A new attack: G20 countries practice ‘agricolonialism’ in developing countries
- Workers' World
- 03 August 2009
The social consequences of these land grabs are significant.
The social consequences of these land grabs are significant.
GRAIN says the World Bank's much anticipated report on the global farmland grab is both a disappointment and a failure.
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.
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.
Land grabs in the developing world create a system so unequal that resource-rich countries become resource dependent.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
The following report, by independent researcher Anna Bolin, explores the global trends and influences at work behind agriculture mega-projects like MIFEE in Papua.
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.
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?
The growing financialisation of Brazilian agribusiness is enabling foreign investment in the industry most responsible for deforestation - and land grabbing
Background note to accompany a joint press release on the Kenyan government finding Karuturi Global Ltd guilty of tax evasion
Civil society, including African farmers unions, need to educate local people that such land deals are not in their interests, however couched in 'win-win' terminology they appear to be.
"They are selling off African land for a song," said Ndiogou Fall, president of the executive committee for the Network of Peasant Organizations and Producers in West Africa (ROPPA), which is calling for dialogue between governments, producers and African and foreign investors.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Laos has approached Thailand as a partner in a joint venture with Kuwait to grow rice in Laos. The Lao government has allocated 200,000ha.
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.
In this excerpt from her book, ‘Will Africa Feed China?’, Deborah Brautigam discusses China-Cameroon agricultural development and investment.
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.
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.
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.
In order to better resist contemporary, neocolonial accumulation, we need to historicize land grabs in Africa.
The Bunong people's land struggle with Socfin
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