Land grabbing: food security and exploitation

Until a couple of days ago, I'd never heard about land grabbing. However, according to an article published by the Oakland Institute, around 180 instances of land grabbing have been reported since mid-2008.

The same article defines land grabbing as "the purchase or lease of vast tracts of land by wealthier, food-insecure nations and private investors from mostly poor, developing countries in order to produce crops for export." For example, China may set up large pork and chicken operations in Australia to keep up with the demand for meat among Chinese consumers. Meat consumption in China has quadrupled in the last 30 years, a common trend among countries in a period of rapid industrialization.

As countries grow wealthier and tastes expand, large agribusinesses search for ways to satisfy consumers by mass producing well-liked products; however, such expansion takes land. Consequently, wealthy countries buy or lease land cheap from poorer nations. However, this can cause ecological problems for those nations, and in some cases increase food insecurity for countries already struggling.

The Oakland Institute says that, "The International Food Policy Research Institute (IF PRI) has reported that foreign investors sought or secured between 37 million and 49 million acres of farmland in the developing world between 2006 and the middle of 2009." That's 49 million acres those countries can no longer use to grow their own food.

Farmlandgrab.org, a blog that aggregated news reports on the issue as a resource for activists, non-government organizations and journalists, says the World Bank, in an attempt to address the growing trend, put out principles for responsible agro-enterprise investment. However, legions of organizations promoting sustainable agriculture condemn the World Bank for legitimizing the practice.

I'm hoping to learn more about this practice in the future. Hopefully, mainstream news will soon pick up a topic that is potentially exploiting unknown numbers of poor countries. Just food for thought.