27 Jun 2012: Foreign ‘Land Grabs’
Scooping up Key Agricultural Lands

From 2000 to 2010, foreign investors bought or leased roughly 270,000 square miles of prime agricultural land, most of it in the developing world, according to a report by the Worldwatch Institute. Half of the land was in Africa, acquired by investors from China, the Middle East, and other countries and regions, Worldwatch said. Although the pace of what Worldwatch called “land grabs” has slowed somewhat in the last several years, private investors and state-owned companies are still buying and leasing land in the developing world to ensure ample food supplies for citizens of land-poor countries. Worldwatch said the land deals generally took two forms: “South-South regionalism,” in which emerging economies invest in nearby countries, and North-South deals in which wealthy countries with little arable land buy up land in low-income nations. The Worldwatch Report said the land deals usually resulted in the displacement of small-scale agriculture for larger, industrial agriculture operations that have more serious environmental impacts.