Food Versus Fuel: Extractive Industries, Insecure Land Tenure, and Gaps in World Food Production

Corporations now go “to the ends of the earth” to extract natural resources like oil and diamonds from the earth at the same time that farmers, investors, and development experts try to expand the supply of food, sometimes through large land acquisitions in remote regions. These two processes of globalization interact in important ways. Cross-national analyses indicate that oil and mineral dependent nations with neo-patrimonial elites have lower than expected areas under cultivation and yields from cereal crops. Booms in extractive sectors and neo-patrimonial practices in governance have debilitated agricultural enterprises within nations and conceivably throughout the globe.