Who rents out the land? Agrarian capital accumulation and lessor landowners in South America

The case of Uruguay

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2285996
AutoresGabriel Oyhantçabal Benelli (0000-0002-2500-4708, Facultad de Agronomía Universidad de la República Montevideo Uruguay, autor de correspondencia), Soledad Figueredo (Facultad de Agronomía Universidad de la República Montevideo Uruguay), Soledad Figueredo Rolle (0000-0002-1440-8774, Universidad de la República de Uruguay), Lucía Sabia (0000-0002-6761-8994, Facultad de Agronomía Universidad de la República Montevideo Uruguay), Verónica Nuñez (Facultad de Ciencias Sociales Universidad de la República Montevideo Uruguay)
Año2024
Volumen24
Número4
Fecha de publicación2024-10-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaJournal of Agrarian Change (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1471-0358 • E-ISSN: 1471-0366
EditorialWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/joac.12603
OpenAlexW4401524669
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas2
Referencias citadas29

This article studies the connections between lessor landowners, land grabbing and land financialization in contemporary capital accumulation. Drawing upon extensive empirical research conducted in Uruguay, which combined database analysis and in-depth interviews, the paper provides key insights to understand why land leasing has become a central strategy of ground rent appropriation among different types of landowners at the beginning of the 21st century. Our main results show that the leasing strategy is a combination of tenant-capitalists' expansion, social differentiation and demographic processes of the small landowning capitals displaced from production that rent out their lands, the process of land financialization through large institutional investors, which deploy a land banking strategy, and the optimization of land exploitation among landowner-capitalists. Moreover, our results highlight the importance of prioritising the study of landowners as a class in itself and the different forms of ground rent appropriation

Agrarian society · Agriculture · Appropriation · Business · Capital (architecture · Economic rent · Economic system · Economics · Expropriation · Financialization · Geography · Land grabbing · Land tenure · Land use · Market economy · Natural resource economics · Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development · Land Rights and Reforms · Political Economy and Marxism