Large-scale agricultural investments trigger direct and indirect land use change: New evidence from the Nacala corridor, Mozambique

Abstract

The Nacala corridor in Mozambique is one of the main host regions for large-scale agricultural investments (LAIs) in Africa. LAI companies produce crops for export, with scarcely known impacts on small-scale farmers and the environment. We conducted 101 interviews with smallscale farmers living near an LAI to elicit their perceptions of the LAI's impacts on their own land use and the environment. Additionally, we used remote sensing to assess land use change between 2000 and 2015 in two study areas in Guruè and Monapo districts. The results show that LAIs caused deforestation both directly and indirectly. The main environmental impact perceived by farmers was that LAIs had blocked their access to rivers. Positive spillovers did occur, but could not compensate for the negative impacts experienced. A peaceful coexistence of LAIs and smallscale farmers in the Nacala corridor is only possible if existing injustices around the occupation of land are resolved.

Impacts of land use intensification on human wellbeing: Evidence from rural Mozambique

“…These findings likely reflect the low technological input and land-abundant context of Mozambique, however current trends of increasing global land scarcity means that agricultural intensification processes will require technological inputs (Chamberlin et al, 2014). Whilst the sites selected for this study were not directly affected by conflicts rising from foreign companies acquiring land rights (though see Zaehringer et al, 2018), it is impossible to rule out leakage affects, such as households opening up new land for agriculture as a result of their displacement, contributing further to land scarcity. Land scarcity typically increases income inequalities, which is increasingly pronounced in land-abundant countries such as Mozambique when local land conflicts arise from large-scale land investments (Zaehringer et al, 2018).…”

“…Mozambique has a unique land use and land tenure history, largely shaped by colonial rule, civil conflict and resolution, and more recent emergence of forced displacement from largescale land acquisitions. With independence from Portugal in 1975, large colonial-run farms were abandoned and subsequently converted into state-run enterprises, following socialist development ideology (Zaehringer et al, 2018). During the Civil War (1977-1992, State enterprises were discontinued and many rural households abandoned rural areas (Unruh, 1998); the civil war reduced the amount of land under agricultural production, largely confining agricultural areas to urban peripheries (Temudo and Silva, 2011).…”

“…According to the Mozambican Land Law (Government of Mozambique, 1997), land use rights can be allocated providing no prior usage or if the requester can prove their use for at prior ten years. However, recent land conflicts have emerged whereby companies have obtained land rights from often-inhabited areas, leading to land and resource conflicts (Bleyer et al, 2016;Zaehringer et al, 2018). The Mozambican Land Law (Government of Mozambique, 1997) has legal procedures whereby farmers must be compensated by means of an agreed payment or relocation.…”

“…M D agricultural land is cultivated by smallholders (estimated holding size of 1.5-2.5 hectares), A cultural area is leased by the private sector (Government of Mozambique, 2015), giving rise to increasing land conflicts between local smallholders and large-scale commercial operators (Zaehringer et al, 2018).…”

Understanding How Smallholders Integrated into Pericoupled and Telecoupled Systems

“…This scenario was described by Dolan and Humphrey [14] as Kenyan and Zimbabwean farmers struggled to produce vegetables meeting the standards demanded by retailers within the United Kingdom. In other cases, smallholders may be displaced by large-scale land and water grabs as exogenous global forces (e.g., transnational resource demands and land investments) spur acquisition of local-level resources for purposes of production and profit [15][16][17][18]. Increasing the share of smallholders' benefits and reducing their vulnerability from being exposed to global markets is therefore vital for ensuring sustainable development of smallholder systems.…”