1.5 Subsumed deals
AsThe aLand rule,Matrix separaterecords individual large-scale land acquisitions that meet the criteria defined in the Land Matrix deal definition. These land deals shouldrepresent bethe differentiatedprimary from each otherentity and bemain addedobject individually toof the Land Matrix database. However, inthere someare cases,cases investors carry out several different projects (based on different agreements) in the same country, region, or sub-region. This can make it very difficult, or even impossible, to identify the single projects of one investor or group of investors in a specific area or specific details about an individual land acquisition (e.g. exact location, corresponding contracts, primary investors, and investment conditions). In these situations, you may only be able to obtain general information, for example, the number of hectareswhere an investor has acquiredundertaken several contractually independent land acquisitions within the same country or region, and the available information only refers to all these projects collectively, that is, to the investor’s overall investment in athat givencountry or region. In such cases likewhere these,the whereavailable information is toonot scarcesufficiently detailed to distinguishrecord singleindividual projects,deals and where these deals would therefore have to be excluded from the database, there is no otherbetter option but to “subsume”subsume various deals under one parent(parent-) dealdeal. –In thatsuch is,situations enterand severalonly projectsin such situations, multiple deals of onethe same investor inwithin the same region or country should, by exception, be combined and recorded as onea singleso-called “subsumed deal.”
When Therecording problema with“subsumed this,deal”, however,the comment fields are of particular importance, as only detailed comments—at a minimum under Location and Land Area—can both indicate that the deal is that,a while“subsumed thedeal” systemand allowshelp youaddress toand makecompensate several entries for someinherent variablesinaccuracies.
While location,it land area under contract/in operation, intentionis, of investment,course, negotiationan andadvantage operation status) in ordernot to subsume multiple deals, these variables cannot be connectedhave to each other, nor canomit the individual deals entirely, it must be differentiatedclearly fromunderstood eachthat other.[1]“subsumed Thesedeals” inherently involve certain attribution inaccuracies and an increased risk of deal duplications.
Therefore, with every deal update, an attempt should be made to find further details and to split these subsumed deals shouldinto thereforeseparate individual deals. For investors involved in subsumed deals, particular care must be splittaken upto verify whether deals for these investors have already been recorded in the longsame run, as soon as further details can be found. This also decreases the risk of duplications, since each deal can be identified.
[1] For instance, if you know that an investor operates in several (specified) regions, that contract farming (CF) is applied and that 1,000 ha were leased, and then enter these data, it is not clear whether CF is applied in all projects or just some – maybe the investor leased 1,000 ha in one of the areas but in others only operates via CF, without having acquired any land (if it is CF on farmers’ own lands, see section 2.8). Likewise, if you select “in operation” in 2005 and “project abandoned” in 2009 for implementation status, if the deal subsumes different projects, whether all operations were closed in 2009, or just one in one certain area, cannot be seen. In such cases, it is therefore very important to use the “additional comment” fields to note such ambiguitiescountry and to giveensure morethat explanationsthe oninvestments yourincluded entries.in the “subsumed deal” have not already been entered as individual deals in the database.