May 17th, 2025
Via Yale e360, a look at how solar and wind farms are proliferating and increasingly taking up land worldwide, prompting criticism from rural communities and environmentalists. Solutions range from growing crops or grazing livestock under PV panels to putting floating solar farms on lakes and reservoirs. In California, sheep safely graze amid giant solar farms. […]
Read more »Thailand: Stop Chinese Land Grabs
March 19th, 2025
Via Bangkok Post, commentary on growing Thai concerns around Chinese land purchases: The latest report on Chinese investors buying protected forest land to expand their durian plantations is worrying. This is more than just an illegal land grab, however. Soon, the whole durian supply chain will feel the impact. As such, these blatant land grabs […]
Read more »February 14th, 2025
Via Associated Press, a report on North Dakota’s efforts to limit Chinese land purchases in its state: It’s been three years since a Chinese company’s plan to develop a swath of farmland near a North Dakota Air Force base prompted local security concerns and led to a rush of legislation across the country, but calls for restrictions keep coming. If anything, the […]
Read more »Grain Pains: Tensions With West Fuel China’s Anxiety About Food Supplies
February 14th, 2025
Via The Economist, a look at how tensions with the West are fuelling China’s anxiety about food supplies American soyabean farmers could draw some comfort from the tariffs that China imposed on an array of American imports on February 10th. Foodstuffs like theirs were not affected by China’s countermeasures against the 10% levy on Chinese imports […]
Read more »February 3rd, 2025
Via Bloomberg, a look at China’s substantial efforts to future-proof itself for trade wars and the return of Donald Trump: China’s quest to feed itself has taken it as far as Kenya’s macadamia nut groves and Bolivia’s cattle ranches, as part of a push in recent years to diversify food sources away from traditional Western […]
Read more »Mango Farms Where? Climate Change Is Scrambling Where The World’s Food Is Grown
January 31st, 2025
Via Grist, a look at how climate change is scrambling where the world’s food is grown, a reality that will lead to more tensions over who owns that land: Twelve years ago, Vincenzo Amata stumbled upon a plot of flowering trees while wandering the Sicilian countryside. Before long, he found a farmer tending the grove. […]
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