Large-scale agricultural investments in drylands: Facing some blind spots in the grabbing debate

Large-scale agricultural investments (LSAIs) are increasingly targeting dryland areas, especially where water for irrigation is available. Despite the wide academic literature, which often refers to the phenomenon as ‘land grabbing’, a number of analytical blind spots remain that appear when we thoroughly explore anomalies related to the maps, labels, and numbers that circulate in this debate. This chapter discusses four blind spots that are particularly relevant for understanding the impacts of LSAIs on dryland populations. One is the variability of numbers reported on single investments, highlighting the need for studying investments as processes whose outcomes are not predefined. Another is how the label ‘land grabbing’ has obscured similar processes in regions where such labelling is not used in the scholarship. The third concerns the invisibility of common-pool resources and the importance of their loss to mobile livelihoods. The fourth relates to the scholarly disinterest in or inability to studying investment failures and struggles, which risks missing out on important post-investment dynamics—including local actors’ agency and adaptive capacity to deal with ever-changing situations. The authors conclude that thorough, on-the-ground, and longitudinal research will best illuminate these blind spots.