Corporate land deals, dispossession and the future of farming

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Forty-five years ago the Polish economist Michal Kalecki, after visiting Egypt, Indonesia and some other postcolonial countries, noted the survival and apparent resilience of what he called the “intermediate classes” in agriculture and other sectors (by which he meant small- and medium-scale farms and other enterprises). He also raised the question whether, at some future moment, we would see their disappearance in final submission to the interests of big business (Kalecki 1967). Observing the current wave of large-scale, state-supported corporate acquisitions of contested lands and common lands today – in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the former Soviet Union – one wonders whether Kalecki’s moment has finally arrived.