The emergence of ‘flex crops and commodities’ within a fluid international food regime transition, the rise of BRICS and middle-income countries, and the revalued role of nation-states are critical context for land grabbing. These global transformations that shape and are reshaped by contemporary land grabbing have resulted in the emergence of competing interpretations of the meaning of such changes, making the already complex governance terrain even more complicated. We are witnessing a three-way political contestation at the global level to control the character, pace, and trajectory of discourse, and the instruments in and practice of land governance. These are ‘regulate to facilitate’, ‘regulate to mitigate negative impacts and maximize opportunities’, and ‘regulate to block and rollback’ land grabbing. Future trajectories in land grabbing and its governance will be shaped partly by the balance of state and social forces within and between these three political tendencies. Given this an unfolding global development, this article offers a preliminary analysis by mapping under-explored areas of inquiry and puts forward initial ways of questioning, rather than firm arguments based on complete empirical material. El surgimiento de ‘los cultivos y productos básicos flexibles’ dentro de una transición del régimen alimentario internacional, el auge de los países emergentes BRICS y de los países de ingresos medios, y la función reevaluada de las naciones-estado son fundamentales en el contexto del acaparamiento de la tierra. Estas transformaciones globales que dan forma y se han remodelado mediante el acaparamiento contemporáneo de la tierra, han resultado en el surgimiento de interpretaciones opuestas del significado de tales cambios, complicando aún más al complejo terreno de gobernanza. Estamos presenciando una controversia política de tres tendencias a nivel global para controlar el carácter, el ritmo, la trayectoria del discurso y los instrumentos en la práctica de la gobernanza de la tierra. Estas tendencias son ‘regular para facilitar’, ‘regular para mitigar los impactos negativos y maximizar las oportunidades’, y ‘regular para bloquear y reducir el acaparamiento de la tierra’. Las trayectorias futuras en el acaparamiento de la tierra se forjarán en parte, por el equilibrio entre el estado y las fuerzas sociales dentro y entre estas tres tendencias políticas. Dado esto como un desarrollo global en curso, este artículo ofrece un análisis preliminar clasificando las áreas de interés poco exploradas y plantea formas iniciales de cuestionamiento, en lugar de argumentos firmes basados en material completamente empírico. 在动荡不定的国际粮食规制的转型中“发挥种植物和商品的作用”的出现，金砖国家及其联合（BRICS）和中等收入国家的崛起，以及民族国家被重新估量的价值，对于土地掠夺是关键的背景。被当代土地掠夺塑造和重塑的全球变革，已经导致了对这些变化的内涵各执一词的解读的出现，致使已经复杂的治理状况变得更为复杂。我们正在目睹全球层面涉及三方的政治格局，该局面控制着土地管理的特点、速度、话语轨迹，以及手段与实践。它们是“为了提供便利的调节”、“为了减轻负面影响、扩大机遇的调节”、“为阻止和回落土地掠夺的调节”。未来土地掠夺的轨迹及其治理将在一定程度上由国家与这三种政治派别内或期间的社会力量社会的平衡来决定。考虑到这一全球发展，本文通过考察欠开发地区及提出初步的疑问，做出了初步的分析，而不是基于全面实证材料的坚实论证。 إن نشأة "المحاصيل والسلع المرنة" في إطار تحول النظام الغذائي الدولي، وصعود دول الاقتصاديات المتنامية حديثاً (البرازيل وروسيا والهند والصين وجنوب إفريقيا) وبلدان الدخل المتوسط، وإعادة تقييم دور الدولة- الأمة، تمثل سياقاً حرجاً لعمليات الاستيلاء على الأراضي. وتضطلع هذه التحولات العالمية بتشكيل وإعادة تشكيل عمليات الاستيلاء المعاصرة على الأراضي، وقد أدت إلى بروز تفسيرات متعارضة لمعنى هذه التغيرات، مما زاد من تعقيد مسألة الحوكمة المعقدة أصلاً. فنحن نشهد على المستوى العالمي منافسةً سياسيةً ثلاثية على التحكم في طابع وإيقاع ومسار خطاب وأدوات ممارسة حوكمة الأرض. فهناك منافسة بين رؤية "التنظيم من أجل تيسير" الاستيلاء على الأراضي، و"التنظيم من أجل تخفيف الآثار السلبية وتعظيم الفرص" للاستيلاء، و"التنظيم من أجل المنع وإعادة الأراضي" المستولى عليها. وسوف تتشكل المسارات المستقبلية للاستيلاء على الأراضي، جزئياً، حسب موازين القوى بين الدولة والقوى الاجتماعية، وبين الاتجاهات السياسية الثلاثة السابقة. ومع وضع هذا التطور العالمي في الاعتبار، تقدم هذه الورقة تحليلاً أولياً من خلال مناطق بحثية جديدة، وتطرح تساؤلات أكثر منها أفكاراً راسخة تدعي الاستناد إلى تجارب تطبيقية مكتملة. 유동적인 국제 식량 레짐 전환에서 “유연한 수확과 상품”의 등장, BRICs와 중간 소득 국가들의 대두와 국민 국가 의 재평가 된 역할이 토지 매입의 핵심적인 맥락이다. 현재 토지 매입에 의한 이러한...

This paper aims to broaden the scope of analysis of the contemporary global land rush by examining crop booms not only outside, but inside China; and investment flows not only from China, but also within and into China. It does so by examining the eucalyptus and sugarcane sectors in southern China, which have witnessed investment booms during the past decade, with capital being infused by both domestic capital and foreign capital, including Finnish, Indonesian, and Thai companies. Our argument addresses three key issues: (a) explaining why foreign and domestic companies enter into a multitude of lease and grower contracts involving holders of micro-plots, (b) revisiting the notion of extra-economic coercion, and (c) a critique of thinking about flows of large-scale investments centred primarily on nationality. These issues are central in current debates in the land grabs literature, and our study offers a different perspective from dominant narratives.

This paper reflects on the concept of the Plantationocene through an analysis of sugarcane plantations in Guangxi province, China. It argues that although these plantations are owned and operated by local villagers, they are de facto controlled by corporations, and subject to state intervention through a ‘zoning scheme’. They are constructed and operated according to the same logic as other plantations all over the world, namely, the logic of extraction based on cheap land and labor. By demonstrating that plantations are not necessarily large-scale and do not always entail the alienation of land and labor, this paper hopes to empirically broaden the concept of the Plantationocene and to highlight the extractive nature of and the power relations around plantations.

Poverty alleviation through industrial development in China contributes to the long-standing debate on how the poor could benefit from the development. It creates four industrial organizing approaches (i.e. households operating independently, intermediary organizations providing linkages, modern enterprise leading and asset income distribution) and three ways of participation for the rural poor (i.e. participating as petty commodity producers, wage workers and shareholders), in which productivity has been improved and production relations adjusted. While highlighting the specificity of China’s situation, this paper argues for the more general implications of China’s case for other developing countries due to its theoretical hybridity in addressing poverty alleviation and development.

In this paper we argue that the most critical factor that shapes the character and trajectory of the sugarcane sector in China is neither land nor labour, individually, but rather the interactions of social dynamics around land and labour, and specifically migrant labour. We argue that not only that the political economy of land and labour together drive agrarian transformation in the sugarcane sector, but more precisely that it is the process of how the labour regime shapes land politics, and how land politics shapes the labour regime, that is the central driving force. Furthermore, this mutual reshaping of land and labour regimes is multi-sited, occurring simultaneously within China and Myanmar, and in the China–Myanmar corridor. Our hunch is that the dynamics we observe here have broader resonance worldwide, especially in major farmer–farmworker land/labour flows along transnational corridors.