Land Grabbing in Europe? Socio-Cultural Externalities of Large-Scale Land Acquisitions in East Germany

Ramona Bunkus,Insa Theesfeld

doi:10.3390/land7030098

Abstract

Recently, we witnessed an immense increase in international land transactions in the Global South, a phenomenon slowly expanding in northern industrialized countries, too. Even though in Europe agriculture plays a decreasing economic role for rural livelihoods, the increases in land transactions by non-local, non-agricultural investors pervades rural life. Nevertheless, the underlying processes are not yet well understood. Large-scale land acquisitions describe such purchases and leases in a neutral way, while ‘land grabbing’ expresses negative consequences for rural people. We investigate whether and under which conditions the term land grabbing is justified for the phenomenon observed in Europe. We propose six socio-cultural criteria that scholars should consider to come to an initial classification: legal irregularities, non-residence of new owners, centralization in decision-making structures, treating land as an investment object, concentration of decision-power, and limited access to land markets. We supplement our findings with empirical material from East Germany, where such land acquisition processes occur. Our paper contributes to the ongoing discussion about agricultural structural change in Europe, which is intensified by increasing land prices and a new distribution of landownership but likewise strongly intertwined with rural development.

Highlights

With large-scale land acquisitions (LSLA) increasing in pace and extent in the Global South over the last two decades, key issues of negative social effects for rural people have been widely studied [1,2,3,4].LSLA in the Global South are often criticized especially for constituting an enclosure in the affected countries: Former used land is regarded as underused or abundant, subsequently removed from the attached rural community, and handed to a new owner
We interviewed 135 rural people with a standardized survey who were met at public places in the villages of which 127 questionnaires could be used for analysis
We aim to shed some light on how these spheres are interlinked, e.g., whether land ownership makes a difference in how people farm and whether rural people recognize the importance of farming for their village

Summary

Introduction

With large-scale land acquisitions (LSLA) increasing in pace and extent in the Global South over the last two decades, key issues of negative social effects for rural people have been widely studied [1,2,3,4].LSLA in the Global South are often criticized especially for constituting an enclosure in the affected countries: Former (commonly) used land is regarded as underused or abundant, subsequently removed from the attached rural community, and handed to a new owner. With large-scale land acquisitions (LSLA) increasing in pace and extent in the Global South over the last two decades, key issues of negative social effects for rural people have been widely studied [1,2,3,4]. There may be no access to ancestral community land which may have fulfilled other functions than food production. These enclosures may have political consequences too—they are described as ‘neocolonialism’ by some authors when former de-facto land rights are ignored [5,6,7,8]. Lacking a legal guarantee for de-facto land rights can even lead to dispossession of land—explored by scholars as a human rights problem [2,3].

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