Tanzania’s experience in the global land grab post-2008 led to shattered hopes, land conflicts & misery for small farmers. Yet, the current govt risks repeating history. A new report looks at this critical moment for Tanzania's small farmers & pastoralists.
Local residents who were evicted from their land for a 42,000 hectare sugar cane plantation are all the more bitter now that the unprofitable and poorly financed agricultural project has collapsed.
- Equal Times
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11 December 2023
Bloomberg exposé on Frank Timis' plan to turn Les Fermes de la Teranga (ex-Senhuile) into a major source of animal feed for the Gulf States and the implications for Dakar's water supply
- Bloomberg
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14 November 2023
A six-month investigation by Gideon Sarpong, Elfredah Kevin-Alerechi and Audrey Travère has uncovered the extent to which the relentless exploitation of rubber and palm oil resources by Socfin is fueling deforestation and displacement of indigenous populations in Nigeria and Ghana.
- iWatch Africa
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06 November 2023
Cuyama Valley farmers and ranchers have launched a boycott of supermarket carrots to protest a water rights lawsuit that was filed against them by Bolthouse and Grimmway farms, major carrot farmers in the valley.
Farmland purchases by the Harvard endowment contributed to a climate of anxiety, fear, and strain on Brazilian subsistence farmers.
- The Crimson
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17 April 2023
Palm oil from Brazil's Agropalma is certified as organic, fair and sustainable, and the oil is sold to food giants like Ferrero, Kellogg’s and Nestlé. But much of the plantation land of this purported model company was likely grabbed illegally.
- Rainforest Rescue
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30 Mar 2023
The case is emblematic of the spate of land grabs targeting unallocated public lands throughout the Amazon, where speculators clear and burn the vegetation, then sell the empty land for soy farms.
- Mongabay
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14 February 2023
Some community members accuse Socfin of land-grabbing and pollution. We visited the company’s plantation in Malen to find out what’s happening beneath the palm fronds.
- China Dialogue
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08 July 2022
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
In the country known as the “breadbasket of Europe,” agriculture has been dominated by oligarchs and multinational corporations since the privatization of state-owned land following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Will this change, now that a controversial law to create a land market entered into effect on July 1, 2021?
- Oakland Institute
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06 August 2021
Complex web of data reveals large swathes of country controlled by small number of billionaires and large companies
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
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.
With fires on their Cerrado properties, Harvard’s and TIAA’s deforestation exposure appears to be growing.
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
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
The project leaders of Wanbao Africa Agriculture Development Limited seemed to have an emerging-market hubris every bit as blinding as that of their colonial predecessors.
In 2011, three village communities in eastern-central Côte d’Ivoire learned that a Belgian corporation called SIAT was about to move onto their land without their consent.
- IDEF et al.
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12 December 2017
There is a large gap between SOCFIN's “responsible management” policy and the reality of violence and destruction around its plantations, where, with the complicity of national governments, the company attempts to suppress people’s resistance.
Pension fund giant TIAA is investing its clients’ funds in farmland and agribusinesses tied to environmental and human rights abuses in Latin America.
A new website has been launched this week to monitor the devastating impact of illegal large-scale commercial agriculture as a driver of global deforestation.
While there is near consensus that foreigners should not have the right to own farmland in Kazakhstan, opinions are deeply divided on the issue of granting leases to foreigners.
- The Diplomat
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15 June 2016
Eight years after releasing its first report on land grabbing, GRAIN publishes a new dataset documenting nearly 500 cases of land grabbing around the world.
Global demand for agricultural land has increased 14-fold since the 2008 spike in global food prices. With that comes increasing cases of land grab, violence, and force eviction. Why every actor that could have prevent that is becoming increasingly powerless to do so.
- Foreign Policy
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11 April 2016
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.
In this excerpt from her book, ‘Will Africa Feed China?’, Deborah Brautigam discusses China-Cameroon agricultural development and investment.
- All China Review
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02 September 2015
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.
New book, “Palms of controversies: Oil palm and development challenges,” says the problems is not the oil palm but the way people have chosen to exploit it.
Can we minimize downsides and maximize benefits of transnational land investments?