What owns the land: the corporate organization of farmland investment

Ashwood, Loka; Canfield, John; Fairbairn, Madeleine; Master, Kathryn De

doi:10.1080/03066150.2020.1786813

Cited by 35 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 68 publications

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“…Though the farm sizes in Sweden have been increasing rapidly, it has not seen the development of the mega large farms managed by a corporate farming sector, as seen elsewhere in the Global North, such as Eastern Europe (Kuns et al, 2016), and North America (Ashwood et al, 2020;Magnan, 2011). At present the Swedish Land Acquisition Act, prevents legal entities (e.g., agribusiness corporations) from owning agricultural land.…”

Section: Background: Swedish Agrarian Structurementioning

confidence: 99%

Towards a Deeper Understanding of Agricultural Production Systems in Sweden – Linking Farmer’s Logics with Environmental Consequences and the Landscape

Marquardt

Eriksson

Kuns

2022

Rural Landscapes: Society, Environment, History

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Farm restructuring is a continuous on-going process supported by national agricultural policy in Sweden; while striving for more efficient farms in terms of labor and yields, farms enlarge their holdings of arable land and animals. The environmental consequences of more intensive land uses have in turn stimulated environmental policies to deal with negative environmental consequences. In this paper we argue that an underlying problem with both of these policy approaches is that they primarily emphasize specific components of farms and fail to see the farm as an interconnected system. In this paper we therefore focus on the farm as a 'system' and on the systemic role of farming in the broader landscape. We develop a theoretical framework of farming logics which help to better understand agricultural production systems. Drawing on 34 semi-structured interviews with farmers, we divide the farms into three farming logic categories: I) 'production vanguards'; II) 'landscape stewards'; and III) 'environmental vanguards'. We use these categories to analyze the role of key aspects such as size, intensity of production, specialisation, how farmer preferences and knowledge influence land use systems, and interactions of these with the local landscape. The findings show how farms that on the one hand share some basic characteristics can display quite different farming logics and vice versa. We argue that these farming logics offer a potentially positive diversity in farming approaches, with complementary and mutually dependent roles in Sweden's overall food system.

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Section: Background: Swedish Agrarian Structurementioning

confidence: 99%

Towards a Deeper Understanding of Agricultural Production Systems in Sweden – Linking Farmer’s Logics with Environmental Consequences and the Landscape

Marquardt

Eriksson

Kuns

2022

Rural Landscapes: Society, Environment, History

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“…Privatization of commonly held property in Yucatan Mexico, for example, is linked to increased deforestation (Lawrence et al 2019). Absentee land control on the Central American frontier typifies a global trend in which corporate financial and agribusiness entities seek land for financial speculation and investment (Ashwood et al 2020;Borras et al 2012).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, changes in land tenure, ownership, and control-the ability to exclude others from access land and its resources-are social processes difficult to detect at a distance, and thus remain poorly understood and unquantified across the globe (McSweeney & Coomes 2020). Land system science has recently called for greater attention to land control as a key factor in shaping land cover and resource use (Ashwood et al 2020;McSweeney & Coomes 2020), and others have noted the methodological challenges of 'seeing' land control using conventional approaches such as satellite imagery analysis (Marinaro et al 2020;Tellman, et al 2020a). Others point to the difficulties of assessing land control where land registries and cadasters are not publicly available, or are underfunded, corrupted, or seldom updated-all of which render legal titles an inadequate representation of who controls land and its use (Anseeuw & Baldinelli 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Narcotrafficking and Land Control in Guatemala and Honduras

Tellman

McSweeney

Manak

et al. 2021

Journal of Illicit Economies and Development

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On frontiers dominated by illicit activities such as narcotrafficking, criminal organizations' usurpation of land and resources is profoundly changing rural livelihoods and prospects for biodiversity conservation. Prior work has demonstrated how drug trafficking catalyzes forest loss and smallholder dispossession but does not make clear the extent to which the long-term control of land is moved from state, Indigenous, or smallholders to criminal or other actors. This study attempts to describe those shifts. Specifically: we develop a typology of land control, and use it to track how drug trafficking initiates shifts from public lands and Indigenous territories to private large holdings. We examine an array of secondary sources indicating shifts in land control related to narcotrafficking, including illegal land seizure documents, news media, and surveys of land managers. In absence of formal land registries, frontier actors may signal their control over land through land use change. After establishing where changes in land control have taken place, we analyzed land use and resulting changes in spatial patterns of forest loss. We found that large scale sustained forest losses (over 713,244 ha and 417,329 ha), in Guatemala and Honduras, respectively, from 2000-2019) corresponds with areas undergoing shifts in control towards large landowners, often related to narcotrafficking. Incomplete empirical data on land control prevent comprehensive attribution of all sustained forest loss related to narcotrafficking. Yet the limited evidence gathered here indicates drug trafficking activities initiate widespread and sustained shifts and consolidation of who controls land and resources at the frontier. Our work suggests that in Central America and likely elsewhere, control over land-quite separate from property rights-is the key factor in understanding social and ecological change.

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“…A political ecological approach helps reveal how powerful actors within the global system of commodity grain production reproduce the systems that uphold their interests through both material and rhetorical means. Industrial agriculture entrenches itself not only through corporate concentration and consolidation (Hendrickson 2015;Howard 2016), agribusiness lobbying (Baines 2015), or financialization of farmland (Ashwood et al 2020), but also through the rhetoric deployed across its productive heart in middle America.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

"We feed the world": the political ecology of the Corn Belt's driving narrative

Rissing

2021

Journal of Political Ecology

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Industrial grain production occupies most of Iowa's farmland. Around the edges of corn and soybean monocultures, however, small-scale, diversified farmers establish alternative agricultural operations and sell to local markets. One narrative, "we feed the world", stretches across these two spheres; its roots lie in post-World War II geopolitics, and its contemporary iterations reflect the actions of private agricultural interest groups. As a rhetorical strategy, asserting "we feed the world" invokes neo-Malthusian fears to reposition differences in agricultural production systems within a moral framework where yield primarily determines agricultural legitimacy. This article ethnographically analyzes how this narrative intersects the lives and livelihoods of conventional and alternative farmers alike. Today, the narrative serves three functions: defending industrial agricultural systems against criticisms,justifying the pursuit of ever-higher yields on moral grounds, and gatekeeping agricultural legitimacy. Examining this discursive mechanism yields insight into the diversity of strategies through which actors within the industrial agricultural system reproduce particular land use practices in service of their own interests.

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What owns the land: the corporate organization of farmland investment

Cited by 35 publications

References 68 publications

Towards a Deeper Understanding of Agricultural Production Systems in Sweden – Linking Farmer’s Logics with Environmental Consequences and the Landscape

Towards a Deeper Understanding of Agricultural Production Systems in Sweden – Linking Farmer’s Logics with Environmental Consequences and the Landscape

Narcotrafficking and Land Control in Guatemala and Honduras

"We feed the world": the political ecology of the Corn Belt's driving narrative

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