May 7th, 2011
Via The Economist, an article examining the surge in global land deals: THE farmers of Makeni, in central Sierra Leone, signed the contract with their thumbs. In exchange for promises of 2,000 jobs, and reassurances that the bolis (swamps where rice is grown) would not be drained, they approved a deal granting a Swiss company […]
Read more »The New Geopolitics of Food: Food Wars Of The 21st Century?
April 26th, 2011
Courtesy of Foreign Policy, an interesting report on the geopolitics of food, namely how high prices are spawning land grabs and ousting dictators from the Middle East to Madagascar. As the article notes: In the United States, when world wheat prices rise by 75 percent, as they have over the last year, it means the […]
Read more »April 16th, 2011
Courtesy of The Atlantic, an interesting article on how speculators, among them Muammar Qaddafi, are snatching up much of Africa’s arable soil — enough acreage to cover Norway in a single year — driving up food prices and leaving locals homeless. As the report notes: “Hours into the interior of this agrarian nation sits a […]
Read more »Red China Eyes Ukraine’s Black Earth
April 14th, 2011
Via The Financial Times, an article on China’s hunger for natural resources is taking them to Ukraine: Chinese investors are looking to buy agriculture land and agribusinesses in Ukraine, as they widen their global hunt for natural resources. But given the bureaucratic challenges of investing int Ukraine, not least restrictions on land ownership, can even […]
Read more »April 14th, 2011
Via Radio Australia, a report from a leading Australian academic of a massive land grab happening in Papua New Guinea: “…In a paper to be delivered at a conference in London Australian National University Associate Professor, Colin Filer, says 5 million hectares of customary land has passed into the hands of national and foreign corporations […]
Read more »African Land, Up For Grabs
March 31st, 2011
Via Anyuak Media, a look at recent foreign investment into Ethiopian farmland: “…Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Ali Al Amoudi, a citizen of Saudi Arabia, spends his time shuttling between Riyadh and Ethiopia, where he was born in a village 64 years ago. The son of a Yemeni father and Ethiopian mother, Al Amoudi boasts an estimated […]
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