Agrofood-feed-fuel
complex & the land grab
Philip McMichael
Cornell University
Agro-food-feed-fuel complex?
 Integrated
agro-industrial sector:
crops interchangeable as fungible
investments  indiscriminate production
 Food regime vector:
with class & conjunctural conditions
structuring policy & markets
‘security mercantilism’
 New
development ~ food/energy crises
 Replacing ‘free trade driven ‘food security’
 State/investor compacts to guarantee food
& fuel supplies for consumer citizens vs
food insecure.
‘aginvestment’ emphasis
 National
food security strategies
 Protection of land & natural resource rights
 How can these be met?
 Investment in sustaining smallholders,
pastoralists, fishers and indigenous people
rather than sustaining consumers
World Bank, WDR 2008
 ‘new
agriculture’ – containing smallholders
w/in value chains
 Peasant agriculture as impoverished
baseline for development (paradigm)
 Peasant out-migration =
underachievement or choice
Alternative explanation of
peasant out-migration
“the massive movement of food around the
world is forcing the increased movement of
people” (Via Campesina 2000)
Displacement: planet of slums

For India: by 2015 peasant migrants to be “equal
to twice the combined population of the UK,
France & Germany” (W/Bank).
Re-centering of agriculture
 Official
(W/Bank) version: outgrower
model + value chains
 Philanthropic version (Gates F’n): ‘some
degree of land mobility and a lower % of
total employment involved in direct
agricultural production’
 IAASTD version: multifunctionality, valuing
farmer knowledge & biodiversity
Commodification of food
 Even
so, industrial agr. heavily subsidized
 Global inequality deepened by:
1. ‘ghost acres’
2. Inertia of rising energy & meat
consumption
‘Ghost acres’: food from nowhere
 Kenya:
90% of horticulture is destined for
Europe, produced by ♀ migrant labor
 UK supermarkets (76% of organic foods)
imported 34% of organic food sold in
2006, including from China….
 Mexican agro-maquilas depend on migrant
labor force of indigenous women,
displaced by US corn dumping
Consuming the Amazon
2006 Greenpeace Report:
“Meat reared on rainforest soya finds
its way onto supermarket shelves and
fast food counters across Europe.”
‘Meatification’ – meat consumption
per capita (kg per annum)
US
Spain
Europe
Brazil
China
Japan
1968
89
22
56
39
4
8
2008
124
119
89
68
54
42
Incr.
40%
440%
59%
74%
1250%
425%
Mangroves become aquaculture:
“We have turned the blood of our
people [shrimp] into an appetiser”
Agricultural investment frontier?
 Commodity
index funds speculation
 Safe haven in global economic recession
 Profit squeeze on agribusiness
 Investment fund fungibility
 Subsidies (energy, food)
-- incl. cheap land & labor in global South
Deforestation in Sumatra for pulp and palm
[Greenpeace, The Guardian 8-20-10]
Infrastructure of land grab
 Millennium
Challenge Corporation:
market-based solutions to food security
 Externalizes rights through inordinate
valorization of land as economic resource
[WB land grab price-mechanism omits
eco-system values]
 Infrastructure for global consumers rather
than local producers as citizens
Global consumer footprint
Development?
 Paradigm
of growth values yield per plant
= industrial ‘agriculture without farmers.’
 Ecological paradigm values yield per ha.
from small-scale, biodiverse farming.
 Choice: land-grabbing on behalf of global
consumer sovereignty, vs. local food &
energy sovereignty…