Global land grabbing: Eroding food sovereignty
- PAN AP
- 14 January 2011
Land deals, whether as direct purchases or long-term leases, are being brokered in poor countries by advanced capitalist countries and their TNCs
Land deals, whether as direct purchases or long-term leases, are being brokered in poor countries by advanced capitalist countries and their TNCs
New report by GRAIN shows how Saudi businessmen are pursuing deals in Africa that would give them control over some of the continent's most productive farmlands.
As many foreign and local investor are seeking to win a license to invest in the giant agriculture project in Papua, Indonesia, one unnamed South Korean investor has obtained a permit. Mitsubishi is also bidding. Binladin Group has been rejected.
The development, under which many residents will be forced to sell their land, has met opposition from locals and non-government organizations. The Indonesian Farmers Union (SPI) has said that it will lead to a “land grab” by big businesses at the expense of locals.
Forecast reports on scarcity predict global actors will move in on dwindling resources. Governments are taking notice, and so should the public, Vivian Fritschi writes for ISN Security Watch.
The planned expansion of plantations in the Papuan provinces of Indonesia should be immediately suspended and reviewed amid concerns over massive deforestation and widespread exploitation of local communities, environmentalists warned today.
The Saudi Binladin Group's $4.3 billion planned investment in Papua, east Indonesia, to develop rice fields has stalled because of problems acquiring land from local people.
Agricultural experts have called for a halt to moves by Gulf investors to snap up foreign land, amid claims that poor nations are losing much-needed farmland in a calculated land grab.
Singapore's Temasek is seeking to buy land in North Bolaang Mongondow, North Sulawesi, where they plan to grow high-quality rice.
Essentially, the Middle East is left with two choices. “The region has to import. The question is, invest abroad or rely on the free market?” said Dr Eckart Woertz, program manager in economics at the Gulf Research Center in Dubai.
Indonesia will allocate at least 2 million hectares of farm land to joint ventures with Saudi investors to be used mainly for the cultivation of rice, a Saudi newspaper reported on Saturday.
Growing crops for strangers, of course, is nothing new. The long, grim march of colonialism was driven by Europe’s penchant for sugar, tea, tobacco and other crops that don’t flourish in northern climes. But as climate change and growing populations put ever more pressure on the earth, state-backed searches for land and food contracts as part of a national food-security strategy strike many as fundamentally new.