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
In order to better resist contemporary, neocolonial accumulation, we need to historicize land grabs in Africa.
- Africa is a Country
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30 December 2022
New podcast, in English, featuring Ardo Sow from the Collectif pour la Défense du Ndiaël
- Oakland Institute
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27 September 2022
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
Aminata Massaquoi of the Informal Alliance Against Industrial Oil Palm Plantations in Africa speaks about the struggles of women in Sierra Leone opposed to the oil palm plantations of Socfin and other companies.
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
A Bangkok court ruled that about 3,000 Cambodians could proceed with a class-action suit against Mitr Phol, the world’s fourth-largest sugar producer. Farmers in Oddar Meanchey province are seeking compensation after the Cambodian government allocated land to the company for sugar plantations.
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
Award-winning Cameroonian journalist Madeleine Ngeunga and Fern’s Indra Van Gisbergen recently visited villages in the shadow of Socapalm’s oil palm plantations to see if issues driving the dispute between locals and the company are being resolved.
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.
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
Land grabs in the developing world create a system so unequal that resource-rich countries become resource dependent.
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
A land measuring and titling campaign launched and financed by Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen lacks transparency and accountability and could leave thousands dispossessed from their land.
Background note to accompany a joint press release on the Kenyan government finding Karuturi Global Ltd guilty of tax evasion
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
Many of the areas from which people are being moved are slated for leasing by the Ethiopian government for commercial agricultural development, according to a new report from Human Rights Watch.
The following report, by independent researcher Anna Bolin, explores the global trends and influences at work behind agriculture mega-projects like MIFEE in Papua.
- Down to Earth
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30 November 2011
Internationally-funded Guatemalan palm oil and sugar cane interests evict Mayan Qeqchi families from their historic lands, destroying homes and crops, killing one, injuring more, while thousands are without food or shelter.
- Upside Down World
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23 Mar 2011
GRAIN says the World Bank's much anticipated report on the global farmland grab is both a disappointment and a failure.
Hassad Food knows how to shop. The $1b subsidiary of Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund finalised a $500m agreement last year to grow wheat & rice on 100,000 ha in Sudan and has announced plans to invest $700m worldwide this year.
- The National
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02 September 2010
Evidence suggests a marked disparity in the benefits received by those involved in and affected by these transnational land acquisitions, particularly for those originally dwelling on the land.
- Brookings Institution
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25 June 2010
Unfortunately, the US Senate inquiry into Goldman Sach's alleged malfeasance is unlikely to question why the company in 2008 decided to acquire ten intensive poultry farms in China's Hunan and Fujian provinces for $300 million.
- Huffington Post
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04 May 2010