CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 71Political Conflict and GovernancePeacebuilding and International SecurityEnvironmental and Biological Research in Conflict Zones

Living off the land: The connection between cropland, food security, and violence against civilians

Koren, Ore, Bagozzi, Benjamin E·2017·Journal of Peace Research
DOI 10.1177/0022343316684543
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

Food security has attracted widespread attention in recent years. Yet, despite preliminary evidence connecting food insecurity to political violence, we lack a systematic understanding of the relationship(s) between local food resources and violence against civilians. This study develops a food-security based theory to explain the significant variation that we observe in violence against civilians across both time and subnational geographic space. We argue that combatants, be they government or rebel actors, often must turn to local agricultural resources for sustenance. During times of relative peace, armed actors and civilians have long time horizons, and the prospects of repeated interactions thereby promote a strategy of co-optation to obtain food resources. However, the existence of immediate conflict in a region leads armed actors to discount the benefits of future interactions in favor of obtaining food immediately, using violence if necessary. In estimating a series of statistical models on a sample of all African countries (1997–2009), we find robust support for our expectations: cropland increases the frequency of violence against civilians during periods of conflict, but has an added pacifying effect during times of peace.

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1177/0022343316684543

Cites

50 of 50 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Claims the paper makes

We couldn’t retrieve this paper’s full text, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • A climate-related hazard may contribute to local scarcity and elevate the strategic relevance of controlling food resources, potentially resulting in battles between armed actors and civilian targeting.

    “A climate-related hazard, such as a drought or flood, may contribute to local scarcity and further elevate the strategic relevance of controlling food resources, potentially resulting in battles between armed actors (176) as well as civilian targeting (177, 178) in order to gain access to the scarce resource.”

    From Vicious Circles: Violence, Vulnerability, and Climate Change (2021) · cites this paper as [178]

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

Authors
Koren, O., & Bagozzi, B. E.
Affiliations
  • University of Minnesota (US)
  • University of Delaware (US)
Corresponding author
Koren, Ore
ORCID
Venue
Journal of Peace Research
Publisher
Oxford University Press (OUP)
Published
2017-05-01
Volume
54
Issue
3
Pages
351-364
ISSN
  • 0022-3433 (ISSN-L)
  • 1460-3578
DOI
10.1177/0022343316684543
OpenAlex
W2610268286
Cited by
71
References
49
Citations by year
2026: 5 · 2025: 7 · 2024: 11 · 2023: 10 · 2022: 8 · 2021: 11 · 2020: 5 · 2019: 4 · 2018: 4 · 2017: 6
FWCI
13.30
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Licence
Locations
  • Journal of Peace Research (publishedVersion)
  • RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Political Conflict and Governance
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Peacebuilding and International Security
  • Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law › Environmental and Biological Research in Conflict Zones
Keywords
food security, violence against civilians, cropland, armed conflict, co-optation, time horizon, rebel groups, government forces, conflict duration, subnational variation, Africa

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review