Abstract
Abstract In the last years, the term “land grab” has gained international importance and has been used as a catch-all frase for (trans)national commercial land transactions mainly revolving around the production and export of food, animal feed, biofuels, timber and minerals. The main literature explains it as a consequence of the financialization process that included land as an asset. Our main proposition in this article is that for Brazil, speculative land acquisitions played an important role in the portfolio of many economical agents, but with the deregulation of financial markets and the financialization of the seventies it became more intensive. To do so, first we present the different theoretical approaches to the land grab phenomenon and add a post-keynesian view on land transactions to the debate. Second, we analyze the available data on agriculture and livestock foreign investments in Latin America with the main focus on Brazil. Third, we present the legal and institutional aspects of foreign-owned land in Brazil. In conclusion, we propose that land grabbing will always have a speculative component, but after the deregulation of financial markets, the pressure for land acquisition is larger and the efforts in regulation and control over land acquisition in Brazil have not been effective in controlling acquisitions by foreigners.
Highlights
The set of problems involving land property in Latin America has been the subject of controversy, legislation and political struggle ever since the occupation of its territory by the European colonizers in the post-Mercantilism era
Mostly between 2006 and 2009, a great movement of land acquisitions around the world, carried out by different agents and countries mainstreamed this discussion. This debate has coined the new expression “land grab”, which has produced a good deal of controversy around its causes and cansequences. First it can be characterized, as by Borras and Franco (2012b, p. 34), in the following manner: ‘‘Land grab’ has become a catch-all phrase to refer to the current explosion ofnational commercial land transactions mainly revolving around the production and export of food, animal feed, biofuels, timber and minerals.’
It begins with a comparison of data from Unctad, the Brazilian Central Bank and Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform (Incra), that finds that there has been growing investment in agribusiness and that land has been acquired in large quantities
Summary
The set of problems involving land property in Latin America has been the subject of controversy, legislation and political struggle ever since the occupation of its territory by the European colonizers in the post-Mercantilism era. Mostly between 2006 and 2009, a great movement of land acquisitions around the world, carried out by different agents and countries mainstreamed this discussion This debate has coined the new expression “land grab”, which has produced a good deal of controversy around its causes and cansequences. Item four consists of a study of foreign direct investment in Brazil and its agriculture & livestock sector It begins with a comparison of data from Unctad, the Brazilian Central Bank and Incra, that finds that there has been growing investment in agribusiness and that land has been acquired in large quantities. The evidence shows that this body of regulations, by virtue of the absence of regulation of land property and inadequate land registration, does not manage to achieve its objective of controlling land acquisition by foreigners, a discussion broached in the conclusion
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