The Great Soy Expansion: Brazilian land grabs in Eastern Bolivia

In the last two decades, the best agricultural lands in Bolivia have been put into commercial production by large-scale producers closely linked to foreign investors, particularly Brazilians. Foreigners now control more than one million hectares of prime agricultural and ranching lands in Bolivia, primarily in the eastern lowland department of Santa Cruz, an important agroexport region dominated by transnational corporations and what has been termed “trans-Latina” corporations or TLCs. The rapidly expanding soy and ranching industries are the primary cause of deforestation and land use change in the country, at a high cost to the environment, national food security and indigenous peasant livelihoods. This brief traces recent agrarian transformations in the Bolivian lowlands, including rising foreign control over land; widespread tropical deforestation; the role of the state in facilitating changes in land use and control; and the environmental and social impacts of these changes.