Elizabeth Gardiner was awarded a Borlaug Fellowship in Global Food Security ($29,323) to support her dissertation research in Burkina Faso on the impacts of land privatization on food security. The fellowship is administered by Purdue University and financed by USAID and the US Feed the Future program.

 

Elizabeth's research project is bound to make significant theoretical contributions to understanding how processes of large-scale land conversions are changing land use and food security in rural communities in Burkina Faso. Large-scale land conversions, also called land grabs, are happening across the globe but have particular traction in sub-Saharan Africa. These processes are supported by international organization like the United Nations and the World Bank as solutions for problems such as underdevelopment, food security, and adaptation to climate change. There are several big questions concerning the implementation and impact of these land grabs. Who is buying the land and converting it to cash crop productions? How are they acquiring the land from communities? How does that affect land security in rural communities? And what are the implications for food security? Eliza’s pilot studies showed that Burkinabe entrepreneurs play a critical role as they both understand the capitalist logics of the World Bank and the cultural logic of rural communities. Her analysis not only shows that land grabs lead to loss of land, but also changes the way local communities think of and value land and change the social relations within these communities. These sociocultural changes may have far reaching consequences for agricultural development in Burkina Faso and other countries in sub-Saharan Africa affected by land grabs.