Markus Giger

• Doctor of Philosophy
• University of Bern

This paper aims to support differentiation between sustainable and unsustainable agricultural production, with a view to enabling a transformative agricultural trade system by incentivizing sustainable agricultural production. We argue that transformative governance of corresponding global trade flows will need to provide support to the weaker part...

We study smallholder households livelihood profiles in central Kenya in an area characterized by the presence of many large commercial farms. We surveyed 375 smallholder households, compared them according to three categories (employed, contract farmers, households non-engaged with commercial farms), and constructed a livelihood index. The results...

Large-scale agricultural investments (LAIs) transform land use systems worldwide. There is, however, limited understanding about how the common global drivers of land use change induce different forms of agricultural investment and produce different impacts on the ground. This article provides a crosscountry comparative analysis of how differences...

More than 10 years after the surge in large-scale land acquisitions (LSLAs) in developing countries following the spike in agricultural commodity prices in the late 2000s, the Land Matrix Initiative has taken stock of the “global land rush” and its socio-economic and environmental impacts. Our findings draw on evidence from the Land Matrix database...

Available empirical evidence about the impacts of large-scale agricultural investments (LAIs) in low-income countries is skewed towards the assessment of economic benefits. How LAIs affect land use and the environment is less understood. This study assesses how small-scale farmers living close to an LAI perceive the changes LAI's inflict on land us...

Wheat is the second most important carbohydrate staple in Kenya and is produced by both smallholder and large-scale farmers. Smallholders are the majority, but produce <20% of the total national production. Compared to large-scale farmers, they have been considered to be less efficient producers and thus fail to benefit fully from their participati...

A commentary) in One Earth Journal highlights the link between large-scale land acquisitions, deforestation and risks of emerging zoonotic diseases. (insert Link to One Earth). The Land Matrix has analysed data from 2,485 domestic and international large-scale agricultural deals. We found that 87% of these land deals are occurring in regions of med...

Participatory Food System Sustainability Assessment and Transformation (FoodSAT) is a framework developed after six years research under the research project “Towards food sustainability: Reshaping the coexistence of different food systems in South America and Africa”. The project was anchored in the Swiss Programme for Research on Global Issues fo...

The recent surge in Large-Scale Agricultural Investments (LAI) has triggered much debate and analysis on land issues. But what are the debates and results saying about labour issues? This paper offers a comparative perspective by studying Kenya, Mozambique and Madagascar-three African countries having contrasted experiences in terms of LAI. Based o...

Abstract Food systems must become more sustainable and equitable, a transformation which requires the transdisciplinary co-production of knowledge. We present a framework of food sustainability that was co-created by academic and non-academic actors and comprises five dimensions: food security, right to food, environmental performance, poverty and...

Land is a scarce resource and its depletion is related to a combination of demographic and economic factors. Hence, the changes in dietary habits and increase in world population that upturn the food demand, are intertwined with a context of increasing oil prices and rise of green capitalism that in turn impacts the demand in biofuel. A visible ind...

Beef production in Kenya is the forte of pastoralists and large-scale ranches in the Arid and Semi-Arid areas. Cross sectional data was collected from 67 pastoralists and seven large-scale ranches, selected through multistage stratified sampling. Comparative descriptive statistics, gross margin analysis and analysis of production constraints were d...

Many experts agree that more agricultural investment is needed in the global South to improve local food security and reduce poverty. However, there is a lack of consensus about the types of investment needed to achieve these goals. This paper contributes to the literature on large agricultural investments and corresponding business models by inven...

Smallholder farmers and pastoralists produce the largest proportion of food consumed in sub-Saharan Africa. However, they remain among the food insecure populations. This paper explores the food (in)security among smallholder farmers and pastoralists using a sample of 175 households in three agro-food value chains of wheat, dairy, and beef in the n...

For millennia, humankind’s food security and resilience were ensured by thousands of cultivated plant species, dozens of domesticated animal species, and the wider biodiversity from which they derive. But with the expansion of industrial agriculture and globalized standardized food systems, this long-running agricultural biodiversity has fallen ste...

Understanding land users’ livelihoods and their strategies is essential in order to adapt prevention and adaptation policies and to ensure sustainable land management (SLM) planning. Considering the global call for SLM, and due to a lack of studies on land degradation (LD) in Tunisia, we aimed to explore the livelihoods of farmers, their livelihood...

Large Scale Land Acquisitions (LSLAs) by private companies or states have seen a sudden increase in recent years, mainly due to combined and increasing demands for biofuel (i.e., caused by the increase in oil prices) and food (i.e., caused by the increase in world population and changes in dietary habits). These highly controversial phenomena raise...

Transdisciplinary co-production of knowledge is widely credited with producing knowledge that can contribute to sustainability transformations, but there is little empirical evidence showing to what extent and through what mechanisms it is actually advancing sustainability. This article analyses how 31 transdisciplinary projects conceptualised the...

Archetypes are increasingly used as a methodological approach to understand recurrent patterns in variables and processes that shape the sustainability of social-ecological systems. The rapid growth and diversification of archetype analyses has generated variations, inconsistencies, and confusion about the meanings, potentials, and limitations of a...

Science-based initiatives generate particular changes towards sustainable development. But why and how does this work? Theories of change (ToCs) can help in understanding the theoretical assumptions and modes of knowledge production associated with these initiatives: ToCs trigger debate among the stakeholders and evaluators of an initiative regardi...

Large-scale land acquisitions (LSLAs) have become a major concern for land use sustainability at a global scale. A considerable body of case studies has shown that the livelihood outcomes of LSLAs vary, but the understanding of factors and processes that generate these livelihood outcomes remains controversial and fragmented in terms of cases, cont...

This paper examines how the geospatial accuracy of samples and sample size influence conclusions from geospatial analyses. It does so using the example of a study investigating the global phenomenon of large-scale land acquisitions and the socio-ecological characteristics of the areas they target. First, we analysed land deal datasets of varying ge...

Healthy soils are critical to agriculture, and both are essential to enabling food security. Soil-related challenges include using soils and other natural resources sustainably, combating land and soil degradation, avoiding further reduction of soil-related ecosystem services, and ensuring that all agricultural land is managed sustainably. Agricult...

Perceived profitability is a key factor in explaining farmers' decision to adopt or not adopt sustainable land management (SLM) technologies. Despite this importance, relatively little is known about the economics of SLM. This paper contributes to the literature by analysing data on costs and perceived cost/benefit ratios of SLM technologies. Data...

This paper analyses local geographical contexts targeted by transnational large-scale land acquisitions (>200 ha per deal) in order to understand how emerging patterns of socio-ecological characteristics can be related to processes of large-scale foreign investment in land. Using a sample of 139 land deals georeferenced with high spatial accuracy,...

This paper assesses possible contributions of land change science to the growing body of knowledge about large-scale land acquisition. Despite obvious commonalities, such as a problem-oriented and interdisciplinary approach to land change, there seems to be little overlap between the two fields thus far. We adopt a sustainability research perspecti...

This chapter provides an in-depth look at the Centre for Development and Environment’s (CDE) 2012 programme work related to land and natural resource governance. It outlines CDE's conceptual framework for sustainable governance—defined as the rules, processes, and structures guiding land and resource use with respect to ecological regeneration and...

Editor's note: The text of this article originally appeared as the final chapter of a brochure entitled Mountains and Climate Change—From Understanding to Action, prepared at the Centre for Development and Environment, University of Bern, Switzerland, for presentation by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) at a side event at the...

Die globale Landwirtschaft steht vor enormen Herausforderungen. Um diesen zu begegnen, wurden kürzlich zwei internationale Berichte vorgelegt: das International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development und der World Development Report 2008. Landwirtschaft ist zentral für die Bekämpfung der Armut: In dieser Botsch...

The Beta version of the Land Matrix (Land Matrix 201217. Land Matrix. 2012. The Land Matrix. Beta version 2.0. International Land Coalition (ILC), Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement (CIRAD), Centre for Development and Environment (CDE), German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA) and Deutsche...