A New York company managing the retirement savings of workers in Sweden, the US and Canada is evading Brazilian laws on foreign investment to acquire farmlands from a businessman accused of violently displacing local communities.
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.
ILC is actually trying to promote some sort of dialogue between the different proposals for principles for responsible farmland investment
A discussion note prepared by FAO, IFAD, UNCTAD and the World Bank Group to contribute to an ongoing global dialogue.
- World Bank
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25 January 2010
The growing financialisation of Brazilian agribusiness is enabling foreign investment in the industry most responsible for deforestation - and land grabbing
- Intercept
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23 November 2021
Une société new-yorkaise chargée de la gestion de l'épargne-retraite des travailleurs en Suède, aux États-Unis et au Canada se soustrait aux lois brésiliennes sur les investissements étrangers pour acquérir des terres agricoles
For the world’s people to have secure access to the quantity and quality of food needed for a decent life, the land grabs and the development of large, highly mechanized factory farms must stop.
- Monthly Review
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02 November 2013
MCC is playing a key role in commodifying Africa’s farmlands
A global food crisis and rapid population growth are making farmland an increasingly attractive investment. Holly Black looks at the options.
CRR’s sustainability analysis shows that deforestation and fires have taken place on TIAA’s farmland portfolio in Brazil, enabling negative social impacts on local communities.
Conversation with Maria Antonelli about the main drivers and implications of land transactions around the world, with a particular focus both on the role of EU.
- ClimateScience&Policy
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22 October 2014
Pension fund giant TIAA is investing its clients’ funds in farmland and agribusinesses tied to environmental and human rights abuses in Latin America.
Oakland Institute speaks about the findings of their latest round of in-depth research into land grabs in Africa.
- Pambazuka
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09 December 2011
The AgriSol investment is a good case in justifying that in Tanzania it is the state which grabs on behalf of the investors as opposed in other areas where land is acquired illegally.
There are countless examples of governments handing it over at bargain prices to foreign investors, ranging from hedge funds to biofuel producers.
One of the world's major buyers of farmland is under fire for their involvement in land conflicts, environmental destruction and risky investments. A new report by GRAIN and Rede Social de Justiça e Direitos Humanos presents, for the first time, a comprehensive analysis of Harvard University's controversial investments in global farmland.
- GRAIN and Rede Social de Justiça e Direitos Humanos
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06 September 2018
Satellite maps show the connection between Harvard and TIAA's farmland acquisitions in Brazil's Cerrado and the massive number of fires that have been burning in the region since July of this year.
- FOE US, GRAIN,NFFC, Rede Social
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22 October 2019
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
Land-Grabbing is slowly becoming a serious problem in Tanzania with the poor being turned into landless citizens in their own country in the name of foreign investors.
- The Guardian
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20 July 2011
The government has not presented satisfactory and truthful explanations about its actions, let alone credible defense of its role as agency and facilitator of the abominable practices of farmland grabbing.
- tramnsformingethiopia
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11 August 2011
Despite the African Union's commitment to strengthening women's access and control of land by placing land rights in the domain of human rights, it is silent on the issue of land grabs. This is a gap that the AU needs to plug.
- Open Democracy
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10 February 2012
Rural sociologist Saker El Nour discusses the complex power dynamics between main actors within land reclamation projects in Egypt.
- Mada Masr
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02 February 2021
Land grabs in Canada have not been well-documented. Provinces do not keep inventory on large-scale land acquisitions. This blind eye approach has some people, particularly farmers, worried.
- Watershed Sentinel
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07 Mar 2013
It is not too late for equitable partnerships to flourish between foreign investors and local communities.
A new report published this week claims farmers in Africa are being driven off their traditional lands to make way for vast new industrial farming projects backed by European hedge funds seeking profits and foreign countries looking for cheap food.
Ethiopia's potential can be maximized only if we Ethiopians are the producers and sellers of our own agricultural products. What Meles Zenawi is doing now is putting this upside down. He made our potential buyers the sellers of our commodity.
- Ethiomedia
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03 December 2009
Global commodities giant Cargill continues to buy soybeans from a farm in Brazil that cultivates on illegally acquired and deforested land, including lands acquired by US teachers’ pension fund TIAA.
- Mongabay
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04 February 2021
A new breed of colonialism is rampaging across the world, with rich nations buying up the natural resources of developing countries that can ill afford to sell. Some staggering deals have already been done, but angry locals are now trying to stop the landgrabs
- The Independent
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09 August 2009
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.