Taking advantage of post-Brexit uncertainty for the agricultural sector, newly
established investment funds are buying up small farms in Wales as part of a ‘new
enclosures’. Land is acquired with the plan to convert to commercial forestry,
management outsourced to professional contractors, and with the aim to garner
government subsidies, the sale of carbon credits and to profit from timber products and eco-tourism. This paper will detail and analyse this new process of financialised land grabs, its effects on small farms in Wales, and its potential consequences for the Welsh countryside and food production, and for goals of global climate justice.
This form of land grabbing is a novel form in the historical development of the
agrarian question in the context of Wales and the UK and represents a deepening of the capitalisation and financialisation of the countryside, all in service of corporate greenwashing. We are yet to see the exact path it will take but this paper will seek to understand the current situation and potential directions, with the aim of aiding political movements so they may formulate effective responses before such a process of dispossession can be allowed to further take hold.
Firstly, I will outline the political economic environment of Welsh land and agriculture, and the context for investment fund land grabs via forestry. Secondly, I will outline land grabbing and carbon markets. Thirdly, I will explicate the financial strategy of Foresight Sustainable Forestry Company PLC1 and how they seek to capitalise upon carbon markets, post-Brexit agricultural policies, rural economic crisis and demands for British timber production. Thirdly, I will explore some of the local, national and global consequences of carbon offsetting and land grabs. Finally, I will identify (actual and potential) resistance and alternatives, and the wider ramifications for green transitions and movements for food sovereignty.
Keywords: land grabbing, food sovereignty, carbon offsetting, green transitions,
enclosures, financialisation