Carlos Oya

Global Land Grabs: historical processes, theoretical and methodological implications and current trajectories

Abstract Scholars, practitioners and activists generally agree that investor interest in land has climbed sharply, although they differ about what to call this phenomenon and how to analyse it. This introduction discusses several contested definitional, conceptual, methodological and political issues in the land grab debate. The initial ‘making sense’ period drew sweeping conclusions from large databases, rapid-appraisal fieldwork and local case studies. Today research examines financialisation of land, ‘water grabbing’, ‘green grabbing’ and grabbing for industrial and urbanisation projects, and a substantial literature challenges key assumptions of the early discussion (the emphasis on foreign actors in Africa and on food and biofuels production, the claim that local populations are inevitably displaced or negatively affected). The authors in this collection, representing a diversity of approaches and backgrounds, argue the need to move beyond the basic questions of the ‘making sense’ period of the debate and share a common commitment to connecting analyses of contemporary land grabbing to its historical antecedents and legal contexts and to longstanding agrarian political economy questions concerning forms of dispossession and accumulation, the role of labour and the impediments to the development of capitalism in agriculture. They call for more rigorous grounding of claims about impacts, for scrutiny of failed projects and for (re)examination of the longue durée, social differentiation, the agency of contending social classes and forms of grassroots resistance as key elements shaping agrarian outcomes.

Testing Claims about Large Land Deals in Africa: Findings from a Multi-Country Study

Abstract Despite much research on large land deals for plantation agriculture in Africa, reliable data remain elusive, partly because of limited access to information and practical and methodological challenges. International debates are still shaped by misperceptions about how much land is being acquired, where, by whom, how and with what consequences. This article aims empirically to test some common perceptions through an analysis of findings from research conducted in three African countries: Ethiopia, Ghana, and Tanzania. The article presents new evidence on the scale, geography, drivers and features of land deals, relates findings to data from earlier research and international efforts to monitor land deals, and outlines possible ways forward for ongoing monitoring of the deals.

The Land Rush and Classic Agrarian Questions of Capital and Labour: a systematic scoping review of the socioeconomic impact of land grabs in Africa

Abstract This paper has two main objectives. First, to address the problematic of the socioeconomic impact of land deals in sub-Saharan Africa by looking at what we know from the available literature so far, namely what has been claimed and how much research has been done, as well as why we do not know very much despite the quantity of material published. This is done via a systematic scoping review, which aims to avoid some of the biases inherent in conventional literature reviews and to provide evidence for some basic features of the emerging research on land grabs in Africa, with specific reference to their contribution to the understanding of livelihood impacts. Second, the article links empirical questions about the impact and implications of land grabs with a discussion of alternative (neglected) research questions, notably the implications of the current land rush phenomenon for the classic agrarian questions of capital and labour, as understood in agrarian political economy. Thus the paper proposes a re-engagement with debates on the classic agrarian questions in a Marxist political economy tradition in order to move the land grab research agenda towards more conceptually and empirically challenging research questions.

Women Working for Wages: Putting Flesh on the Bones of a Rural Labour Market Survey in Mozambique∗

The life stories of six women working for wages are analysed together with quantitative data from the first ever large-scale rural labour market survey undertaken in Mozambique. Quantitative data from three provinces are used to emphasise the heterogeneity of the characteristics of women working for wages as well as to examine hypotheses about dynamic processes suggested by the life stories. It is argued that there are important methodological advantages to be gained if researchers can cross-check their own quantitative survey data with qualitative data they have collected themselves, as well as with a wide range of historical and secondary sources. The policy implications of the findings concerning the extreme deprivation suffered by many rural wage workers, the intergenerational transmission of poverty and the relative success of some rural women are discussed.

Lifting the blinkers : a new view of power, diversity and poverty in Mozambican rural labour markets

This paper presents some results from the largest rural labour market survey yet conducted in Mozambique. Evidence from three provinces shows that labour markets have a significant impact on the lives of a large number of poor people, and that employers exercise considerable discretion in setting wages and conditions of casual, seasonal and permanent wage employment. The evidence presented comes from a combination of a quantitative survey based on purposive sampling with other techniques, including interviews with large farmers. The findings contrast with ideas that rural labour markets are of limited relevance to poverty reduction policy formulation in Africa, and the paper concludes with methodological, analytical and policy recommendations.

The World Development Report 2008: inconsistencies, silences, and the myth of ‘win-win’ scenarios

The World Development Report 2008 (WDR-2008) on agriculture and development has been received with much expectation and controversy. This paper welcomes some aspects of the WDR-2008 that help us reinvigorate some debates on agricultural development, so far marginalised in international development policy agendas. The paper, however, focuses on some critical problems in the report and the World Banks stance on agriculture. First, there are tensions between advocacy and research and between the World Banks rhetoric and operational realities. Secondly, the report suffers from the usual adherence to superficial win-win scenarios that mask conflict of interest and power relations. Thirdly, the WDR-2008 is caught in a tension between neo-populist pro-small farmer views and ‘modernist’ pro-agribusiness stances. Fourthly, the analysis of agricultural development in isolation from broader development processes and especially without a systematic analysis of industrialisation and agriculture–industry relations seriously limits the analytical and empirical value of the report.

Large- and Middle-Scale Farmers in the Groundnut Sector in Senegal in the Context of Liberalization and Structural Adjustment

The article presents preliminary ?ndings of a research survey on large-and middle-scale farmers and the groundnut sector in Senegal. The sampling of this group of producers is justi?ed on the basis of the high degree of social strati?cation and farmers’ heterogeneity existing in Senegal, and the methodological problems associated with approaches focused on the ‘ average representative farmer’. This argument leads to a task of grouping farmers into distinct classes according to capitalist tendencies, dynamism and scale of production. The core part of the article tackles the political economy of the process of agricultural liberalization and structural adjustment in Senegal and their effects on the behaviour and production conditions of the classes of large-and middle-scale farmers analysed in the ?rst part.

How to do (and how not to do) fieldwork on Fair Trade and rural poverty

Abstract The Fair Trade, Employment and Poverty Reduction (FTEPR) project investigated poverty dynamics in rural Ethiopia and Uganda. When designing fieldwork to capture poor people often missing from standard surveys, several methodological challenges were identified and, in response, four decisions were made. First, FTEPR focused on wage workers rather than farmers and improved on standard questionnaires when collecting labour market information. Second, researchers adopted contrastive venue-based sampling. Third, sampling was based on clearly identifiable “residential units” rather than unreliable official registers of “households”. Fourth, an economic definition of “household” was used rather than the more common definition based on residential criteria.

Fairtrade cooperatives in Ethiopia and Uganda: uncensored

The Fairtrade lobby ignores the degree to which the poorest rural people depend on wage labour incomes, pretending that ‘smallholder’ producers and members of cooperatives are homogeneous and that all or most of them can exit poverty as a result of interventions designed to increase farmers’ income from crop production. The argument here, based on a four-year study of the wages and working conditions of labourers hired by ‘smallholder’ tea and coffee producers in Uganda and Ethiopia, is that activists concerned to reduce poverty should be channelling resources to reward good employers rather than mythical ‘small’ farmers.

Agricultural Maladjustment in Africa: What Have We Learned after Two Decades of Liberalisation?

Given the extent and significance of rural poverty in sub-Saharan Africa (henceforth ‘Africa’ or ‘SSA’) much of the literature on poverty reduction continues to focus on agriculture and rural development. Agriculture still plays a major role in African economies: it typically contributes 40 per cent of exports, 30 per cent of foreign exchange earnings, 25 to 30 per cent of GDP, and about 70 per cent of employment in the region as a whole (World Bank 2005). Moreover, as the picture appears rather bleak in terms of trends, the debate on agricultural policies, adjustment and reforms continues. The 1980s and 1990s were characterised by the dominance of agrarian neoliberalism and the concomitant agricultural adjustment reforms promoted by donor agencies and international lending institutions in most of Africa (Oya 2005). Despite this apparent hegemony of one-size-fits-all policy packages, the timing, content and speed of neoliberal reforms has varied across countries and time over the last 25 years, thus making sweeping generalisations inappropriate.