Is there something really new about "land grab" except its extent? What is wrong with an investment contract allowing the holder to buy a farm and to export wheat to Saudi Arabia, or soybeans and maize as cattle feed to Korea, or to plant and process sugar cane and palm oil into ethanol for...

The number of hungry in the world has crossed the one billion mark, a dubious milestone that has been attributed in large part to consecutive food and economic crises. Over ninety-eight percent of these individuals live in the developing world. Ironically, a great majority are involved in food...

Motivated by the conclusions from various modelling studies, modifications to the bioenergy sector regulations are under way in Europe and in the USA to account for emissions from indirect land-use change (ILUC). Despite their influence on the policy-making, evaluations of the capacity of...

The article examines the food security implications of the WTO Agreement on Agriculture. It places the Agreement in historical context, examines its key provisions, and argues that the Agreement systematically favors industrialized country agricultural producers at the expense of farmers in...

This overview article examines the various dimensions of sustainable coffee as well as the actors involved and their perceptions on how to advance the market from niche to mainstream. The issues at hand are very complex, with different types of coffee producers, manufacturing/roasting companies...

Foreign direct investment (FDI) and trade are driving forces in agro-food global value chains (GVCs), allowing companies to spread their activities across countries in complex production chains. This study explores the landscape of FDI in the agriculture and food sectors, using a novel database...

Large-scale agricultural land acquisitions have been covered substantially in recent literature. Despite the wealth of theoretical and empirical studies on this subject, there is no study that has reviewed existing literature in light of concerns over sustainable and equitable management. This...

This paper studies the determinants of foreign land acquisition for large-scale agriculture. To do so, gravity models are estimated using data on bilateral investment relationships, together with newly constructed indicators of agro-ecological suitability in areas with low population density as...

Large-scale land acquisitions, or "land grabs", concentrate in developing countries which are also known for their corruption-friendly setting caused by a weak institutional framework. We argue that corrupt elites exploit this given institutional set-up to strike deals with international...