South Korea has just leased half of all the arable land in Madagascar according to the Financial Times. This has stirred quite a debate in the Malagasy blogosphere about land sovereignty and economic development.
- Global Voices
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23 November 2008
Stephen Marks looks at the latest rush by China and countries in the middle east to sign lease agreements in poor countries for agricultural production, and what this trend means in terms of food security and access to arable land for local populations.
- Pambazuka
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11 December 2008
THESE days, as we follow the struggle against the Taliban in the northwest, we can be forgiven for missing other important news. For instance, I had filed away a report on plans to lease large chunks of agricultural land in Punjab and Sindh to overseas investors in the back of my mind, planning to write about it later. When I ran a Google search on the subject, however, I realised the enormity of the scam.When I ran a Google search
Contrary to past trends, countries in the Global South are initiating much of the investment.
- Foreign Policy in Focus
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18 June 2009
If Indonesia decides to go ahead with leasing farmland, it should do so with caution, keeping an eye on both the risks and the opportunities. We need to understand that we have a very strong bargaining position.
- Jakarta Globe
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18 June 2009
We challenge the line agencies, legislators and national government to immediately stop the leasing of public land to foreign corporations. Instead, public lands that have huge potential to ensure food security and nation building should be distributed to Filipino small farmers.
There may emerge a situation when Ukrainians will be starving in spite of having the most fertile black earth.
"The motivation for South African farmers is simple," said Theo de Jager, Agri SA's deputy president, who helped negotiate the deal. "One in four farms must be redistributed in the next four or five years. So for new entrants into the sector and for those farmers who want to expand there is nowhere to go."
- National Post
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21 October 2009
Area nearly the size of France purchased, leased for food production around the world Africa, South America, parts of Europe targeted by cash-rich, food-poor nations
- Circle of Blue
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17 November 2009
In Mali the government has approved long-term leases for outside investors to develop more than 160,000 hectares of land. Local farmers say they fear being pushed out.
The much-discussed Congo land-lease, granting 200,000 hectares to South African farmers with a further 10 million hectares in the balance, appears to mark a departure from the usual terms underpinning foreign acquisition of fertile land by multinationals
- Pambazuka
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07 January 2010
He confirmed that the Ministry received very wide offers of investment by Arab and foreign investors.
- IRAQdirectory.com
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09 January 2010
There is something amazingly patronising in the way Payne claims that Emergent has ‘adopted’ a Mozambican village of 3,000 people and hired its citizens to clear 2,000 acres of land to farm it with her firm.
- Agriprods
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18 February 2010
Right now communities in Latin America, as around the world, are suffering a new kind of invasion of their territories
The Congo ventures are not core businesses to be based in the Congo but instead, extensions of businesses located in South Africa
- Mail & Guardian
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12 Mar 2010
Demeter International got a 25-year lease for 10,000 ha of Bwabwata National Park, which it will start ploughing in October. Hundreds of families will lose access to the forest.
It is not too late for equitable partnerships to flourish between foreign investors and local communities.
Quietly, these modern-day land marauders are coming to Canada—undermining family farms, compromising local food sovereignty, and harming the environment.
- Dominion
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27 September 2010
Access to land and security of tenure are essential for the enjoyment of the
right to food.
Indigenous people in Cameroon claim a company is stealing communal land to build a palm oil plantation -- a dispute that could lead to conflict, hunger and human rights abuses.
Given the power imbalances at play, it is folly to assume that land-seekers will suddenly embrace, en masse, a set of voluntary rules promoting sustainable and equitable investor practices, says Michael Kugelman
- Sustainable Security
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02 August 2012
Logging companies in PNG are using special agricultural leases to clear vast tracts of rainforest timber, on the promise of roads and economic development for remote villages. Jemima Garrett investigates.
With the large and sometimes overexposed attention for land grabbing in Africa, good examples tend to be forgotten
- The Water Channel
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23 April 2013
Savills, the UK property consultancy, believes sub-Saharan Africa, in agriculture, is the Brazil of the 1970s but warns against investments in farms of over 5,000 ha because of land ownership sensitivities.
The EU's bioeconomy vision is fuelling land grabs in Africa.
On the margins of the annual World Bank land and poverty conference in April a donor roundtable agreed to establish a first global donor working group on land, which was launched recently. Video interview with the first chair of the group, from DFID.
- Donor Platform
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01 September 2013
As investment deals between big business and the government are made across Tanzania, those working on behalf of small-scale farmers argue that more needs to be done to ensure their needs are not overlooked.
The Mozambique Council of Ministers is considering a massive project along the Lurio River in northern Mozambique without consulting the estimated 500,000 affected people in the project area.
“We want our land back,” said Bindu Kannea, a mother and a farmer who lives in Grand Cape Mount County. In Liberia community resistance to palm oil expansion is about protecting their last remaining pieces of land.
An ABC Rural investigation reveals the extent of the creep of foreign ownership in the Top End, particularly over the past three years.