Growing concentration of land is in foreign hands

Latinamerica Press | 25 April 2012
Medium_gaucho001-8
In Uruguay, 83 percent of the agricultural lands sold in 2010 (336,000 hectares) were bought by foreigners, including Europeans, Brazilians, Argentinians, New Zealanders, Koreans, and US citizens.

by Alejo Álvez

The processes of concentration, foreign ownership and land degradation came to be a central concern of supranational bodies and NGOs that warn, like the United Nations Organizations for Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), of the “negative effects of these phenomena on food security, agricultural employment and the development of family farming.”

An FAO study focusing on South America – and specifically, the four Southern Common Market, or Mercosur, countries of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay y Uruguay, all major food producers — warns of the situation in Argentina and Brazil regarding those three processes. The report, “Land grabbing in Latin American and the Caribbean viewed from broader international perspectives”, confirms “we face a new wave of foreign capital that caused a tremendous concentration process” and an “unchecked rise in the price of land, that in Uruguay for example increased seven-fold in the last 10 years”.

Uruguay has a total acreage of 16 million hectares. In the last decade transactions were carried out for 6.3 million hectares (15.5 billion acres). According to the latest statistics from the country’s National Institute of Colonization, 83 percent of the fields sold in 2010 (336,000 hectares or 830,300 acres) were bought by foreigners, including Europeans, Brazilians, Argentinians, New Zealanders, Koreans, and US citizens.

Until now, when talking about foreign ownership of land, UN agencies referred to the private actions of investors (speculators) driven by the pursuit of profit. In the report, released in November 2011, the emphasis is for the first time on “land grabbing”, defined as the purchase of land for food production in which foreign governments are also involved.

Just as the FAO is concerned with the sale to foreigners of land to use for the production of food or other plants intended to make biofuels, other entities are talking about the sale and concentration in certain hands of land for the development of mining or tourism.

Grain, an international organization that supports campesinos and social movements, cites the cases of mining companies like US firm Newmont Mining, which is digging in the Yanacocha gold deposit in Cajamarca, Peru, and investments by Canada´s Barrick Gold in “South America´s highlands”

Investment in land
But Grain also sets its sights on the countries that are involved in land grabbing. While it doesn’t specify the purchases by country, it states that South Korea ranks first, with 2.3 million hectares (56.8 billion acres), followed by China (2.1 million hectares or 5.4 billion acres) and Saudi Arabia (1.6 million hectares or 3.9 billion acres). The motivations behind the purchases, according to Grain, are obvious: they are countries with large economic growth that have the funds to buy land wherever there are resources they don’t have, like soy, wheat, and rapeseed.

In the case of China — consumer of virtually all the transgenic soy produced by Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay— “There is an attempt to buy land in countries of great natural wealth and produce the food needed to supply its domestic market”, according to Grain. In 2010, Argentine courts halted a contract between the southern province of  Rio Negro with Chinese company Heilongjiang for the sale of 254,000 hectares (627,000 acres) to be used for just such a megaproject.

Also in Argentina, on Feb. 22 the government in the Northern province of Chaco announced it had reached an agreement with a parastatal Saudi Arabian firm, turning over 200,000 Ha (494,200 acres) of public lands, a virgin forest known as “El Impenetrable” which will be used for food production to be exported to the Saudi Arabian market. In return, the Riyadh-based company will invest US$400 million. There are currently 60,000 members of the Wichi indigenous community living there who will be displaced.

The International Land Coalition, or ILC, a global alliance of civil society and intergovernmental organizations working to promote secure and equitable access to land, highlights the “significant role played by national elites in the process of concentration of the lands”, a phenomenon also observed by Fernando Eguren, president of the Peruvian Center for Social Studies. There are also the issues, he added, of “a concentration of influences, political power in the geographic areas under development, and ... restrictions on democracy. “

The ILC study, which refers not to Latin America exclusively, but rather to “a set of developing countries”, offers a startling conclusion that affirms the speculative underpinnings of these investments: of the 71 million hectares that changed hands in 2010, 58 percent was for biofuel crops, 22 percent went toward mining, tourism, and logging, and only 20 percent was earmarked for food production.

Financial benefits
FAO warned of the difficulties with regard to policies that favor land concentration with incentives that, in theory, seek to promote certain productive activities but ultimately mean a transfer of public funds to third parties. The organization cites among those policies the tax advantages for irrigation schemes (in Peru and Chile), forest development (in Chile and Uruguay) and the promotion of agriculture, forestry and crop exports linked to biofuels (in most countries).

The UN agency said the four Mercosur countries account for half of the world´s soybean, which is grown using genetically modified seeds that don´t require manual tillage, but rather a system of “direct seeding”. This requires large amounts of glyphosate, a herbicide that causes serious damage to people and the ecosystem.

“This combination reduces long-term productivity, encourages the misuse of water and promotes erosion,” FAO said.

The bulk of the land dedicated to soybean crops in Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay is in the hands of foreign groups, multinationals like Monsanto and Syngenta, or corporations. These are what allow Grain to denounce how transgenic seeds are used: “Speculative investors are not interested in caring for the earth or the environment, when land resources are exhausted in one area they simply move on.”
  • Sign the petition to stop Industria Chiquibul's violence against communities in Guatemala!
  • Who's involved?

    Whos Involved?


  • 13 May 2024 - Washington DC
    World Bank Land Conference 2024
  • Languages



    Special content



    Archives


    Latest posts