Oane Visser wins prestigious European Research Foundation grant

Dr. Oane Visser joined ISS on 1January 2013 as Senior Lecturer

Dr. Visser has recently won a prestigious ERC (European Research Foundation) starting grant on: ‘Land grabbing’ in Russia: Large-scale investors and post-Soviet rural Communities', with a value of 1.3 million EURO.

He will work within the 'Political Economy of Environment, Resources and Population' Research Programme', in particular with the Agrarian and Environmental Studies group, led by Professor Max Spoor.

Dr. Visser will work full-time on this research project, which also finances 2 Phd researchers and 1 Postdoc. The first PhD researcher has already been contracted by ISS, namely Ms. Natalia Mamonova.

Dr. Visser is an economic anthropologist and comes from Radboud University.

Background to the ERC fund

The mid-2000s saw the beginning of large-scale land acquisitions, or ‘land grabbing’ (Borras and Franco 2012), resulting in the rapid commodification and ‘foreignisation’ of land (Zoomers 2010) as well as financialisation of global agriculture (McMichael 2011).

As a result ever more regions have been incorporated into global food chains and financial investment flows. On the one hand, such investment in agriculture is seriously needed, but on the other hand, there are serious concerns about the unequal market power relations that underlie the insertion of rural areas in developing and emerging countries in global food chains.

Whilst large-scale acquisitions of agricultural land have received considerable attention globally and in Africa, in particular, the land deals in the ‘transition countries of post-socialist Eurasia (Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union and Central Asia) has gone largely unnoticed. Yet, domestic and foreign state and private companies are acquiring vast areas of farmland in this region (Visser and Spoor 2011).

It is remarkable that land acquisitions in the under-used (and often unused) land masses of post-Soviet Eurasia have practically been ignored. The more so since this former breadbasket of the 19th and early 20th century contains so much fertile and well-endowed agricultural land.

Focus on Russia

This proposal aims to explore this omission in the ‘land grab’ debate: the concealed but accelerating process of domestic and international large-scale land acquisitions in the transition countries of the former Soviet Union in Eurasia, by focusing on Russia, the largest agricultural producer in the region.

In this country, large domestic conglomerates, for instance from the oil sector, have entered agriculture from the mid-2000s onwards. In addition, with mounting protests and attention from international media and NGOs for the downside of land acquisitions in especially Africa, part of the global investors is shifting their focus to the former Soviet Union, where their acquisitions go largely unnoticed.

In addition to the large potential of this region concerning the contribution to solving world food security, and the lack of research on land acquisitions in this region, the proposed research is relevant and pertinent for another reason. It provides a case of ‘land grabbing’ that is rather different from other regions, and therefore is likely to raise original perspectives and insights on land grabbing. Several features make the case of Russia (and the main countries of the former Soviet Union (FSU) at large) significantly different, e.g. the concept and extent of ´marginal, empty, available land´, and the low level of presence of autonomous organized civil society and the issue of contesting land acquisitions.

While there is increasing realization in the literature of the diversity of land investors (e.g. Nooteboom and Rutten 2011), to include domestic and intra regional key players, our knowledge remains patchy. We hope to contribute towards a better understanding of this dimension of land deals by looking more closely at intra regional and national/domestic land investors, sometimes in alliance with international capital.

See for more information:

Borras, S. Jr. and J. C. Franco (2012) ‘Global land grabbing and trajectories of agrarian change: a preliminary analysis’, Journal of Agrarian Change, Vol. 12 (1), pp. 34-59.

Nooteboom, G. and R. Rutten (2011) ‘Gulf State investments in Indonesia and the Philippines: Gaining control over agricultural lands and foodcrops’, paper presented at the international conference ‘Global Land Grabbing’, 6-8 April, IDS, University of Sussex.

McMichael, P. (2010) ‘Agrofuels in the food regime’, Journal of Peasant Studies, Vol. 37(4), pp. 609–29.

Visser, O. and M. Spoor (2011) ‘Land grabbing in Post-Soviet Eurasia. The World’s largest land reserves at stake’, Journal of Peasant Studies, Vol.38 (2), pp. 299-32

Zoomers, A. (2010). Globalization and the foreignization of space: seven processes driving the current land grab, Journal of Peasant Studies, 37(2), 429–47.