News
Timely news and information about agricultural research in Africa. Collected from a variety of sources, we are also happy to accept your suggestions for relevant research to include.
Latest articles
Claude J. Fortin
April 13, 2011 / News The Biofuel Boom and Indonesia’s Oil Palm Industry : The Twin Process of Peseant Dispossession and Adverse Incorporation in West Kalimantan
Adeline Carrier
April 13, 2011 / News Economic Land Concessions: a Legal Framework to Legitimize Land Grabbing in Cambodia?
Roosbelinda Cardenas Gonzales
April 13, 2011 / News After titling: Oil palm landscapes and Afro-Colombian territories
Jefferson Boyer & Wilfredo Cardona?????
April 13, 2011 / News Land Grabbing in Pre-and Post-Coup Honduras
M. Borras Jr. , Jennifer C. Franco , Danilo Carranza and Maria Lisa Alano
April 13, 2011 / News The fundamentally flawed ‘marginal lands’ narrative: insights from the Philippines Saturnino
Benjamin Neimark?
April 13, 2011 / News Biofuel battlegrounds: Property rights, land deals, and alternative energy production in Madagascar
Andrea Bues
April 12, 2011 / News Agricultural Foreign Direct Investment and Water Rights – an Institutional Analysis from Ethiopia
Kojo Amanor
April 12, 2011 / News Global Landgrabs, Agribusiness and the Commercial Smallholder: A West African perspective
Alberto Alonso-Fradejas
April 12, 2011 / News Expansion of oil palm agribusinesses over indigenous-peasant lands and territories in Guatemala: Fuellinga new cycle of agrarian accumulation, territorial dominance and social vulnerability?
Pastoralists and irrigation in the Horn of Africa: Time for a rethink?
April 10, 2011 / News By Stephen Sandford There is much land in pastoral areas of the Horn of Africa that could be converted to irrigated agriculture and thus provide an alternative or additional livelihood for pastoralists. There is a long history of successful indigenous
Land Deals and Commercial Agriculture In Nigeria
April 8, 2011 / News Land Deals and Commercial Agriculture In Nigeria: The New Nigerian Farms in Shonga District, Kwara State Joseph A. Ariyo and Michael Mortimore Nigeria’s long standing agrarian policy was to transform the entire peasantry of smallholders in the country into modern
The next Great Trek? South African commercial farmers move north
April 8, 2011 / News By Ruth Hall This paper analyses the shifting role of South African farmers, agribusiness and capital elsewhere in the Southern African region and the rest of the continent. It explores recent trends in this expansion, investigates the interests and agendas
Land Grabbing in Bangladesh: In-Situ Displacement of Peasant Holdings
April 8, 2011 / News by Shelley Feldman and Charles Geisler Land grabbing accounts are now abundant, prompting scholars to seek patterns and regularities in the phenomenon across dissimilar geographies and histories. This paper examines the irregularities and pattern-defying expressions of land grabbing in Bangladesh
Escalating Land Grabbing In Post-conflict Regions of Northern Uganda: A Need for Strengthening…
April 8, 2011 / News Escalating Land Grabbing In Post-conflict Regions of Northern Uganda: A Need for Strengthening Good Land Governance in Acholi Region By Samuel B. Mabikke Since the mid 1980s, Northern Uganda- a region of over 13 districts has been devastated by armed
Commercial pressures on land
April 7, 2011 / News Ward Anseeuw And Mike Taylor Disclaimer: This Presentation Presents Work In Process, That Will Be Published By The ILC at the End Of May 2011
The end of the African peasant?
April 7, 2011 / News The end of the African peasant? From investment funds and finance value-chains to peasant related questions by Ward Anseeuw, Antoine Ducastel and Jean- Jacques Gabas The last couple of years have been characterized by a “rediscovery” of agriculture as a
“Land Grabbing” in Developing Countries: Foreign Investors, Regulation and Codes of Conduct
April 7, 2011 / News by Nadia Cuffaro and David Hallam 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
Behind Dispossession: State, Land Grabbing and Agrarian Change in Rural Orissa
April 7, 2011 / News By Deepak K Mishra This paper seeks to examine the diverse forms and implications of land grabbing in Orissa, known for its abject poverty, starvation deaths and violent conflicts over the issue of displacement. Taking into account the historical processes
Expansion of oil palm agribusinesses over indigenouspeasant lands and territories in Guatemala…
April 7, 2011 / News Expansion of oil palm agribusinesses over indigenouspeasant lands and territories in Guatemala: Fuelling a new cycle of agrarian accumulation, territorial dominance and social vulnerability? By Alberto Alonso-Fradejas This paper is a critical analysis of the political economy and ecology of
Implications of Land Deals to Livelihood Security and Natural Resource Management in Benshanguel…
April 7, 2011 / News Implications of Land Deals to Livelihood Security and Natural Resource Management in Benshanguel Gumuz Regional State, Ethiopia By Maru Shete The Federal Government of Ethiopia (FGE) is leasing out large tracts of arable lands both to domestic and foreign investors
Is Water the Hidden Agenda of Agricultural Land Acquisition in sub-Saharan Africa?
April 7, 2011 / News by P Woodhouse and A S Ganho The many headlines focusing on ‘land-grabbing’ have distracted attention from the role that access to water plays in underpinning the projected productivity of foreign direct investment in acquisition of agricultural land in developing
Projecting Smallholders: Roads, the Puebla to Panama Plan
April 7, 2011 / News Projecting Smallholders: Roads, the Puebla to Panama Plan and Land Grabbing in the Q’eqchi’ Lowlands of Northern Guatemala By Liza Grandia As an avenue for analyzing the impacts of the broader PPP infrastructure program on indigenous, rural areas, this paper
ENGLISH – Agrarian structure, foreign land ownership, and land value in Brazil
April 7, 2011 / News Agrarian structure, foreign land ownership, and land value in Brazil By Sérgio Sauer and Sergio Pereira Leite The recent world “rush for farmland” has targeted Latin America in general and Brazil in particular, with a huge increase in foreign investments
Dynamics in land tenure, local power and the peasant economy: the case of Petén, Guatemala
April 7, 2011 / News By Markus Zander and Jochen Dürr This article analyses the ongoing process of land grabbing by cattle farmers and drug traffickers in south-eastern Petén, Guatemala and its socio-economic consequences. In the last decade, this process has strongly accelerated due to
Transnational Land Deals in Mindanao: Situating Ambivalent Farmer Responses in Local Politics
April 6, 2011 / News by Tania Salerno This article broadly discusses transnational corporate land acquisitions while focusing specifically on the politics surrounding a joint-investment in Mindanao, Philippines. More particularly it analyses the key implementation processes prior to and during the establishment of one particular
The gendered politics of dispossession: oil palm expansion in a Dayak Hibun community in West Kalima
April 6, 2011 / News The gendered politics of dispossession: oil palm expansion in a Dayak Hibun community in West Kalimantan, Indonesia # by Julia and Ben White This paper explores the gendered politics of monocrop oil-palm expansion in a Hibun Dayak community in Sanggau
Urbanization strategies and agrarian change in Eastern China: a multilevel integrated assessment of
April 6, 2011 / News Urbanization strategies and agrarian change in Eastern China: a multilevel integrated assessment of domestic land grabbing by Giuseppina Siciliano This paper explores the links between urbanization strategies and domestic land grabbing processes in a rural village located in Chongming island.
Gulf-State Investments in Indonesia and The Philippines: Gaining Control of Agricultural Land and Fo
April 6, 2011 / News by Gerben Nooteboom & Rosanne Rutten, University of Amsterdam The issue of food security is most acute for Gulf States. Poor in arable land and water resources, rich in capital, and dependent on a huge migrant-labour force, Gulf States rely
Conservation and Land Grabbing in Tanzania
April 6, 2011 / News by Tor A. Benjaminsen, Ian Bryceson, Faustin Maganga, Tonje Refseth The discussion of global ‘land grabbing’ has mainly focused on large-?scale land deals and direct foreign investments in food and biofuel production in developing countries. The land grabbing effect of
Gendered Dimensions of Land and Rural Livelihoods: The Case of New Settler Farmer Displacement…
April 6, 2011 / News Gendered Dimensions of Land and Rural Livelihoods: The Case of New Settler Farmer Displacement at Nuanetsi Ranch, Mwenezi District, Zimbabwe By Patience Mutopo The bio fuels boom has recently been gaining much currency in Zimbabwe. This revolution has had different
Resistance to Accumulation by Dispossession in the Context Of Neoliberal Capitalism And Globalizatio
April 6, 2011 / News By Shapan Adnan Harvey [2003] has argued that, in the long term historical geography of capitalism, accumulation by dispossession (ongoing primitive accumulation) is organically linked to the accumulation of capital proper i.e. that based on expanded reproduction. Furthermore, accumulation by
Legitimating Foreignization in Bolivia: Brazilian agriculture and the relations of conflict…
April 6, 2011 / News Legitimating Foreignization in Bolivia: Brazilian agriculture and the relations of conflict and consent in Santa Cruz, Bolivia By Lee Mackey Introduction: Brazil is a leader in tropical soybean innovation, the pretender to dominance of a global biofuels market, and the
After titling: Oil palm landscapes and Afro-Colombian territories
April 6, 2011 / News by Roosbelinda Cardenas Gonzales On September 28, 1994, Aroldo and a small group of other residents of Bocas de Guabal, a small village on the Mira River in Colombia’s littoral border with Ecuador, held a meeting to discuss the rapid
The Role of the EU in Land Grabbing in Africa – CSO Monitoring 2009-2010 “Advancing African….
April 6, 2011 / News The Role of the EU in Land Grabbing in Africa – CSO Monitoring 2009-2010 “Advancing African Agriculture” (AAA): The Impact of Europe’s Policies and Practices on African Agriculture and Food Security By Alison Graham, Sylvain Aubry, Rolf Künnemann and Sofía
A question of scale: the construction of marginal lands and the limitations of global land classific
April 6, 2011 / News by Rachel A. Nalepa, Boston University With the growth of the biofuel complex, the concept of “marginal land” has emerged as a term commonly associated with the promotion of agrofuels. Remote sensing and other data are used to globally characterize
China’s Farmland Rush in Benin: Toward a Win-Win Economic Model of Cooperation?
April 6, 2011 / News By Paulette Nonfodji The early seventies saw the re-establishment of diplomatic relations between the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of Benin after the breakdown of these relations in 1966. China’s role in Benin has ever since been growing
Wildlife Conservation and Land Acquisitions: A Case Study of the Tanzania Land Conservation Trust
April 6, 2011 / News By Ngeta Kabiri, Environmental Evaluation Unit, University of Cape Town In the past decade, there have been large-scale acquisitions of land in Africa that have drawn the attention of both agrarian policy analysts and local populations in the affected areas.
Development by Dispossession: Land Grabbing as New Enclosures in Contemporary Ethiopia
April 6, 2011 / News by Fouad Makki and Charles Geisler Dept. of Development Sociology, Cornell University The confluence of the world economic crisis with the global food and energy crises has set off a frenzy of land grabbing in Africa, accelerating trends of de-peasantization,
Multi-stakeholder initiatives to regulate biofuels: the Roundtable for Sustainable Biofuels
April 6, 2011 / News By Elizabeth Fortin, British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow University of Bristol Over the last decade, dramatic growth in the production of biofuels across the globe has been supported by domestic, bilateral and intergovernmental policy instruments. The consequential dominance of agri-business multi-national
Joint ventures in South Africa’s land reform programme: strategic partnerships or strategic …
April 4, 2011 / News Joint ventures in South Africa’s land reform programme: strategic partnerships or strategic resource grab? By Nerhene Davis & Edward Lahiff Interoduction: Over the past three years, growing attention has been paid to the large-scale acquisition of land in developing countries
Contemporary Land Grabs and their Alternatives in the Americas
April 4, 2011 / News By Sara Safransky and Wendy Wolford Introduction: In 2007-2008, world food and fuel prices spiked sharply upward, doubling or tripling the cost of key food items and leading to a “wave” of protests and anti-government riots in more than 60
Land Market Liberalization and Trans-National Commercial Land Deals in Ghana since the 1990s
April 4, 2011 / News By Dzodzi Tsikata and Joseph Yaro Introduction: Large Scale commercial land transactions involving land in developing countries and transnational corporations and governments of the global north are justifiably generating a lot of interest in the land tenure research and policy
Titling against grabbing? Critiques and conundrums around land formalisation in Southeast Asia
April 2, 2011 / News By Philip Hirsch Debates and critiques around land policy often focus on the neo-liberal agenda of formalising land as alienable property, most notably through land titling schemes. Sometimes these schemes are posited against alternatives such as land reform and community land
How the Daewoo Attempted Land Acquisition Contributed to Madagascar’s Political Crisis in 2009
April 2, 2011 / News By Venusia Vinciguerra The acquisition or leasing of extended areas of land in developing countries by private firms is a growing phenomenon (Cotula et al. 2009:4-5; Shepard and Anuradha 2009). Some trigger factors for this are: food security issues tied
From International Land Deals to Local Informal Agreements: Regulations of and Local Reactions…
April 2, 2011 / News From International Land Deals to Local Informal Agreements: Regulations of and Local Reactions to Agricultural Investments in Madagascar By Burnod Perrine, Gingembre Mathilde, Andrianirina Ratsialonana Rivo, and Ratovoarinony Raphael In 2009, the 1.3 million hectare agricultural project planned in Madagascar
A Land Grab Scenario for Indonesia? Diverse Trajectories and Virtual Land Grabs in the Outer Islands
April 2, 2011 / News By John McCarthy, Suraya Afiff and Jacqueline Vel