In person icon Agrarian Land Politics: Contested Claims on Productive Land

Abstract

This panel examines the return of the land question in agrarian politics, with a particular focus on how new visions of rural land use impact food production models and rural livelihoods. As pressures on land from such as material extraction, the green transition, financial asset security and housing increase, many actors turn to rural land for their productive visions. At the same time, agriculture is a key target for policy change because of the food systems’ leading contribution to climate forcing emissions and other environmental dis-services. In response, these claims are contested with new legal, discursive, and institutional strategies. Yet, there aren’t clear opposing factions with discernible visions for the future of agricultural land. Many actors embedded in food production strongly align with entrenched legal and cultural norms of land stewardship and strong property entitlements. Underwriting these conflicts are high level debates about how food ought to be produced and the how structure of the rural sector ought to be. Here, a values debate about over good farming intersects with environmental land use modelling and goals of contributing to food security. Mythologies of productivism articulate with dominant land tenure regimes and sway political actors to green the current industrial system rather than look for transformative alternatives. Outsiders may offer alternative imaginaries for productive landscapes, but it is unclear how such discourse can obtain the access and power afforded by the legacy of land ownership or control. Through exploring contested claims to productive land across legal, institutional and, discursive strategies, this panel will reveal the deep politics of land within the agrarian question.

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