Agro-Industrial Enclosures: Food Security, Land Consolidation and Rural Displacement in China

This paper examines rural enclosures for industrialized agriculture as a window into the local political economy and territorial politics underlying projects of agricultural modernization. In recent years, agro-industrial parks with ‘characteristic’ industries have proliferated in China as the government viewed it as a technical solution to problems of declining grain security and land use inefficiency. Comparing these enclosures with previous waves of expropriation for industrial and real estate development, this paper argues that enclosures for agro-industrialization evince a specific logic of state intervention, which in turn shapes the mechanisms of land assembly and the politics of counter-enclosure engendered. Through ethnographic fieldwork and in-depth interviews, this paper interrogates the unequal impact of farmland transfer as villagers found it increasingly difficult to hold onto their land and turned to individualized strategies for survival.