“Large scale land investments” and “land grabbing” are the terms most commonly used to describe the rising global trend where foreign and local agribusinesses, mining corporations, governments, and investment houses obtain long term rights over large areas of land. Perhaps the most famous of these is the attempt by the Daewoo Group of South Korea to lease 1.3 million hectares, or more than half of the productive agricultural lands of Madagascar, in Africa. The fact that the deal covered lands being cultivated by smallholder farmers as well as bio-diversity rich forests led to massive peasant protests which ultimately led to the overthrow of the regime which signed it. The succeeding government predictably cancelled the agreement.
While the two terms basically refer to the same phenomenon, the two vary in their connotation. “Land grabbing” is the more political term often used by activists and more militant groups to describe and oppose these land deals, while “large scale land investments” is obviously a more neutral term preferred by mainstream international development institutions like the World Bank (WB) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), governments and investors to describe and promote these land deals (Borras and Franco, 2012).
