ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the following key interlinked issues: land grabbing, the crisis of the peasant economy and the emergence of a rural precariat, and the financialization of agriculture. The contemporary dynamics of agrarian change are being shaped by the neoliberal corporate food regime dominated by the agro-industrial system. Neoliberal land titling in general was aimed at enhancing the land market, and many beneficiaries of land parcels from agrarian reforms, as well as existing peasant farmers, were unable to compete in the market for agricultural commodities being exposed to the full force of the neoliberal 'market compulsion'. Neoliberal globalization has intensified the crisis of the peasant economy or agricultural petty commodity producers. Agro-industrial capitalist farmers are increasingly appropriating resources through a variety of means that further strengthen it while weakening the peasant farmers. The financial sector had increasingly become involved in the agricultural sector through the creation of derivates and other financial instruments, such as agricultural commodity index funds.
