Land grabbing

Land grabbing is the contentious issue of large-scale land acquisitions: the buying or leasing of large pieces of land by domestic and transnational companies, governments, and individuals. While used broadly throughout history, land grabbing as used in the 21st century primarily refers to large-scale land acquisitions following the 2007-2008 world food price crisis. Obtaining water resources is usually critical to the land acquisitions, so it has also led to an associated trend of water grabbing. By prompting food security fears within the developed world and new found economic opportunities for agricultural investors, the food price crisis caused a dramatic spike in large-scale agricultural investments, primarily foreign, in the Global South for the purpose of industrial food and biofuels production. Although hailed by investors, economists and some developing countries as a new pathway towards agricultural development, investment in land in the 21st century has been criticized by some non-governmental organizations and commentators as having a negative impact on local communities. International law is implicated when attempting to regulate these transactions.

The term "land grabbing" is defined as very large-scale land acquisitions, either buying or leasing. The size of the land deal is multiples of 1,000 square kilometres (390 sq mi) or 100,000 hectares (250,000 acres) and thus much larger than in the past. The term is itself controversial. In 2011, Borras, Hall and others wrote that "the phrase 'global land grab' has become a catch-all to describe and analyze the current trend towards large scale (trans)national commercial land transactions." Ruth Hall wrote elsewhere that the "term 'land grabbing', while effective as activist terminology, obscures vast differences in the legality, structure, and outcomes of commercial land deals and deflects attention from the roles of domestic elites and governments as partners, intermediaries, and beneficiaries."

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