by Victoria Marin, Jon C. Lovett and Joy S. Clancy

Biofuels driven land grab is often identified with land transactions conducted in developing countries by transnational/foreign companies/governments for the production of biofuels/feedstock for exports. This captures only partially the dynamics of biofuels land grabs and misses different processes and elements at play in the local and national settings. An important dynamic is the increasing appropriation of land by local and national elites/corporations to produce biofuels/feedstock for the national market and exports, which often come accompanied by agrarian political struggles. National biofuels policies are key elements that need to be analysed in light of their influence on this dynamic. Colombia illustrates this influence by the way in which land appropriation for cultivation of feedstock has taken place since national policies were adopted to promote biofuels. In this paper, agrarian political struggles related to biofuelfeedstock cultivation and policies for the promotion of biofuels in Colombia are analysed from a political ecology perspective by exploring how policies influence access to and control over rural land by local/national elites and corporations. This analysis contributes to indentifying whether this land grab dynamic and the related political struggles are linked to agrarian structures rooted in historical vested power relations or are forms/products of new agrarian structures