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The scholarly debate around ‘global land grabbing’ is advancing theoretically, methodologically and empirically. This study contributes to these ongoing efforts by investigating a set of ‘small-scale land acquisitions’ in the context of a recent boom in banana plantation investments in Luang Namtha Province, Laos. In relation to the actors, scales...
Contexts in source publication
Context 1
... Luang Namtha province, the field site for this study (see Fig. 1), there has been an extensive agricultural transformation and com- mercialisation over the past 15-20 years, strongly influenced by the province's close proximity to China. Political and economic reforms in both Laos and China -including a transformation from a planned to socialist market economy in the late-1980s, the re- opening of ...
Context 2
... Namtha, 28.04.2014). The landscape is characterised by a rugged mountainous terrain and narrow river valleys, with the Mekong River forming the district's north-western border with Myanmar and the main district road connecting the district centre with Muang Sing -a main trading town and gateway to China -in the east (Lagerqvist, 2013; see map Fig. 1). The case study village Ban Sirimoon is located approximately 30 km east of Muang Long town on the main road to Muang Sing town. The majority of the village's 66 households (323 people in August 2014) are Doi Samtao people, a very small ethnic minority group; however, as Buddhists, they share many cultural traits with the larger group ...
Citations
... Against the backdrop of neoliberal policies and disinvestment in smallholder farming, distress sales compound such concentration. Often led by such local elites or land brokers in alliance with external capital (Sitko and Jayne 2014), and done informally or led by the state in a politically-motivated effort to place largescale land deals and smallholder plots side by side (as in the 'leopard spot' reforms in Cambodia, Beban 2021), such deals have transformed agrarian relations in many places (Friis and Nielsen 2016;Woods 2020;Xu 2018). ...
... 9 The literature has predominantly focused on Current 1. Yet, Currents 2 and 3 combined are likely to be more widespread than Current 1. Moreover, even within the dominant 7 The few exceptions include Hilhorst, Nelen, andTraoré (2011), Kandel (2015), Friis and Nielsen (2016), Beban and Gorman (2017), Xu (2018), Borras, Franco, and Nam (2020), Woods (2020). 8 Among the early publications that flagged this issue are Hunsberger (2010), Kaag and Zoomers (2014), Schönweger and Messerli (2015). ...
... Since land and resource dependency characterize a large share of the rural population in the Mekong Region, land dispossession and loss of access to forest resources combined with lacking alternative options such as employment generated by land-based investments are key drivers of negative poverty outcomes of commercial agricultural investments (Hunt & Leonard, 2023, this collection;Lewis et al., 2023, this collection) In areas with land loss, both monetary and multidimensional poverty increase. Reduced access to land and other natural resources pushes peasants to depend increasingly on food markets, which results in higher cash expenditures (Friis & Nielsen, 2016;Junquera & Grêt-Regamey, 2020;Nanhthavong et al., 2021Nanhthavong et al., , 2022. Income from employment in commercial agriculture is often not sufficient to cover these additional costs because food prices on the market might outweigh households' own production. ...
The agrarian transition, with its rapid growth in land-based investments, has radically altered agrarian and forest landscapes across the Mekong Region. These processes were enabled and accelerated by choices of actors in the public and private sectors with the aim of alleviating poverty and boosting socioeconomic development. We examine to what extent these goals were achieved and for whom, with a focus on poverty alleviation, gender equality, and forest conservation. Our descriptive assessment shows that the sustainability outcomes of the agrarian transition offer a highly variegated picture that is often not reflected in national level statistics used for monitoring the distance to target towards achieving the 2030 Agenda. Based on our findings, we sketch pathways for a more sustainable agrarian transition in the region. These pathways are explored in greater detail in three framing papers of the special issue “Agrarian Change in the Mekong Region: Pathways towards Sustainable Land Systems’.
... Within Laos, the Bolaven Plateau which extends across Attapeu, Champsack, Salavan, and Sekong is a major destination for foreign investment for formal rubber concessions . These concessions are one example of a broader trend of increased concessions in Laos since 2000, incentivized by the government policy framework of 'Turning Land Into Capital' (Ingalls et al., 2018, Friis and Nielsen, 2016. ...
... These negative impacts stem from dispossession of resources or resettlement, including land for subsistence production of primarily rice, as well as communal resources, such as forests for the collection of nontimber forest products as sources of food (Drbohlav & Hejkrlik, 2018;Nanhthavong et al., 2021;Scheidel et al., 2013). Environmental and health impacts resulting from intensified commercial production were also raised, with former land users concerned for their personal health as well as the ability to restore the land after investors depart (Friis & Nielsen, 2016). There is documented loss of subsistence self-sufficiency and resiliency, coupled with an increased dependency on markets for food and/or income and the loss of indigenous identity and breakdown of social institutions (Hennings, 2018;Scheidel et al., 2013). ...
Agricultural commercialization has been a development focus in the Mekong region for several decades, resulting in varying outcomes. In response to competing claims and policy advice, this meta-narrative review not only examines the literature on the impacts of agricultural commercialization in the Mekong on local livelihoods, but also investigates the research traditions that shape the conceptualization of the research topics, study design, and recommended solutions. We explore narratives from three research traditions, namely the neoclassical, Marxian political economy, and neopopulist approaches. On the whole, the neoclassical literature finds positive impacts on household incomes and thus contributes to reducing poverty; the Marxian political economy tradition finds that capitalist development in agriculture creates and deepens social differentiation through which certain groups may benefit while others are negatively impacted; lastly, the neopopulist perspective finds negative impacts compared to previous, traditional livelihoods. The ideological premises informing these studies and implications for policy are discussed.
... Hall noted that 'secure' booms show that the basic tenure relations existed before crop booms, and specific territories). Locally, however, the same boom crops, such as rubber and banana crops, are found on both sides of the China-Laos borderland, where (trans)national investments coexist to fulfill the Chinese market demand (Sturgeon 2013;Kobayashi 2014, 2015;Friis and Nielsen 2016). Therefore, we argue that a border is not only a division between growing and consuming boom crops; a border also creates a 'buffer', where agricultural production factors are supplied from both domestic and foreign sources. ...
... Thirdly, relationally, many studies have reported the implications of crop booms for agrarian livelihoods (Belton, van Asseldonk, and Bush 2017;Vicol, Pritchard, and Htay 2018;Xu 2018;Nghiem, Kono, and Leisz 2020). Although many studies have interpreted how crop booms have caused the dynamics of smallholder livelihoods, land-uses, social relations, and political reactions 'from below' (Li 2011;Borras and Franco 2013;Friis and Nielsen 2016;Kenney-lazar 2018aKenney-lazar , 2018bXu 2019a), this study argues that existing literature may fail to adequately capture grounded agrarian changes. Here, two crucial points are highlighted. ...
... To start with, as Hall, Hirsch, and Li (2011) noted, smallholders are at the heart of many crop booms. Most related studies demonstrate the direct involvement of smallholders, who cultivate boom crops themselves (or 'smallholder-driven crop booms') or who act as wage laborers, such as with commercial banana crops in the China-Laos borderland, maize in northern Myanmar, and coffee in northern Vietnam (Zhang, Kono, and Kobayashi 2014;Friis and Nielsen 2016;Nghiem, Kono, and Leisz 2020;Woods 2020). However, we argue that smallholders might not have to participate in crop booms themselves, based on our observations. ...
This paper examines the transformation of agrarian livelihoods due to crop booms at the China-Myanmar borderland. A key finding is that local villagers have rented out their land to outside investors looking to make fruit boom investments. However, the villagers neither cultivated the same crops themselves, nor were they hired as wage laborers. Overall, this study finds that crop booms provide local villagers with opportunities to reallocate natural resources and adjust their livelihoods. We argue that the dynamics of agrarian livelihoods are co-produced as the result of transnational labor migration and state-led borderland repositioning under secure land tenure relations. This study contributes to the current discussion regarding the changes undergone by an agrarian society experiencing crop booms.
... Laos is a prime example of rapid land use change owing both to the expansion of large-scale agricultural investments (Schönweger et al., 2012;Nanhthavong et al., 2020) and to smallholder farmers leasing out land or signing contractfarming agreements with investors to satisfy demand from neighboring countries (Dubus, 2016;Friis and Nielsen, 2016;Lu and Schönweger, 2017). Landlocked Laos is squeezed between the powerful economic forces of China, Vietnam, and Thailand ( Figure 1) (Dubus, 2016). ...
... The Lao government provided many foreign investors with large-scale land concessions for plantations (Rutherford et al., 2008) in hopes that these would reduce local poverty (Dwyer, 2007). Further, it permitted investors to enter directly into leasing or contract-farming agreements with smallholders (Friis and Nielsen, 2016). However, evidence shows that because of high transportation costs, land-based investment in remote areas has been less attractive to investors than hoped, and poor rural families have been forced to migrate abroad for work due to the lack of income opportunities at home (Nanhthavong et al., 2020). ...
... Due to its proximity to the international border of China's Yunnan province, the area has experienced a substantial influx of Chinese investments in recent decades, especially in rubber and sugarcane, and more recently, also in other perennial and seasonal cash crops like banana, cardamom, sacha inchi (Plukenetia volubilis L.), watermelon, and pumpkin, among others. Different investments models have been implemented, ranging from contract farming to land users leasing their land to investors directly (Friis and Nielsen, 2016;Broegaard et al., 2017;Lu, 2017). ...
Forest-frontier landscapes in the humid tropics display distinct land use change dynamics compared to other world regions, providing useful examples of current global environmental and development challenges. In northwestern Laos, part of the former Golden Triangle region, investments in value chains for commercial crops—mainly to fulfill Chinese market demands—have triggered various land use changes and put increasing pressure on remaining biodiverse forest areas. Capturing the existing land use change trajectories is a key initial step toward further studies assessing land use change impacts. However, methodological challenges arise when conducting spatially-explicit change assessments in these regions, given the high temporal variability of land use at the plot level, compounded by the paucity of good quality satellite imagery. Thus, we applied a novel approach combining analysis of very high-resolution (VHR) satellite imagery with participatory mapping. This enabled joint collection of annual land use information for the last 17 years together with local land users, shedding light on temporally dense land system dynamics. For decades, the government of Laos has sought to halt shifting cultivation, labeling it environmentally degrading, and to reduce poverty through promotion of permanent commodity-oriented commercial agriculture. Among other things, this gave rise to a boom in banana and rubber investments in Luang Namtha province in order to satisfy growing Chinese demand for these commodities. The present paper investigates the impact of these cash crop booms on land use transitions and whether they reduced pressure on forest-frontier areas, as ostensibly desired by government authorities. Our study is among the first to demonstrate in a spatially-explicit manner that subsistence agriculture—in less than two decades—has virtually disappeared in northern Laos due to diverse cash-crop production and agricultural commercialization initiatives linked to Chinese investments. As subsistence-focused cultivation systems are being replaced by land uses solely aimed at commercial production for export, a telecoupled land system is being developed in northwestern Laos with potentially manifold impacts for sustainable development.
... It is worth noting that the companies that had engaged in the OPA program were registered with and supervised by both countries [26]. This distinguished them from other Chinese agricultural investors [41,42] that run their businesses under less supervision in Laos. Additionally, we found that these companies came from the border areas of Yunnan Province, and over four-fifths of them were privately owned, leading to various difficulties such as small-scale, inadequate capital, and weak resistance to market risk. ...
Cross-border agricultural investments (CBAIs) are considered to be an essential strategy that is expected to bridge the gap between poverty reduction and rural development in marginalized regions. Agricultural investments serve as a necessary indicator of the performance of international cooperation in China’s Belt and Road Initiative. It is of great significance to summarize the success factors of Chinese investors under this initiative and, more importantly, to improve the sustainability of CBAI projects and associated rural development. Extensive opium poppy cultivation is a barrier to poverty reduction in marginalized communities in less-developed countries such as Laos and Myanmar. The CBAIs in the opium poppy alternative (OPA) project conducted by Chinese agricultural companies aim to reduce drug crop cultivation and rural poverty based on a perspective of economic development. However, little is known about how participating companies cooperate with ex-poppy farmers to achieve investment success. In this study, we adopted case interviews and questionnaire surveys from Chinese agricultural companies in the China–Myanmar–Laos border region, with the aim to explore the success factors of CBAIs in the OPA project under China’s Belt and Road Initiative. The results indicated that the success of agricultural companies involved in the OPA project depended on three key factors, including (1) institutional and employee capacity building, (2) responses to policy and market incentives, and (3) support for the participation of ex-poppy farmers and community development. Our findings contribute to the theoretical and practical understanding of capacity improvements for foreign investors in China’s Belt and Road Initiative and shed light on the support of international agricultural cooperation for rural livelihood improvement.
... During the past number of decades, there has been a proliferation of literature pertaining to large-scale land acquisitions or land grabbing in the mountainous mainland region of Southeast Asia (Hall 2011a, Hall et al. 2011, Magdoff 2013, Friis and Nielsen 2016, Schoenberger et al. 2017. Borras et al. (2012:850) highlighted that land grabbing is essentially "control grabbing," which means to "grab the power to control land and other associated resources (such as water), in order to derive benefit from the control of such resources." ...
... In recent decades, because of crop booms, the mountainous mainland region of Southeast Asia has witnessed an unprecedented transformation, from subsistence agriculture to market-oriented agriculture (Hall 2011a, Zhang et al. 2015, Rambo 2017, Hurni and Fox 2018, Vicol et al. 2018). This development is driven by advantageous natural or physical conditions, transport links, increased market access, and trade liberalization (Hall 2011a, Xu et al. 2006, Friis and Nielsen 2016. Consequently, crop booms have been proposed to tilt economic, social, and environment systems toward the "plantationocene" through extractive and enclosed plantations (Kenney-Lazar and Ishikawa 2019). ...
... Few studies have explained how the characteristics of fruit booms differ from those of other crop booms, with particular focus on the fruits of herbaceous plants. [4] As indicated by Friis and Nielsen (2016), fruit booms for crops such as bananas are small-scale and short-lived and differ from large-scale and long-term land acquisitions and investments. The concession processes of fruit booms are therefore more informal than those of other boom crops. ...
Investment in fruit cultivation is currently transforming agricultural production and rural landscapes in the mountainous region of mainland Southeast Asia, especially in the borderlands and lowlands of this region. Unlike large-scale land acquisitions and investment in previously reported boom crops, e.g., rubber trees and oil palms, investment in fruit cultivation is generally short-term, small-scale, and often informal. Additionally, different from previous crop booms, investors in fruit booms often relocate geographically or spatially to seize opportunities. Research has yet to investigate this aspect of today’s investment boom in fruit cultivation. Beyond discussing a certain fruit type in a specific area, this study documents the geographic mobility of investment as the distinguishing characteristic of investment in fruit cultivation in Dehong, Xishuangbanna, Mandalay, and Luang Namtha, all of which are located along the China-Myanmar (Burma) and China-Laos borders. This is achieved through grounded methodological approaches. These sites have become a hot spot of booms in the production of fresh fruit, e.g., banana and watermelon. This investment mobility can be generally divided into the following two types: domestic investors relocating within one country, and foreign investors relocating across borders, thus, (re)locating investment. Comparison and synthesis are employed to show that ecological and social-political constraints drive investor mobility in fruit booms along liberalized agri-trade and regional comparative advantages. This study advances the understanding of associated issues by characterizing and excavating the geographic mobility of investors in the current era of small-scale land acquisitions and investment in fruit booms in a broader scope. These findings expand the theoretical literature on land grabbing and crop booms and help to (re)consider related environmental consequences and well-being of the affected population.
... A considerable number of researchers have investigated socioeconomic impacts of land acquisitions in recent years (Hall 2013, Friis and Nielsen 2017, Malkamäki et al. 2018, Müller et al. 2021. Emerging evidence also links land acquisitions to environmental impacts such as deforestation (Davis et al. 2015a(Davis et al. , 2020, soil degradation (Shete et al. 2016), pressure on the local water balance (Breu et al. 2016), and chemical pollution (Friis and Nielsen 2016). However, there is less research on climate-related impacts of the land rush (Liao et al. 2021). ...
Large-scale land acquisitions repeatedly fall short of their acclaimed socioeconomic benefits and are associated with unintended social, economic, and ecological costs. In Laos, the government has started to question its own “Turning Land into Capital” policy, and reviews land acquisitions or concessions with regard to their socioeconomic impacts. Empirical investigations of environmental impacts of land concessions, however, remain underrepresented. We link the nation-wide concession development between 2001 and 2017 with associated land use changes and quantify related land use change-induced emissions. Results show that land acquisitions for agriculture, forestry, and mining affect mainly forests and land previously used for shifting cultivation and permanent agriculture; e.g., rice paddies. Consequently, land conversions caused by concessions resulted in net carbon emissions of 4.9 Mt CO2e yr-1 on average in 2001–2017, which amounted to 34% of total emissions from land conversions. Even tree plantations that are meant to serve as net carbon sinks caused net emissions, but those data are the least robust. The relatively low carbon emission intensity of shifting cultivation compared to the high carbon emission intensity of concessions challenges the dominant narrative of shifting cultivation as a causal factor for forest degradation. Political means of fostering sustainable development include the reduction of land acquisitions because of their emissions intensity, and minimization of emissions and social conflict induced by granted concessions, for example, by allocating land with low carbon densities and obtaining consent of local land users.
