We hear about India, China and Arab countries grabbing land - mainly in Africa. However, UK and US companies are behind this land grabbing. While some people (eg WTO) still go on about the 'free' market running the world, others are hedging their bets and taking over vast tracts ofother peoplec'countries.
Can UK Food Security be guaranteed by maintaining a wide diversity of supply chains, should we produce more, and are some of those supply chains vulnerable? It is clear that many countries and institutions are not going to rely on the market for food supplies in the future; they are going to buy or lease land - called landgrabbing.
China, South Korea, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other UK and US financial institutions – have been scouring the globe in search of arable land to buy or to lease for the production of crops for food or biofuels. Some of the deals involve more than a million acres. But there is more to it than just land, there is also the logic underlying the transactions. This is not land that is being primarily acquired to produce crops to sell on the world market or to feed the local population. These crops are to be sent back to the nation that has acquired the land. The investing nation is taking over land – and, with it, the soil fertility and the water that are needed to cultivate crops – so that its people back home can have food to eat and fuel to put into their cars. Jacques Diouf, Director General of FAO, calls this landgrabbing 'Neocolonialism'. Landgrab Resource Page has up to date links for all countries. Farmlandgrab keeps daily dossier of events.
UK companies have already grabbed about 200,000 heactares of land in Africa mainly for biofuels production. Bidwells are part of a bid to gain control of $300m worth of Eastern Europen land. LandKom International lease large tracts of land in Ukraine (more). Map of UK's landgrabbing, originally in 'Land Grab' (IFPRI) where there are flags from all over theworld as to who is landgrabbing what/where.
GRAIN in Seized: The 2008 landgrab for food and financial security says:"Today’s food and financial crises have, in tandem, triggered a new global land grab. On the one hand, “food insecure” governments that rely on imports to feed their people are snatching up vast areas of farmland abroad for their own offshore food production. On the other hand, food corporations and private investors, hungry for profits in the midst of the deepening financial crisis, see investment in foreign farmland as an important new source of revenue".
Oakland Institute Understanding Land Deals in Africa spells out the role of financial institutions in enabling 35-40 mil acres/yr to be landgrabbed.
More in Independent May '09 & Daewoo & Madagscar landgrab.
Japan have ideas of their own and are looking at regions in Southern America and Easern Europe - not to supply themselves, but in order to sell crops on the global food market - particularly soya to China. More from FT