Land-Use and Equity Outcomes of the Global Land Rush in Tanzania

In the coming decades, patterns of demographic growth, climate change, urbanization, and changing food consumption will put increasing pressure on croplands, ecosystems, and smallholder farms. Boosting the productivity of farms is widely recognized as a necessity to meet future food demands and key to alleviating poverty. Concern is growing, however, as rural land rights that are the basis of livelihoods for billions are rapidly being acquired by corporate and institutional holders, challenging whether improvements in agricultural productivity will be equitably shared. Since 2000, nearly 90-million hectares of rural lands (approximately the surface area of Venezuela) changed hands from traditional users to well-heeled foreign and domestic investors seeking large areas for commodity agriculture. Whether such large-scale changes in land rights represent the most promising path to achieve greater agricultural productivity and reduce poverty is hotly debated. On the one hand, privatization and infusions of capital may modernize production methods and thus lead to greater productivity. As a result, technological transfers and market access may benefit local communities. On the other hand, the legal framework, capitalization, and negotiation of land rights favors powerful actors potentially making the distribution of benefits uneven and negative outcomes isolated amongst the poor. This dissertation explores how large-scale tenure changes – referred to as large-scale land acquisitions (LSLAs) – condition agricultural transitions and their implications for equity. It is comprised of three related analyses with a focus on Tanzania – a hotspot of LSLAs. At the household level, I examine the causal mechanisms by which LSLAs influence household agricultural productivity - commonly considered the “engine” of agricultural transitions, farm incomes, and food security. Based on the results of this analysis, I argue LSLAs bring about limited elements of agricultural transitions. Greater agricultural productivity measured in terms of value is evident in proximity to LSLAs. However, farm incomes and food security are not improved, plausibly because increased crop prices surrounding LSLAs best explain the observed increases in household agricultural value rather than yield improvements. The primary LSLA arrangement that explains improved household agricultural value is the availability of contract farming, though few households participate suggesting unequal access to LSLA benefits. I further examine the dynamics of inequality surrounding LSLAs in a second and related household analysis by quantifying the distributional impacts of land loss among nearby households. I find that LSLAs exacerbate land inequality because of uneven access to benefits based on differential land holding sizes. Finally, to enable greater examination of agricultural changes within the boundaries of LSLAs, I develop a methodology to map commercial versus subsistence agriculture from satellites with 72-74% overall accuracy at regional scales. The deep-learning approach to regional-scale monitoring of large-scale cropland will be important to improve our understanding of their impact on human-environment systems including, for example, land-use drivers, differentials in yield, and resilience to climatic conditions. Overall, this dissertation demonstrates that the examination of LSLAs in relation to agricultural transitions requires greater consideration of distributional impacts and use of remote sensing to understand important human-environment implications. Risks and benefits to nearby communities are ubiquitous among LSLAs making research on who wins, who loses, and why critical. Future research on LSLAs must contend with the distribution of environmental and well-being impacts alongside governance arrangements that may enable equitable outcomes.