Dispossession through land titling: Legal loopholes and shadow procedures to urbanized forestlands in the Yucatán Peninsula

Under certain circumstances, land titling, property regime changes, and land-use conversions yield substantial profits. Yet few people possess the wealth, knowledge, and networks to benefit from these procedures. In the Yucatán Peninsula, a region recently targeted as a prominent investment location by the Mexican national government (mainly with the “Tren Maya” megaproject) and the private capital, forestlands collectively owned as ejidos by Mayan peasants are on the trend to complete privatization. Against the arguments of neo-institutional economists that in the 1990s promoted legal reforms and justified land-titling programmes worldwide to make available credit for uncapitalized peasants, individual land titling of commonly held lands in Mexico increased the overall economic value of the land, but not the investment in economic activities related to farmland and indigenous communities. Instead, those policies enabled land grabbing, dispossession, and urbanization. In this article, I describe recent private-led initiatives of ejido land titling that have redefined agricultural land's uses, meanings, and values for capitalist accumulation. In doing so, I explain how and why Mayan ejidatarios have been excluded from the monetary benefits of land titling, a top-bottom dispossession process only accomplished through shadow procedures and former privatization of ejidos' common lands.     

India’s land grab deals in Ethiopia: Food security or global politics?

The so called “land grabbing” has gained increased attention since the outburst of the global financial and food crisis triggering a new trend of acquiring land for outsourcing production of food, feed and agrofuels. India as one of the newly emerging economies is investing heavily in farmland as it faces enormous challenges to sustain its rising population and growing energy demands. This paper analyses Indian land acquisitions in Ethiopia, looking into India’s motivations to acquire farmland and what incentives does Ethiopia have to lease out land to large investors. The paper draws on trade data between India and Ethiopia, expert interviews, studies and reports on the use and productivity of grabbed land. In view of the land grabbing and food security debate, the paper critically evaluates whether acquiring farmland in Ethiopia can indeed contribute to food and energy security in India.     

Organizing anarchy: The food security–biodiversity–climate crisis and the genesis of rural land use planning in the developing world

Shortfalls in global food production, coupled with the growing visibility of climate change's disruptive effects, have underlined for many observers the importance of devoting rural lands to their ‘optimal’ use, where they can make maximal contributions to the global imperatives of feeding the human population and maintaining vital environmental services. In this context observers have endorsed rural land use planning as a way to insure that, at least in theory, lands get devoted to their best uses. In practice, land use planning in the developing world has resembled ‘organized anarchy’. Small landholders with insecure land tenure, overseas investors seeking large land deals, NGOs representing indigenous peoples, government officials, and staff from international environmental NGOs and multilateral organizations have come together in strategic action fields to struggle over and sometimes negotiate land use plans for contested landscapes. These plans represent a strategic, spatially explicit response to the climate change–biodiversity–food security crisis.     

Whereto land fragmentation–land grabbing in Romania? The place of negotiation in reaching win–win community-based solutions

The present study seeks to discuss and advance the understanding of land fragmentation and land grabbing within Romania's economic historiography landmarks, depicting how the origins of the land property issues are deeply embedded politically, socially, and culturally in history and still strongly exist in today's collective mind. Scientific evidence on the perceptions and behaviors of land owners regarding land grabbing was obtained through a non-probabilistic survey. The data collection instrument was a structured questionnaire, which was applied through face-to-face interviews to a sample of 52 Romanian land owners from various regions of the country. The results show that in the land owners’ perception, if land is sold to foreigners, national security is the most vulnerable aspect. Regarding the preference for the nationality of the land buyer, the majority of the people investigated prefer to sell to a Romanian buyer, thus making a clear statement in favor of the Romanian ownership of the land. The empirical results are placed in the context of a bottom-up approach—negotiation, with a high potential, unexplored in Romania, for implementing win–win agricultural solutions. Negotiation is valued as part of the answer to land fragmentation–land grabbing, a “back and forth” matter. The study recommends several measures for land use policy, tailored according to specific Romanian conditions, such as using an open access electronic registry of foreign land acquisitions, establishing a threshold for these acquisitions, and securing the preservation of the agricultural destination of land. In a political and economic context where land fragmentation and grabbing are two realities that are hard to deny and separate, a significant implication of the research is the enrichment of knowledge related to the sources of the “chronical” nature of fragmentation and to land owners’ attitude toward land grabbing, thus contributing to the design and implementation of future integrative land use solutions.     

老挝矿产资源勘查开发的思考与建议

老挝矿产资源丰富,优势矿种的勘查开发价值较高;中国企业在老挝已经拥有一定数量的普查权、勘探权、开采权,为矿产资源勘查开发奠定了较好基础。中国企业在下一步工作中应注意：①加强找矿远景分析和矿床开发经济意义的可行性评价;②重视斑岩型铜金矿的勘查开发;③适度控制钾盐的勘查开发速度;④金属矿的矿业权向重要成矿区适度集中。     

Cashing in or driving development? Cross-border traders and maize contract farming in northeast Laos

Contract farming is receiving renewed attention in research and policy in the Mekong region of Southeast Asia, as countries continue to undergo varied agrarian transitions and agri-food production has become increasingly regionalized. In northeast Laos, previously isolated upland communities have experienced rapid transformations resulting from contract production of hybrid maize, mainly for industrial feed processing and livestock in Vietnam. Based on extensive qualitative fieldwork in the Lao-Vietnamese borderlands, this article explores the quasi-“developmental” functions assumed by cross-border traders, in the context of unfulfilled rural policy objectives, in which these “micro-investors” provide informal extension and infrastructure to enable agricultural commercialization. The article examines the extent to which this dynamic is adequately captured by notions of patronage, or whether subtle mutual dependencies are at work, as livelihoods are rebalanced between subsistence and commodity crops in remote border landscapes.     

Land grabbing: A review of extent and possible consequences in Romania

Land grabbing represents a fundamental problem in the transitional and post-transitional economies. The transfer of land property rights impose a dramatically change of agricultural production structure, including affecting the food safety and security. The main aim of this article is the analysis of the possible effects and transformation imposed by the transfer of land property in a post-transitional agricultural economy and to identify possible solution in valuing the lands as main production factors. Also in the study are taking into consideration the effects of Common Agricultural Policy financing mechanism in supporting land transfers.