The expansion of large-scale farming in the neotropical dry forests and implications for agricultural production, biodiversity, and carbon storage governance.

GRAU, HR; LE POLAIN, Y; GASPARRI, NI

Beijing

Congreso; Global Land Programme, Open Science Meeting; 2016

Global Land Programme - Chinese Academy of Sciences

In this work, using the case of neotropical dry forests, we provide a conceptual analysis of the implication of the rise of large-scale, multi-location agricultural companies as agents of deforestation. Large-scale farms are a common manifestation of a particular type of agribusiness companies. We argue that companies operating large farms gain mobility through the acquisition of know-how, technology, funding access, and markets. Such attributes can be conceptualized as transferable assets that enable a form of ?corporate telecoupling?, in which agricultural companies use them to establish production in new places, thereby linking multiple locations within their own structures. While smallholders are constrained in their movements by a lack of access to land, labor and capital, for these companies, the location of production becomes an adjustable variable that is manipulated to optimize business opportunities, by taking advantage of asymmetries in factors such as taxes, land prices, infrastructure and environmental regulations. Companies operating large-scale farms, because of their high mobility and ability to change the location in a relatively easy way, are particularly insensitive to regulations centered on the territory (e.g. REDD+ or conservation corridors and protected areas). We argue that this type of companies are the main agents of leakage and displacement of deforestation, making it necessary to create policies centered in the flows connecting of the companies , rather than in the territory. We finally suggest priority research topics to better assess the impact of this type of companies in neotropical dry forest in particular and in commodities frontiers in general.