Land grabbing and the commercialization of land are critical issues in development, and a core reason for social conflict around the world.
Investment in foreign farms is not new, but as The Economist pointed out on 21 May 2009, several things about current land transactions are. One is their scale. According to the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), “between 15m and 20m hectares of farmland in poor countries have been subject to transactions or talks involving foreigners since 2006”. Putting a conservative figure on the land’s value, IFPRI calculates that these deals are worth between USD 20 billion and USD 30 billion.
Moreover, unlike older transactions that were about cash crops, current translations focus mainly on staples or biofuels, such as wheat, maize, rice and jatropha. Furthermore, while in the past most foreign farming investments were private, most of the new deals are government-to-government. The majority of purchasers are either foreign governments or companies closely tied to them, such as sovereign-wealth funds.
Moreover, unlike older transactions that were about cash crops, current translations focus mainly on staples or biofuels, such as wheat, maize, rice and jatropha. Furthermore, while in the past most foreign farming investments were private, most of the new deals are government-to-government. The majority of purchasers are either foreign governments or companies closely tied to them, such as sovereign-wealth funds.
In this context, the International Land Coalition (ILC) – a global alliance of civil society and intergovernmental organizations working together to promote secure and equitable access to land for the poor – launched an initiative to examine the key forces, drivers and impacts behind the current wave of large scale land acquisitions.
This initiative, called Commercial Pressures on Land (CPL), responds to the rising competition for land in rural areas by domestic and foreign investors to meet an increasing global demand for food, fibre, fuel and animal feed stocks. One of the objectives of the initiative is to explore possible solutions to enable poor land users to benefit from possible opportunities provided by the increased commercial value of land.
Given the strong linkages between the issues of land tenure, land value and resource mobilization for sustainable land management (SLM) investments, the GM has agreed to contribute to the CPL initiative by sharing information resulting from its country-level work related to the development of integrated financing strategies (IFSs) and, in particular, from the assessments of the value of land resources and ecosystems and the impacts of land degradation. The recently launched economic SLM valuation in Cambodia will be amongst the first GM studies to generate inputs for the CPL Initiative.
For more information:
Mr Simone Quatrini, Coordinator, Policy & Investment Analysis
Tel. +39 06 5459 2154
s.quatrini (at) global-mechanism.org
Download the CPL Initiative (pdf, English, 293kb)
