Conference Agenda

Cross-border agricultural land acquisitions and frontier settlement are reshaping forested regions in Latin America. Low German Mennonite colonies represent a distinct form of transnational agrarian expansion—large, contiguous land purchases followed by the rapid development of commercial-scale agriculture—that has accelerated settlement in remote forest frontiers. We combine spatially explicit data on 105 Mennonite colonies established across Latin America after the year 2000 with annual satellite measures of forest loss, biomass carbon, biodiversity, and nighttime luminosity. We exploit quasi-experimental variation in establishment timing and locations of Mennonite settlements to plausibly identify the causal impacts of these frontier settlements on the local environment, ecology, and economic development. Frontier settlements lead to very large and significant forest loss with substantial ecological and environmental costs. We find no evidence of any positive development spillovers to local communities. Our findings highlight the ecological consequences of cross-border agricultural settlement in frontier regions.