Oane Visser

Land grabbing in post-Soviet Eurasia: the world’s largest agricultural land reserves at stake

‘Land grabbing’ in Africa by China, and other populous, high-income Asian countries such as South Korea, has received considerable attention, while land grabbing in post-Soviet Eurasia has gone largely unnoticed. However, as this article shows, foreign state and private companies are also acquiring vast areas of farmland in this region. The article first discusses the factors that make post-Soviet Eurasia such an attractive region for international investment, arguably encompassing much greater agricultural land reserves than most regions of sub-Saharan Africa or Asia. Second, in view of the use of media and web-based data in this article, the methodological limitations of researching land investments are discussed. Third, an overview is given of the processes of land accumulation and farm acquisition. Both domestic and international accumulation of land are dealt with in the domestic context of agricultural development and institutions. Furthermore, the main actors (investors) involved in land grabbing are distinguished (according to their country of origin and legal or institutional form). Fourth, the article outlines the main obstacles (and points of contention) concerning the emergence (and effectiveness/performance) of domestic, and especially international, agroholdings in the region. Some preliminary findings are presented on the possible effects of land grabbing on local populations in this region.

Oligarchs, megafarms and land reserves: understanding land grabbing in Russia

This paper seeks to unravel the political economy of large-scale land acquisitions in post-Soviet Russia. Russia falls neither in the normal category of ‘investor’ countries, nor in the category of ‘target’ countries. Russia has large ‘land reserves’, since in the 1990s much fertile land was abandoned. We analyse how particular Russia is with regards to the common argument in favour of land acquisitions, namely that land is available, unused or even unpopulated. With rapid economic growth, capital of Russian oligarchs in search of new frontiers, and the 2002 land code allowing land sales, land began to attract investment. Land grabbing expands at a rapid pace and in some cases, it results in dispossession and little or no compensation. This paper describes different land acquisitions strategies and argues that the share-based land rights distribution during the 1990s did not provide security of land tenure to rural dwellers. Emerging rural social movements try to form countervailing powers but with limited success. Rich land owners easily escape the implementation of new laws on controlling underutilized land, while there is a danger that they enable eviction with legal measures of rural dwellers. In this sense Russia appears to be a ‘normal’ case in the land grab debate.

‘Quiet Food Sovereignty’ as Food Sovereignty without a Movement? Insights from Post-socialist Russia

Abstract What does food sovereignty look like in settings where rural social movements are weak or non-existent, such as in countries with post-socialist, semi-authoritarian regimes? Focusing on Russia, we present a divergent form of food sovereignty. Building on the concept of ‘quiet sustainability’, we present a dispersed, muted, but clearly bottom-up variant we term ‘quiet food sovereignty’. In the latter, the role of the very productive smallholdings is downplayed by the state and partly by the smallholders themselves. Those smallholdings are not seen as an alternative to industrial agriculture, but subsidiary to it (although superior in terms of sociality and healthy, environmentally friendly produce). As such, ‘quiet food sovereignty’ deviates from the overt struggle frequently associated with food sovereignty. We discuss the prospects of ‘quiet food sovereignty’ to develop into a full food sovereignty movement, and stress the importance of studying implicit everyday forms of food sovereignty.

Is Russia the Emerging Global ‘Breadbasket’? Re-cultivation, Agroholdings and Grain Production

Expectations of Russia becoming a global ‘breadbasket’ have been nurtured by its rise to the top group of global wheat exporters, the abundance of abandoned land, assumed yield gaps and the apparent ‘success’ of agroholdings. It is argued here that becoming a global breadbasket is hindered by substantial costs of re-cultivating abandoned land, management and financial problems of megafarms and agroholdings, lack of infrastructure for exports and increased domestic demand for feed grains as input for the meat sector. Furthermore, as Russian wheat production is extremely volatile it might increase global price volatility, rather than contributing to global food security.

Running out of farmland? Investment discourses, unstable land values and the sluggishness of asset making

This article critically analyzes the assumption that land is becoming increasingly scarce and that, therefore, farmland values are bound to rise across the globe. It investigates the process of land value creation, as well as its flipside: value erosion and stagnation, looking at the various mechanisms involved in each. As such, it is a study of how the financialization of agriculture affects the process of land commoditization. I show that, for farmland to be turned into an asset, a whole range of conditions have to be fulfilled, presenting a typology of asset making in the context of farmland. Asset making, like commoditization, is a process of assemblage, and it is less straightforward and less stable than generally assumed. Further, I argue that ‘asset making’ is not a one-way process. The article is based on an analysis of global data on land values and the case of farmland investment in post-Soviet farmland (Russia and Ukraine).

State marionettes, phantom organisations or genuine movements? The paradoxical emergence of rural social movements in post-socialist Russia

Of all the rural social movements in the world, those in post-socialist Russia have been considered to be among the weakest. Nevertheless, triggered by the neo-liberal reforms in the countryside, state attention to agriculture and rising land conflicts, new social movement organisations with a strong political orientation are emerging in Russia today. This sudden burst of civil activity, however, raises questions as to how genuine and independent the emerging organisations are. Our research shows that many rural movements, agricultural associations, farm unions and rural political parties lack constituency, support the status quo and/or are actually counterfeits (what we call ‘phantom movement organisations’). With this analysis, we aim to explain the nature of social movements in the post-Soviet countryside and offer an original contribution to the theory on and practice of rural social movements.

Post-socialist agricultural cooperatives in Russia: a case study of top-down cooperatives in the Belgorod region

Abstract Through a study of agricultural service cooperatives in Russia’s Belgorod region, this article addresses two gaps in the literature: first, the dearth of empirical studies on cooperatives in post-socialist Russia; second, the lack of attention to top-down cooperatives in the global literature, and the overly negative approach to the topic in the few extant studies. Whereas state attempts to establish agricultural cooperatives in Russia in a top-down fashion have largely failed, such cooperatives have sprung up widely in Belgorod. The article investigates: (1) what influence the (regional) state exerts on the cooperatives, and how that affects their daily functioning and viability; and (2) to what extent such top-down cooperatives might evolve into less state-led forms, such as classic member-driven or business-like cooperatives.

Multicultural Vanguard? Sarajevo’s Interethnic Young Adults between Ethnic Categorisation and International Spaces

Abstract This article analyses how Sarajevo’s young adults from a middle class, interethnic background deal with the rigid ethnic categorisation enforced by state institutions and society. Their strategies (exit, reframing, and partial separation) appear to be unsatisfactory to the actors themselves, and wield generally no influence on the institutions they wish to change. Three factors have been setting into motion this dynamic: first, the difficulty of escaping ethnic group thinking when attempting to reframe ethnic categories; second, the rationality of avoiding open defiance to ethnic categorisation; and third, the young adults’ tendency to centre their life on interethnic and international spaces. As a ‘project elite’, Sarajevo’s young adults are rather separated from society, both discursively and socio-economically.