Focussing on Chinese investment in land and agriculture, the panelists suggest that widespread investment in land from China is relatively new and potentially distinct from investments made by other actors.
Peter Ho and I. Hofman outline the general dynamics of Chinese investment while Paulette Nonfodji focuses on Benin and compares Chinese investment strategies in agriculture with investment by western countries. Janette Bulkan analyzes the increasing influence of Chinese investors in Guyana and examines the possibilities for “purely commercial relations” to replace colonialism. Finally, Lila Buckley provides an ethnographic analysis of investment in Senegalese agriculture and suggests that Chinese agronomic practices are shaped by particular conceptualizations of agriculture that have to be negotiated on the ground.
Chair: Joshua Muldavin, Sarah Lawrence College, New York
- Paulette Nonfodji, University of Amsterdam, China’s Farmland Rush in Benin: Toward a Win-Win Economic Model of Cooperation? (Presentation)
- Janette Bulkan ECCo, Field Museum, Red Star over Guyana’: colonial-style grabbing of natural resources but new grabbers (Presentation)
- Lila Buckley, IIED, Eating Bitter to Taste Sweet: An Ethnographic Sketch of a Chinese Agricultural Project in Senegal (Presentation)
- Peter Ho and I. Hofman, University of Groningen, Netherlands,Land Grabbing or Global Outsourcing: The Case of China