Internal Land Grabbing in Indian Jatropha production: actors, processes and impacts

• Applicant: Dr. Anika Trebbin
• Subject Area: Human Geography
• Term: from 2014 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 246318921

Land Grabbing has won extreme popularity in the public and scientific debate over the past six years. The term is commonly used to describe large-scale land acquisitions by a foreign investor who intends to use the agricultural land to grow food or fuel crops for export into his home market. Critics of this kind of land transactions generally fear negative effects on the local population, food security and ecology in the countries concerned. Detailed studies of local processes and systemizing analyses of the land grabbing phenomenon are relatively rare till date and the definitional boundaries of the term are outlined only vaguely. Therefore, the land grabbing debate often overlooks that there is a transnational as well as a national or internal dimension to the phenomenon. In the case of India, the area which has become subject of land grabbing processes over the past years is almost twice as large as the area that Indian companies acquired for agricultural production overseas, mainly in African countries. This is not only the case in India but in a number of countries. Therefore, this research project aims at studying the internal dimension of land grabbing processes. The study will concentrate on land which has become subject to land grabbing for the production of Jatropha. This is the case for the majority of land areas that are affected by land grabbing processes in India. Jatropha is a drought resistant scrub that produces highly oily seeds which are used to produce bio-diesel, which is strongly promoted by the Indian government. It is assumed that this state promotion of bio-diesel production from Jatropha is one of the key factors of land grabbing processes in India. In this regard, the Indian example is comparable to a number of other countries where bio-fuel production is promoted by the government, for example in the case of oil palm in Malaysia and Indonesia. Land grabbing processes for bio-fuel production account for a considerable share in land grabbing processes worldwide. Land grabbing for Jatropha cultivation alone accounts for about 18% of the worldwide land grabbing processes. Therefore, this research project does not only study a highly topical phenomenon, but also one which needs to be more systematically studied. The attention that is given especially to internal land grabbing processes in the Indian context targets another currently existing research gap.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants