SEFS director Dan Brown is a co-author on a recent publication in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) that demonstrates how corporate farms, which have steadily risen in Africa, can displace small farmers leading to greater land inequity, poverty, and food insecurity.
The research highlighted how land use policies can reinforce existing inequalities. Food price volatility, land scarcity, and increasing land values in the early 2000s created an incentive for private companies to acquire farm and forest land. Sub-Saharan Africa was a hotspot of land investments, with commercial acquisitions often occurring in agricultural areas already in use by smallholder farmers. In nearby villages, some of these land-use interventions led to dispossession of land or displacement for local farmers, resulting in greater inequality. Households with the smallest land holdings bear the brunt of the impact of large-scale land acquisitions, according to the paper.
The study, which surveyed households surrounding large corporate farms in Tanzania, examined how land use change from commercial acquisitions led to significant consequences for livelihoods and development.