No abstract

No abstract

The literature on land-use frontiers has overwhelmingly focused on active frontiers of expansion. We focus on an emerging frontier. We studied the decisions, narratives, and practices of the actors driving land-use change in Niassa, Mozambique. Based on ethnographic research carried out between early 2017 and late 2018 among investors engaged in commercial agriculture and plantation forestry, we show how successive waves of actors with different backgrounds, motives, and business practices arrived in Niassa and attempted to establish farms or plantations yet repeatedly failed and left, or remained but continued to struggle. We show how even though waves come and go, they do leave sediments behind, legacies that over time add up to overcome the various constraints that investors face and gradually form the conditions for a frontier to emerge. We argue that the build-up of these legacies, particularly after the end of the civil war in 1992, has given rise to a new wave, which is qualitatively different from the previous ones in the sense that the actors did not arrive from elsewhere but were already present in Niassa. This wave thus emerges from within the region, building on the legacies of previous waves, indicating that over time endogenous processes may replace externally driven waves. We contribute to frontier theory by arguing that waves and legacies shape emerging frontiers through their dynamic interaction.

To understand how land-use frontiers emerge, we studied the actors driving investments in Niassa province, Mozambique. Our ethnographic research over 2017-2018 among commercial agriculture and forestry investors shows that successive waves of actors with different backgrounds, motives and business practices, arrived in Niassa to establish farms or plantations yet repeatedly failed. Waves come and go but leave sediments – legacies – that add up to gradually build the conditions for a frontier to emerge. The accumulation of these legacies has given rise to a new wave by actors from within the region, indicating that over time endogenous processes may replace externally-driven waves.

Agricultural intensification, through increased yields, and raising incomes, through enhanced labor productivity, are two dimensions prioritized for sustainable agricultural development. Prioritizing these two outcomes leaves labor intensity as a hidden adjustment variable. Yet, when agriculture is mainstay and the prospects of labor absorption in other sectors are scarce, the density of agricultural employment is central for livelihoods. We revise relationships of land and labor productivity and labor intensity with farm size, using standardized data for 32 developing countries. We show that labor productivity increases with farm size, while land productivity and labor intensity decrease with farm size nonlinearly. Technical efficiency increases with farm size. We further systematize the evidence on how, beyond the farm level, local contexts can be pivotal in choosing how to prioritize the dimensions of the trade-off space. Our findings contribute to debates on the fate of small-scale farmers, and call for contextualized decisions.