This paper is a commentary on Tania Li's paper, “After the land grab: Infrastructural violence and the 'mafia system' in Indonesia's oil palm plantation zone.” In her paper, Tania Li considers plantations as a spatial, politico-economic and socionatural assemblage. Drawing on her recent work on African palm plantations in Indonesia, Li asks not only what is lost with the establishment of plantation, but also and perhaps more importantly, what is newly produced? The present paper notes the striking similarities between plantations and mines as territorialized sites of capital accumulation conditioned on radical ecological and social simplification.