Abstract
Growing global demand for food has driven a surge in large-scale land acquisitions, often by multinational companies. This relatively recent phenomenon has already reached massive proportions, with over 80 million hectares acquired in large-scale deals worldwide in 2023. This paper examines the impact of these acquisitions on land productivity and local communities. To do so, we exploit an exogenous increase in large-scale land acquisitions caused by the Ebola epidemic in Liberia. The health crisis relaxed the acquisition constraints of palm oil companies by diverting the attention of NGOs, which typically act as watchdogs in this context. We find a significant increase in palm oil production, driven primarily by an expansion in the hectares dedicated to this production rather than an improvement in land productivity. This increase in production is associated with greater pollution but has minimal effect on the local economy.