Agricultural land grabbing refers to the large-scale acquisition or lease of arable land, often in developing countries, by foreign investors, funds, or states. The phenomenon accelerated markedly after the food and financial crisis of 2007-2008. Three reference sources allow it to be discussed honestly: the "Seized!" report by the NGO GRAIN (2008), the World Bank study "Rising Global Interest in Farmland" (2011), and the collaborative Land Matrix database. All three converge on a trend — increased pressure on agricultural land — while signalling that precise figures remain uncertain.
Definition. Land grabbing is the takeover, through purchase or long-term lease, of large agricultural areas by actors external to the local community, generally for food production, agrofuels, or financial investment. The term emphasises the power imbalance between the investor and the populations that occupied or cultivated these lands, sometimes without formal land title.
The surge in food prices in 2007-2008 pushed several food-importing countries to seek to secure their supply by farming abroad. At the same time, the financial crisis led investors to see agricultural land as a safe-haven asset, likely to gain value. These two logics — the food security of certain states and financial investment — converged to fuel a wave of large-scale land transactions.
It is precisely this moment that the NGO GRAIN documented as early as October 2008 in its report "Seized! The 2008 land grab for food and financial security". This text contributed greatly to drawing international attention to these transactions and to popularising the very notion of land grabbing. It must be situated for what it is: an alert by a civil-society organisation, based on a compilation of more than a hundred cases, which opened a field of investigation rather than delivering a definitive accounting.
In 2011, the World Bank devoted a reference report to the subject, "Rising Global Interest in Farmland: Can It Yield Sustainable and Equitable Benefits?", by Klaus Deininger and Derek Byerlee. Its weight stems from its source: it comes not from a militant movement, but from an institution hardly suspect of principled hostility to the market. Yet this report documents a sharp rise in large-scale land transactions after 2008 and raises serious reservations.
The report advances an often-cited order of magnitude: whereas the annual expansion of global agricultural land was less than 4 million hectares before 2008, deals covering roughly 56 million hectares had been announced before the end of 2009, more than 70% of them in Africa (notably Ethiopia, Mozambique, Sudan). This figure concerns announced projects, not necessarily realised ones — caution remains warranted.
Three findings from the report deserve to be retained:
In other words, the problem identified is not agricultural investment in itself, which can be useful, but the conditions under which these transactions take place: opacity, weak protection of local land rights, and asymmetry of power between the investor and the occupant.
Measuring land grabbing is notoriously difficult, and honesty requires saying so. The Land Matrix initiative, an independent and collaborative database launched in 2011, records large-scale land transactions (from 200 hectares, signed since 2000) and publishes regularly updated figures. But it itself flags the limits of the exercise.
Several sources of uncertainty compound one another:
For this reason, it is more rigorous to reason in orders of magnitude than to advance a single figure presented as definitive. Land Matrix's Analytical Report III (2021) thus recorded 1,865 deals for a targeted area of about 33 million hectares, of which some 30 million hectares were actually contracted — a massive total, comparable to the area of Italy, but surrounded by a significant margin of uncertainty and entirely dependent on counting conventions. The honest cartographer retains the trend, an increased pressure on land, rather than an exact total.
Land grabbing is not limited to the soil. In 2013, a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) by Maria Cristina Rulli, Antonio Saviori, and Paolo D'Odorico showed that acquiring land abroad goes hand in hand with an appropriation of the associated water resources — a "water grab" that had until then been little quantified. The analysis recorded transactions involving dozens of "grabbed" and "grabber" countries on every continent except Antarctica.
A complementary study by the same authors (Environmental Research Letters, 2014) estimated the amount of food theoretically producible on these acquired lands: enough to feed hundreds of millions of people, most often destined for export rather than for local populations. These academic works remain modelled estimates, but they illuminate the stakes: behind the land, it is the water and the food security of communities that are at play.
Land grabbing is not to be confused with the concentration of the seed or agrochemical industry: the actors are partly distinct (investment funds and states for land, firms for seed and inputs). But both partake of the same underlying movement: the transformation of resources once held in common or by peasants — land, seed — into financial assets managed at large scale. A systematic review published in 2024 (Agricultural and Food Economics) documents the growing involvement of sovereign wealth funds in these acquisitions, while stressing that their net effect on local food security remains contested in the literature.
One can see in this a correlation of logic more than a planned coordination. Whoever controls vast areas also buys seed and inputs in bulk, which reinforces the power of suppliers already concentrated upstream. Conversely, an agriculture of small, diversified farms naturally disperses that power. It is precisely this articulation that makes the land question a matter of food sovereignty, and not merely of investment.
What is land grabbing? It is the large-scale acquisition or lease of agricultural land, often in developing countries, by foreign investors, funds, or states, generally to produce food, agrofuels, or to make an investment. The term emphasises the power imbalance with local populations.
How much land is involved worldwide? There is no single reliable figure. The World Bank cited roughly 56 million hectares of announced deals before the end of 2009; Land Matrix recorded about 33 million hectares targeted (30 million contracted) in 2021. These sources themselves flag strong methodological uncertainties (deals announced but not realised, variable perimeters). It is better to reason in orders of magnitude and in trend.
Is the phenomenon proven or militant? Both registers exist and must be distinguished. The initial alert came from an NGO, GRAIN, with its "Seized!" report of 2008. But the finding of a sharp rise in transactions, often opaque and unfavourable to local communities, was confirmed by the World Bank in 2011, a non-militant institution, then followed by independent databases (Land Matrix) and peer-reviewed academic work. The fact of land pressure is documented; the exact extent of its consequences remains debated.
To place land back within the broader map of the control points of food — seed, inputs, trade — see our pillar article: who controls the world's food. The full investigation, marked out level of certainty by level of certainty and supported by sources, is detailed in the ebook The Global Food Monopoly.
It is the large-scale acquisition or lease of agricultural land, often in developing countries, by foreign investors, funds, or states, generally to produce food, agrofuels, or to make an investment. The term emphasises the power imbalance with local populations.
There is no single reliable figure. The World Bank cited roughly 56 million hectares of announced deals before the end of 2009; Land Matrix recorded about 33 million hectares targeted (30 million contracted) in 2021. These sources themselves flag strong methodological uncertainties (deals announced but not realised, variable perimeters). It is better to reason in orders of magnitude and in trend.
Both registers exist and must be distinguished. The initial alert came from an NGO, GRAIN, with its "Seized!" report of 2008. But the finding of a sharp rise in transactions, often opaque and unfavourable to local communities, was confirmed by the World Bank in 2011, a non-militant institution, then followed by independent databases (Land Matrix) and peer-reviewed academic work. The fact of land pressure is documented; the exact extent of its consequences remains debated.
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