Fears that investors from rich nations have been snatching huge tracts of farmland in poor countries are borne out by a new report from the World Bank, Rising global interest in farmland. The report finds that foreign investors are moving in where there is "weak governance" and an "absence of legal protection" in order to push local producers off their land. Ironically, the World Bank's own advice to developing countries is to go for market-based land management. But with this study it is forced to conclude that the
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private investors involved in the farmland deals in 14 countries have provided minimal benefits for those states and none at all for local communities.
The report reveals that land purchases in developing countries in 2009 were up ten fold on levels from the last decade and that two thirds of them were in Africa. Those behind the foreign acquisitions were failing to respect the environment, improve agricultural processes or address issues of food security in the countries where they operate.
The global land grab has accelerated since the food and financial crises of 2008. Commodity prices have soared on the back of rising global food demand (world wheat prices alone have doubled since June). Weather fluctuations and a growing bio-fuels industry are other important tactors driving the proliferation of farmland deals.
Friends of the Earth reports that Mozambique has received applications from bio-fuel investors from Europe and elsewhere to use around 12 million acres of its land - nearly one seventh of all the country's arable land.
Uganda, Sudan, Sierra Leone, Tanzania and Ethiopia are among the other African countries where foreign land speculators are rife. The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) estimates Photo: Laura vang Rasmussen foreign buyers have invested $30 billion since 2006 to purchase some 50 million acres of African farmland. Up to 10 million acres have been sold in Sudan alone.
As well as speculative investment from Europe and the US, states including China, Egypt, Libya, India, Korea, Japan and Saudi Arabia are buying up massive tracts of land overseas to grow food to send back home. Yet many of the countries selling or leasing this land are importers of food. Their governments would rather cut a deal with overseas interests than protect land that has been worked by subsistence farmers and pastoralists for centuries. So peasants are evicted and communal grazing lands fenced off.
The scramble to privatise African land is contributing to a crisis of hunger across much of the continent. Food riots like those in Egypt in 2008 and in Mozambique in September look likely to become more widespread.
Fortunately in other parts of the world the land grabbers are not getting all their own way. Brazil has passed a decree restricting acreage held by foreign-owned companies while Argentina and Uruguay are drawing up similar measures.
In Madagascar a lease granting Korea's Daiwoo Logistics the go-ahead to plant corn on territory half the size of Belgium led to the fall of the government in 2008 - and the end of the scheme.
New Zealand plans to tighten controls on foreign land purchases and Australia's senate has called for an audit of foreignowned land and water projects.
Campaigners with GRAIN the international nonprofit organisation that supports the struggles of small farmers against the takeover of their land, welcome these efforts. They also report growing opposition among farmers, A coalition of groups gathered in Angola in May called for African governments to protect collective rights to land, guard communities against land grabbing and to impose a moratorium on any expansion of bio-fuel production. And a coalition of global land rights organisations has launched a petition rejecting the entire logic of "responsible" land grabbing. Says GRAIN: 'The only thing holding back this massive transfer of lands and water from local communities to foreign investors is the strong social resistance that has Sources: Rising global interest in farmland World Bank, September 2010, www.grain.org Socialist Worker 7 September