The attractiveness of agricultural land available in developing countries has markedly increased in the last few years. Driven by rising and highly volatile prices for agricul- tural commodities, large land acquisitions have been undertaken by foreign investors. We formalize the discussion surrounding such large scale land deals through a dynamic stochastic programming model. Within this framework, we first determine the value of a land development project under uncertainty about prices for agricultural commodi- ties, political risk and irreversible capital investment.

Includes large-scale concessions and oil palm growing in Liberia, international attempts to qualify big land concessions, the FAO’s Voluntary Guidelines, national law and its relevance, the national legal framework concessions in Liberia, Sime Darby and Golden Veroleum in conflict.

Includes setting the scene: accountability in large-scale land acquisitions; the role of the law in shaping pathways to accountability; citizen action – how effective are the bottom-up checks and balances?; under what conditions can citizens achieve justice and equitable outcomes in relation to land acquisitions?; what role for research?

CARE commissioned a review of the community land delimitation and demarcation processes implemented by various organisations in Nampula province, focusing on the work of ORAM. Contains an analysis of the extent to which these programmes are assisting communities to prepare for the advent of an expected wave of large-scale investments throughout the north of the country, in the face of gas and coal discoveries and the proposed development of large-scale agribusiness ventures along the Nacala corridor.

Includes agriculture, pro-poor growth and rural livelihoods: debates, scales and guidelines; land, farm size and food security; supermarkets and contract farming; gender and agricultural growth; promoting agriculture in post-conflict states. A number of Topic Guides are being produced for DFID’s Climate, Environment, Infrastructure and Livelihoods Advisers.

Comprises notes from an informal meeting in Pretoria addressing the impasse on land reform in Southern Africa. The main focus is on overcoming problems and constraints, including on redistribution, tenure reform, the land rights of women, HIV/AIDS and donor support. Has sections on the viability of small-scale farms, post-transfer support, mobilising support for land reform, and proposed follow up. There are two main appendices; one on the status of land reform in each of the countries in the region, the other a matrix of current land issues in each country.

Focuses on the reported social and environmental impacts of large-scale land transactions (LSLAs) in Africa, with a focus on West and Central Africa (WCA). Provides an analysis of 18 case studies that are among the best-documented LSLAs in terms of their impacts covering Cameroon, Ghana, Liberia, Mali, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Mozambique, Tanzania, and Zambia. Impacts were classified into five groups: tenure, land governance process, economic and livelihood, human and sociocultural, environmental.

This article discusses how one group is contributing to critical thinking about how the Voluntary Guidelines for the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries, and Forests in the Context of National Food Security (VGs) are implemented. The Future Agricultures Consortium (FAC) - an Africa-based alliance of agricultural research organizations - is both tracking implementation of the VGs and launching a study that will, among other things, investigate the multiple pressures toward the commercialization of land and the resulting impacts on land rights in Southern Africa.

Includes land and food security; an overview; a short literature review (food security, governance); the impact of large scale land acquisitions on food security and nutrition (environmental and social impact assessments, national versus international investors, gender and food security, new research).

This article focuses on recent policy changes implemented by the Government of Tanzania. The Government has been criticized in local and international media for supporting harmful large-scale land acquisitions. In response, policy makers have placed a cap on transfer size: investors can acquire no more than 10,000 hectares for sugar production and no more than 5,000 hectares for rice production (two key agricultural commodities in the country). But will a cap stop harmful transfers? Maybe, but caps are not necessarily the “major step” that the article suggests.

Despite the growth in the agricultural sector in Latin America and the Caribbean, 8 out of every 10 farmers, small-scale producers who are at the base of domestic food production, remain largely excluded from the related benefits. Government efforts for strengthening agriculture allocate public resources to few lines of spending that favour a minority. Investment on small-scale agriculture is difficult to track and where possible, it is disproportionately lower than this group´s contribution to the sector.

DFID are looking to propose that the UK supports a package of measures to strengthen land transparency and ultimately governance. This work is of a high priority for DFID and the wider UK Government. Following further research on the evidence and internal discussions, DFID have identified a gap relating to two specific questions:

1.    What are the impacts of large-scale land acquisitions (LSA) on local food insecurity and malnutrition levels? 
2.    Is there a difference in impacts whether investments are international or local?