack of ethical benchmarks in foreign large-scale land transactions that raise moral concerns. It is evident that when resources are scarce and people depend on them, the balance between values and interests transforms itself into a dilemma.

We examine collaborations between the state and civil society in the context of land grabbing in Argentina. Land grabbing provokes many governance challenges, which generate new social arrangements. The incentives for, limitations to, and contradictions inherent in these collaborations are examined. We particularly explore how the collaborations between the provincial government of Santiago del Estero and non-government organizations (NGOs) played out. This province has experienced many land grabs, especially for agriculture and livestock production.

La notion d’accaparement de terres est devenue courante dans l’étude d’un grand nombre de transformations agraires en cours dans les Suds. Elle souffre cependant d’un grand flou définitionnel et des difficultés à établir clairement le périmètre de son objet. À partir d’études de cas tirés du terrain ivoirien, cette contribution propose de redéfinir ce champ d’études afin de tenir compte à la fois de l’émergence d’un problème public qui est l’accaparement des terres et des transformations dans l’économie politique du capitalisme agraire que ce terme recouvre.

Fraud and corruption are the main enabling mechanisms for land abuses in Brazil, guaranteeing impunity for land grabbers and other public and private agents involved in these schemes. This is what is evidenced in the research report, “Weak land governance, fraud and corruption: fertile ground for land grabbing,” which systematizes for the first time the relationship between these issues. Thereby, the study seeks to understand precisely why and how corruption and fraud associated with land grabbing occur.  

By creating a land commission, the Kazakh authorities managed to bring down the protest rallies in 2016, when, under pressure from citizens, the government was forced to abandon the sale and lease of land to foreigners. The goal of the national patriots was achieved, but the key issue for the citizens remained unresolved – the mechanism and procedures for the return of land to the people of Kazakhstan, sold by the authorities as a result of massive corruption deals and now belonging to oligarchs – “land barons”, has not been created by law.

How do authoritarian populist regimes emerge within the European Union in the twenty-first century? In Hungary, land grabbing by oligarchs have been one of the pillars maintaining Prime Minister Orbán’s regime. The phenomenon remains out of the public purview and meets little resistance as the regime-controlled media keeps Hungarians ‘distracted’ with ‘dangers’ inflicted by the ‘enemies of the Hungarian people’ such as refugees and the European Union.