From the World Bank to pension funds, efforts are under way to regulate land grabs through the creation of codes and standards. Rather than help financial and corporate elites to "responsibly invest" in farmland, we need them to stop and divest.
Authorities in the southern Mozambican province of Gaza said that a group of Chinese businessmen are investing US$250 million in an agricultural project covering 20,000 hectares in the Limpopo Valley.
Film inspired by an APRODEV report on land grabbing in Cambodia
It is expected that the final report of the Commission of Inquiry into Special Agricultural and Business Leases (SABLs) will shortly be tabled in Papua New Guinea’s national parliament, but no one yet knows what it will recommend, let alone whether Peter O’Neill’s new government will act on those recommendations.
Powered by a $34.45-million infusion from a Singapore-based hedge fund owned by Cargill Inc., the expansion and acquisition binge of AgriNurture Inc. has accelerated into a buildup of farm hectarage that will see the company buy up some 1,400 hectares.
The companies, which produce mainly soya, sugarcane, corn and cotton, were informed about the opportunities for investment in the Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor of Tanzania (SAGCOT).
The ongoing rush to African land by national and transnational investors was a dominant theme at the People’s Dialogue and Summit being held at Mumemo in Maputo.
Politicians and economists say that the Australian public is only worked up about foreign ownership of agricultural land because the community is misinformed. This drives the belief that a register of foreign land holdings will calm everyone's anxiety. Given that Queensland has had such a register for 20 years, and that disquiet about foreign ownership still resonates among Queenslanders, this means that something else is at play.
The recent increasing land acquisitions by transnational corporations (TNCs) is causing conflicts among farmers, pastoralists and other land users in Ghana, and have the potential of leading to the loss of arable land by smallholders, reveals a study.
Ounkeo pioneered talkback radio in Laos, giving his listeners a rare chance to voice their opinions on the airwaves, but discussion on the sensitive subject of corporate land grabs appears to have persuaded officials that enough was enough.
Paraguay Resist Social Forum recorded in its first day of debates, denounces against government attacks on journalists, public and alternative media and land grabbing by multinational corporations.
Adecoagro, which owns nearly 300,000 hectares of land in Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, said it had sold its San Jose site for $1,212 per hectare, compared with a purchase price of $85 per hectare in 2002.
