Impact of transnational land acquisitions on local food security and dietary diversity

Abstract

Foreign investors have acquired approximately 90 million hectares of land for agriculture over the past two decades. The effects of these investments on local food security remain unknown. While additional cropland and intensified agriculture could potentially increase crop production, preferential targeting of prime agricultural land and transitions toward export-bound crops might affect local access to nutritious foods. We test these hypotheses in a global systematic analysis of the food security implications of existing land concessions. We combine agricultural, remote sensing, and household survey data (available in 11 sub-Saharan African countries) with georeferenced information on 160 land acquisitions in 39 countries. We find that the intended changes in cultivated crop types generally imply transitions toward energy-rich, but nutrient-poor, crops that are predominantly destined for export markets. Specific impacts on food production and access vary substantially across regions. Deals likely have little effect on food security in eastern Europe and Latin America, where they predominantly occur within agricultural areas with current export-oriented crops, and where agriculture would have both expanded and intensified regardless of the land deals. This contrasts with Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, where deals are associated with both an expansion and intensification (in Asia) of crop production. Deals in these regions also shift production away from local staples and coincide with a gradually decreasing dietary diversity among the surveyed households in sub-Saharan Africa. Together, these findings point to a paradox, where land deals can simultaneously increase crop production and threaten local food security.

Global agricultural trade and land system sustainability: Implications for ecosystem carbon storage, biodiversity, and human nutrition

“…Land acquisitions therefore tend to reduce the cropland availability per capita in undernourished countries, further jeopardizing their food security. 62 M€ uller et al 63 found that many of the land deals in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa increase the area efficiency of land systems but at the same time threaten local nutritional security by shifting the production away from local staples toward export-oriented crops.…”

“…132 A better understanding of the impacts of trade on nutrient availability for exporting systems will be important, considering the increasing importance of large-scale land acquisitions in the Global South. 63 2. Studies have focused on the effect of trade on habitat conversion and ecosystem carbon storage, a central function of ecosystems.…”

Broken promises: a rights-based analysis of marginalised livelihoods and experiences of food insecurity in large-scale land investments in Tanzania

“…Because the regression analysis performed in this study focuses on the individual level experiences, national-level variables such as global economic shocks, and other variables that may explain food (in)security such as climatic condition or seasonality, soil profile, GDP, and economic development profile of the country (Baumgartner et al, 2015;Müller et al, 2021) were not included in the regression model. This explains the low R-square value of 17%.…”

Shrinking agricultural land and changing livelihoods after land acquisition in Vietnam

“…Another critical issue is that agricultural land acquisition also raises concerns about long-term food security. In a study in 11 African and 39 other countries, Muller et al (2021) showed areas where agricultural land transactions threaten local food security, but the degree of influence differs across continents. In Eastern Europe and Latin America, land acquisition does not much affect food security as the crops here are export-oriented, whereas the opposite phenomenon is seen in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa (Muller et al, 2021).…”

“…In a study in 11 African and 39 other countries, Muller et al (2021) showed areas where agricultural land transactions threaten local food security, but the degree of influence differs across continents. In Eastern Europe and Latin America, land acquisition does not much affect food security as the crops here are export-oriented, whereas the opposite phenomenon is seen in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa (Muller et al, 2021). In comparison, a study conducted in six Middle Eastern and North African countries indicated that their food security rankings are at risk of falling by 2030.…”