What are the impacts of different types of large farming developments in Africa? On the blog, Rebecca Smalley explains the highlights from a literature review from our new project, Land and Commercialisation in Africa (LACA).

The project looks at contract farming, plantations and ‘commercial farming areas’ in Ghana, Kenya and Zambia. The evidence review challenges some assumptions about what these different models mean for rural communities.

• Blog: What can we learn from history about large-scale commercial farming developments? by Rebecca Smalley, 13 May 2013

Download the paper

• Smalley, R. (2013) Plantations, Contract Farming and Commercial Farming Areas in Africa: A Comparative Review, Future Agricultures Working Paper 55

Photo: Woman with her passion fruit crop by usaidkenya on Flickr (cc-by-nc)

As the G8 summit approaches, there is talk of how to make large-scale land acquisitions more transparent. But the meaning of 'transparency', and its link with accountability, have not always been clear. And there is little evidence that information being made available through transparency initiatives is actually being used - what one commentator has called the "dirty secret" of transparency.

In a new blog post reflecting on the recent World Bank Land and Poverty Conference, Anna Locke and Andrew Norton suggest some ways to bridge the gap between transparency and the realisation of positive outcomes for the countries and communities hosting large-scale land deals.

• Blog: Large-scale land acquisition: can we overcome transparency’s ‘dirty secret’? by Anna Locke and Andrew Norton, Overseas Development Institute

A special issue of the journal Development and Change, entitled Governing Global Land Deals: The Role of the State in the Rush for Land, is the latest of a series exploring global land, water and green grabs.

This has been part of the work of the Land Deal Politics Initiative, and supported by the land theme of the Future Agricultures Consortium. Many of the papers published were originally presented in two major conferences held at the Institute of Development Studies, Sussex in 2011 and at Cornell University in 2012.

Download and view the issue

Governing Global Land Deals: The Role of the State in the Rush for Land (2013)
Special Issue, Development and Change, 44(2). Wendy Wolford, Saturnino M. Borras Jr., Ruth Hall, Ian Scoones and Ben White (editors)

The tenth "Policies against Hunger" conference in June 2013 will centre around the question of how to apply the standards and principles described in the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the context of national food security.

The aim of the guidelines is safe and fair access to natural resources. Yet what does the path to this aim look like? What kind of challenges are we facing? What are the responsibilities of the different actors - states, international organisations, donors, civil society, industry and the science community - in implementing the Voluntary Guidelines?

This 3-year project looks at what the commercialisation of land and agriculture might mean for growth and poverty reduction in Africa.

• Can new land and agricultural commercialisation initiatives be used as opportunities to promote growth and reduce poverty and inequality in developing countries? If so, how?
• What are the better and worse models?
• Which sets of institutional arrangements between investors and local smallholders provide the best opportunities for benefit-sharing and for synergies between large and small farms?

A new blog post asks what African countries are doing to implement the UN FAO's Voluntary Guidelines, which aim to promote more responsible governance of land tenure, forests and fisheries.

The Voluntary Guidelines (VGs) were launched in 2012 and have been endorsed at high level. But what are African countries doing to implement them?

• Blog: The FAO Voluntary Guidelines: setting sail? by Emmanuel Sulle, PLAAS

This project investigates the multiple pressures towards the commercialisation of land in Southern Africa - part of a phenomenon that has accelerated since the ‘food price crisis’ of 2007-2008.

It will provide grounded evidence on how deals are structured, how people respond to them, and the adequacy of existing land rights to protect local people.

While investment in land from foreign investors has risen sharply in Africa, poor people have not always felt the benefits. While some jobs are undoubtedly created, it is difficult to assess the long term impacts of investments, many of which are in biofuels or export crops, on local people.

Prof Ian Scoones talks about our research on this topic in a documentary produced by the online station Free Speech Radio News. The documentary (26 minutes) addresses the question of how land deals are affecting food production and food security worldwide.

You can stream the audio documentary from the FSRN website or download it here.