Here we investigate investor decisions in large-scale transnational commodity agriculture. The objectives are (1) Understanding investor decision choices and their role in shaping the emergence of new commodity frontiers, particularly in Mozambique, and (2) Exploring the trajectories of land use change resulting from these decisions.

We conducted over 70 semi-structured interviews, covering over 25 companies, with a range of actors involved in and influencing, transnational forestry and agriculture investments, across Mozambique, Zambia, Tanzania, Ethiopia, South Africa, and Europe. The actors include the chain of managers from the farm managers, to the country and regional managers, to the CEOs, shareholders and investors. These interviews investigated the profile, business model, and current and planned portfolio of the companies, the characteristics of their different operation sites, their perception of opportunities, constraints, challenges, and potential benefits of investing in different locations, past investments decisions, and their source of finance.

We identified two groups of investors with distinct investment strategies. The first group builds on a general set of skills to invest primarily in land, and then identify the most profitable crop suitable for that land. The second group invests primarily in a specific crop or land use for which they have a specialized expertise and assets. The location of investments, the crops grown, modes of operation and the scales of operation, and thus the broader land use patterns vary depending on these different investment strategies. Building on specific case studies, we also model the effect of motivations, existing ventures, expectations and suitability evaluations on investment choices using a Bayesian Belief Network.

Understanding investors’ decisions, i.e. where, when, why and how an investment takes place enriches the debates on different forms of agricultural investments, their relative merits and demerits, the ensuing impacts on rural spaces and livelihoods, and the development of sustainable agribusiness solutions.