Ben White

A new political moment is underway. Although there are significant differences in how this is constituted in different places, one manifestation of the new moment is the rise of distinct forms of authoritarian populism. In this opening paper of the JPS Forum series on ‘Authoritarian Populism and the Rural World’, we explore the relationship between these new forms of politics and rural areas around the world. We ask how rural
transformations have contributed to deepening regressive national politics, and how rural areas shape and are shaped by these politics. We propose a global agenda for research, debate and action, which we call the Emancipatory Rural Politics Initiative (ERPI, ww.iss.nl/erpi). This centres on understanding the contemporary conjuncture, working to confront authoritarian populism through the analysis of and
support for alternatives.

Political reactions ‘from below’ to global land grabbing have been vastly more varied and complex than is usually assumed. This essay introduces a collection of ground- breaking studies that discuss responses that range from various types of organized and everyday resistance to demands for incorporation or for better terms of incorporation into land deals. Initiatives ‘from below’ in response to land deals have involved local and transnational alliances and the use of legal and extra-legal methods, and have brought victories and defeats. The relevance of political reactions to land grabbing is discussed in light of theories of social movements and critical agrarian studies. Future research on reactions ‘from below’ to land grabbing must include greater attention to gender and generational differences in both impacts and political agency.

The most recent ‘land rush’ precipitated by the convergent ‘crises’ of fuel, feed and food in 2007–2008 has heightened the debate on the consequences of land investments, with widespread media coverage, policy commentary and civil society engagement. This ‘land rush’ has been accompanied by a ‘literature rush’, with a fast-growing body of reports, articles, tables and books with varied purposes, metrics and methods. Land grabbing, as it is popularly called, is now a hot political topic around the world, discussed amongst the highest circles. This is why getting the facts right is very important and having effective methodologies for doing so is crucial. Several global initiatives have been created to aggregate information on land deals, and to describe their scale, character and distribution. All have contributed to building a bigger (if not always better) picture of the phenomenon, but all have struggled with methodology. This JPS Forum identifies a profound uncertainty about what it is that is being counted, questions the methods used to collate and aggregate ‘land grabs’, and calls for a second phase of land grab research which abandons the aim of deriving total numbers of hectares in favour of more specific, grounded and transparent methods.

The contributions to this collection use the tools of agrarian political economy to explore the rapid growth and complex dynamics of large-scale land deals in recent years, with a special focus on the implications of big land deals for property and labour regimes, labour processes and structures of accumulation. The first part of this introductory essay examines the implications of this agrarian political economy perspective. First we explore the continuities and contrasts between historical and contemporary land grabs, before examining the core underlying debate around large- versus small-scale farming futures. Next, we unpack the diverse contexts and causes of land grabbing today, highlighting six overlapping mechanisms. The following section turns to assessing the crisis narratives that frame the justifications for land deals, and the flaws in the argument around there being excess, empty or idle land available. Next the paper turns to an examination of the impacts of land deals, and the processes of inclusion and exclusion at play, before looking at patterns of resistance and constructions of alternatives. The final section introduces the papers in the collection.

Over the past several years, the convergence of global crises in food, energy, finance, and the environment has driven a dramatic revaluation of land ownership. Powerful transnational and national economic actors from corporations to national governments and private equity funds have searched for ‘empty’ land often in distant countries that can serve as sites for fuel and food production in the event of future price spikes. This is occurring globally, but there is a clear North–South dynamic that echoes the land grabs that underwrote both colonialism and imperialism. In addition, however, there is an emerging ‘South–South’ dynamic today, with economically powerful non-Northern countries, such as Brazil and Qatar, getting significantly involved. The land— and water and labor—of the Global South are increasingly perceived as sources of alternative energy production (primarily biofuels), food crops, mineral deposits (new and old), and reservoirs of environmental services. National governments have looked inward as well, in what is often internal colonialism whereby land seen officially as marginal or empty is set aside for commodity production. The pace and extent of these land deals has been rapid and widespread (GRAIN 2008). Estimates by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) suggest that roughly 20 million hectares exchanged hands in the form of land grabs between 2005 and 2009 (von Braun and Meinzen-Dick 2009). The World Bank report on land grabs (or, as the Bank calls it, agricultural investment), released in September 2010, estimated this global phenomenon at 45 million hectares (World Bank 2010). Sub-Saharan Africa is the site of the most speculative major land deals, including one thwarted deal in Madagascar that brought down the government (Cotula et al. 2009), while major areas are being targeted for commodity crops, fuel crops, investment, and ecosystem services in South America, Central America, Southeast Asia, and the former USSR (Zoomers 2010, Visser and Spoor 2011). There are various mechanisms through which land grabbing occurs, ranging from straightforward private–private purchases and public–private leases for biofuel production to acquisition of large parcels of land for conservation arrangement, with variegated initial outcomes (Hall 2011, Wolford 2010). Some of this land has been cleared of existing inhabitants and users but not yet put into production; in many cases buyers and investors are simply preparing for the next global crisis.