Global Land Grab Transparency

by Natasha Chart · 2009-06-04 11:59:00 UTC
Topics:

Countries with limited agricultural land have been buying up the farm land of poorer countries as a hedge against future need. These contracts are going to start getting more attention:

... GRAIN is launching today a new website that offers the most comprehensive information tool on the global land grab for outsourced food production: http://farmlandgrab.org.

This new site is an improved version of the site initiated by GRAIN last year, which provides an open, up-to-date and easy to search library of over 800 articles, interviews and reports on farm land grabs around the world published since the outbreak of the food crisis in 2008.

The global trend to buy up or lease farmlands abroad as a strategy to secure basic food supplies, or simply to get rich, is not slowing down -- it is getting worse. The scale is becoming more apparent now, with researchers counting some 20 million hectares of good cropland already signed off to foreign investors, or soon to be, worldwide. More countries and corporations are getting involved, from Sri Lanka to Congo or Hyundai to Varun. Farmers' organisations, human rights groups and other social movements are agitating against this obscene approach to feeding their countries, while at least one government – the Ravalomanana regime in Madagascar -- has been brought down because of its involvement in such a deal. ...

The site will have wiki-like features, respect the anonymity of whistleblowing contributors who don't want to be identified, and attempt to bring as much information about these deals as possible into the public domain.

Recent postings to the site include a report on statements by an EU official comparing the trend to a neocolonialism that may harm poorer countries and this one examining farm land outsourcing in Africa, with a focus on Saudi Arabia's purchases.

Natasha Chart
PREVIOUS STORY:
Melamine from Pesticide in Baby Food
NEXT STORY:
Victory! Smithfield Will Stop Using Cruel Gestation Crates

COMMENTS (0)

    Comment Policy

    · All fields are required to comment.

    [X]

    Comments on Change.org are meant for further exploration and evaluation of the campaign on Change.org. To that end, we welcome constructive comments. However, we reserve the right to delete comments which, as determined solely in our discretion: (1) are offensive, abusive, or off-topic; (2) include content solely intended to personally attack the campaign creator, (3) are designed to subvert or hijack comment threads rather than contribute to them; and/or (4) violate our terms of service and/or privacy policy. Repeat offenders may be permanently removed from the site at our discretion. Please also be advised that: (A) we do not actively curate and/or monitor in any manner whatsoever the comments made on the Change.org platform, and (B) the creator of each campaign on Change.org may remove any comment at her/his/its discretion.