Land Grabbing and Jatropha in India: An Analysis of ‘Hyped’ Discourse on the Subject

Anika Trebbin

doi:10.3390/land10101063

Abstract

In the early 2000s, powerful narratives (re-)emerged around the food–fuel–land nexus, which, combined with the financial, food, and fuel crises of 2007–08, sparked new concerns about the finiteness of our resources and triggered, as well as partially justified, the then following land rush. Around the same time, a hyped debate also developed around biofuels as a potential fix to some of the global scarcity problems in which jatropha held a particularly prominent position as a new miracle crop. This study examines the concurrence of jatropha and the land grabbing hype in India, the leading promotor of the plant globally, and asks what effect the global land grab discourse had on actual jatropha investments in the country. To do so, an extensive literature review, discourse analysis, and qualitative survey were conducted, with a specific focus on jatropha investors. The study found that both hyped discourses have impacted investor decisions, but the impact varied depending on the types of company. This study adds a yet underrepresented investor perspective to the global land grabbing discourse and highlights a need to also consider the role of small and medium enterprises in land grabbing processes.

Highlights

The public and scholarly discourse around land grabbing started in the early 2000s, intensifying from 2010 onwards
Jatropha emerged as a hyped biofuel crop from 2000 onwards
The jatropha hype emerged around the same time as the hype around global land grabbing and for both discourses, India happened to become a main stage

Summary

Introduction

The public and scholarly discourse around land grabbing started in the early 2000s, intensifying from 2010 onwards. Activist engagement with the topic has from the start been accompanied by its scholarly examination and both have played a key role in articulating the global land grab debate [5,6]. Almost a decade before the land grabbing discourse took off, the hype around biofuels commenced. While initially the excitement around biofuels focused on finding a clean and secure alternative to fossil fuels, multiple other expectations have been attached to them over the course of the “biofuel boom” [7] Within the discourse around biofuels, around the same time, so-called flex crops gained more and more prominence [10]

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Conclusion