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Abstract
This article offers three insights. First, the renewed global land rush is indeed global: it occurs in the Global North too. Second, the ongoing trend of (generic) land concentration is just as problematic as land grabbing. Third, political processes involving actors at various sites and levels of the state and society mediate corporate and state interests in land, sometimes producing untended outcomes. New “deal brokers” (in finance, business and property) have joined the ranks of other elites (food empires, commercial producers, banks) to determine the dynamics of the European land rush.
Résumé
Cet article présente trois constats. Premièrement, la ruée vers les terres est véritablement un phénomène mondial, qu'on retrouve même dans le Nord. Deuxièmement, la tendance actuelle à la concentration des terres est aussi problématique que l'accaparement. Troisièmement, des processus politiques impliquant des acteurs de divers secteurs et à différents niveaux de l’État et de la société interviennent dans les intérêts des grandes entreprises et de l’État pour la terre, avec parfois des résultats inattendus. De nouveaux courtiers financiers, commerciaux et immobiliers sont venus grossir les rangs d'autres élites (empires agroalimentaires, producteurs commerciaux, banques) dans la structuration de la ruée vers les terres européennes.
Acknowledgements
The action research study on land grabbing and land concentration in and around Europe was jointly coordinated by European Coordination Via Campesina and the Transnational Institute (TNI), and carried out by researchers in several research institutions in Europe. We thank many the researchers involved in this collaborative research and several colleagues in TNI, including Tim Feodoroff, Sylvia Kay and Hilde van der Pas, who supported the project.
Notes
1 See also Plank (Citation2013) on the Ukraine.
2 This article is a revised version of van der Ploeg, Franco and Borras (Citation2013), which introduces and summarises the collection of papers. For the complete report on the study, see Franco and Borras (Citation2013).
3 Income support differs from price support. It is, as the official jargon goes, “decoupled” from actual levels of production. It is related to historical levels of production. It is granted even if production is stopped. The start of this change was known as the “MacSharry Reform”.
4 There is considerable political willingness to correct this undesirable distortion. Proposals for “capping” (introducing a ceiling to subsidies per farm) and “redistributive payments” (that favour smallholdings) have been formally integrated in the regulations. However, both measures are voluntary, and EU member states are not obliged to apply them. National power dynamics mean that these measures are least likely to be applied in the countries where they could have the most impact.
5 The role of financialisation of land, agriculture and the food system, as analysed more broadly by Fairbairn (Citation2014), Isakson (Citation2014) and Clapp (Citation2014), exerts quite considerable influence in the EU and is a common thread throughout this paper, although we do not explore the details of the process.
6 Recent data on bankruptcy levels are given at http://www.faillissementsdossier.nl/nieuws/6144 and http://www.boerderij.nl/Home/Nieuws/2013/8/Meer-agrarische-bedrijven-failliet-1332580W/. See also LEI (Citation2014, 109),
7 In several eastern European and former socialist countries, various forms of land restitution (that is, restituting lands to pre-socialist era landlords) have contributed to post-1990 land concentration, such as in Romania (Bouniol Citation2013). In Bulgaria, restituting land to “original” (pre-1946) owners automatically excluded from the land restitution programme many people who did not own any land before state socialism, but were employed in and whose livelihoods depended on cooperative agricultural production before 1989. This is one factor behind the massive land concentration and economic degradation of the 1990s in Bulgaria, in which people who were dispossessed were pushed to urban areas, often into informal settlements (Medarov Citation2013).
8 Our reference point for the loose definition we use here is the one initially explored by Borras et al. (Citation2012).
9 See general discussion by Hall (Citation2013).
10 It is difficult to know the real extent of pocket contracts because of their illegal nature; see Fidrich (Citation2013).
12 http://farmlandgrab.org/post/view/21548 (accessed 5 August 2013).
13 According to the website, Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) is an effort to create a financial value for the carbon stored in forests, offering incentives for developing countries to reduce emissions from forested lands and invest in low-carbon paths to sustainable development. “REDD+” goes beyond deforestation and forest degradation, and includes the role of conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks. http://www.un-redd.org/aboutredd/tabid/102614/default.aspx (accessed 18 January 2015).
14 The data presented in this article were drawn from Bloomberg, Savills, Morningstar and National Council of Real Estate Investment Fiduciaries (NCREIF).
15 Fagoed stands for Financiering agrarisch [onroerend] goed (English: “Financing agricultural property”). It is an alternative source of financing for farmers besides bank mortgages.
16 Fagoed (Citation2014). The a.s.r. website is http://www.asrvastgoedvermogensbeheer.nl/landelijk/grondfinanciering/ (accessed 18 February 2015).
17 This is 15 times as much as the total agrarian income of Dutch agriculture.
18 See Pauly (Citation2008) and Slovik and Cournède (Citation2011).
19 See, for instance, http://www.foodlog.nl/short-news/detail/tuinbouw-inlevingsvermogen-rabobank-is-bizar/ (accessed 16 January 2015).
Additional information
Jan Douwe van der Ploeg is a professor at the College of Humanities and Development Studies of China Agricultural University (COHD at CAU) in Beijing and a professor of rural sociology at Wageningen University in the Netherlands.
Jennifer Franco is an adjunct professor at College of Humanities and Development Studies of China Agricultural University (COHD at CAU) in Beijing and coordinator of the Agrarian Justice Programme of the Amsterdam-based Transnational Institute (TNI).
Saturnino Borras Jr is Professor of Agrarian Studies at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) in The Hague, an adjunct professor at College of Humanities and Development Studies of China Agricultural University (COHD at CAU) in Beijing and a fellow of the Transnational Institute (TNI).