Landgrab

landgrab-game-boardThe Biodiversity-NGO GRAIN describes in a report how a host of nations – China, South Korea, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and others – have been scouring the globe in search of arable land to buy or to lease for the production of crops for food or biofuels. What attracts attention is not just the amount of land involved – some of the deals involve more than a million acres – but the logic underlying the transactions. For 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. Using its economic clout, 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. Read more at a GRAIN page that brings together various articles, links, news and blog posts.