Land control-grabbing in Guatemala: the political economy of contemporary agrarian change

Alonso-Fradejas, Alberto

doi:10.1080/02255189.2012.743455

Cited by 77 publications

(38 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…Nevertheless, most of the jobs for agricultural workers, for example in the sugar cane and oil palm plantations, are temporary jobs in demanding working conditions. Moreover, agribusiness firms often try to avoid legal obligations, such as social security schemes, by using a flexible labour regime (Alonso‐Fradejas, ). Here, the enforcement of labour regulations would be necessary to secure decent working conditions, compliance of labour liabilities and payment of the minimum wage.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Global value chains and traditional supply chains: Evidence from Guatemala

Dürr

2018

Development Policy Review

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Global value chains have been at the centre of recent research, but traditional supply chains have been given much less attention. However, quantitative data on both chain types is scarce. Therefore, it remains unclear how much smallholders, formal and informal sectors in traditional and global value chains contribute to gross domestic product (GDP), employment generation and income distribution. This article, by using a broad primary data set of 28 value chains in Guatemala, evidences that traditional chains contribute substantially to the national economy and that the income generated is much more equally distributed than in global value chains.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Global value chains and traditional supply chains: Evidence from Guatemala

Dürr

2018

Development Policy Review

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“…Promoting large farm value chains would have negative distributional consequences and contribute to an even more accentuated concentration of land and income in Guatemala. It would probably also mean that locally generated wealth is transferred to the national (and international) level, leaving the local economies with much less income than smallholder value chains generate (see Alonso‐Fradejas, ). Fourth, given the highly unequal land distribution in Guatemala, and taking into account the higher labor intensity but lower land productivity of small farm value chains, land reform seems to be mainly desirable in terms of social equity and generating more employment, but not in terms of GDP growth.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The political economy of agriculture for development today: the “small versus large” scale debate revisited

Dürr

2016

Agricultural Economics

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The role of agriculture in economic development and the development politics of promoting smallholder versus large-scale agriculture have both been at the center of a long-lasting and controversial debate. Using an innovative methodology which combines a value chain approach with input-output-analysis, the growth multipliers and productivity of both farm types in Guatemala are analyzed. Results show that smallholder agriculture has the same potential to stimulate output growth as large-scale agriculture. Smallholder value chains include mainly informal sectors and create more jobs than commercial agriculture. Therefore, a reorientation of agricultural and land policies toward small-scale food producers and within a comprehensive policy of integrated rural development is not only necessary in terms of social equity but also for boosting economic development.JEL classifications: D57, N56, O13, O18, Q13

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“…“Land grabbing” commonly refers to the “contemporary” eruption of transnational commercial land transactions that circulate in relation to large‐scale agricultural production, biofuel, timber and mineral extraction (Alonso‐Fradejas ; Borras and Franco ; Borras et al ; Gudynas ; Jarosz ). Accordingly, agrarian landscapes are abundant with “new” actors, shifts, drivers, crops, labor and concomitant legal strategies as tools for displacing people, appropriating and controlling land (Fairhead et al ; Peluso and Lund ).…”

Section: Novel Land Grabs?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Yet, “land purchases for local production and consumption are not considered land grabs” (Safransky and Wolford :2). In fact, “small and medium scale everyday forms of dispossession by differentiation” (Borras et al :849–850; see also Alonso‐Fradejas ) are (often) located outside land grab discussions. While for some, expanding the composition of land grabs “too broadly will miss what is distinct in the particular wave of contemporary global land grabbing” (Borras et al :849); I contend that “grabbing” is also part of a long racial‐cultural project with specific targets for change and in some cases erasure .…”

Section: Novel Land Grabs?mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Power to Plunder: Rethinking Land Grabbing in Latin America

Mollett

2015

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In this paper I rethink land grabbing in Latin America by decentering the rhetoric of novelty and the tendency to focus on large‐scale land transactions. To do this, I attend to the longevity of racial thinking bound up in everyday forms of land control. I look at the ways race is salient in the making of land and territorial arrangements. Drawing on my own research in Honduras and Panama, I situate land grabbing in relation to a range of scholarly insights that disclose how the early postcolonial dichotomy of “civilization” and “savagery”, and its inherently whitening logics, re‐appear in contemporary development projects of biodiversity conservation, land administration, and residential tourism. I argue, therefore, that land grabbing is a longstanding process that is routinely operationalized through the state and naturalized through development practices that are underpinned by ongoing racial hierarchies.

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Land control-grabbing in Guatemala: the political economy of contemporary agrarian change

Cited by 77 publications

References 18 publications

Global value chains and traditional supply chains: Evidence from Guatemala

Global value chains and traditional supply chains: Evidence from Guatemala

The political economy of agriculture for development today: the “small versus large” scale debate revisited

The Power to Plunder: Rethinking Land Grabbing in Latin America

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