Transnational Farmland Investment: A Risky Business.
2015. Journal of Agrarian Change 15 (4):560-568.
Abstract
Transnational farmland investments in much of the Global South are risky for all parties involved: agribusiness firms and their financial backers; host-country governments; and the people on the spot. This essay focuses on political risk, which encompasses policy shifts, legal disputes and push-back from affected populations. It draws on the analytical framework of ‘powers of exclusion’ (see the work of D. Hall, P. Hirsch and T.M. Li) to consider how transnational investors attempt to deploy force, law and market transactions to secure and legitimate farmland deals; yet they remain fragile, as do the governments that enable them.