Archive - Dec 3, 2008
Running Out of Land
Why are the prime ministers of Qatar and Kuwait looking at buying paddy land to grow rice in Cambodia? For the same reasons the UAE president visited Kazakhstan and Saudi authorities are travelling to Indonesia: they are running out of land to grow food. Asian nations such as China, South Korea and Japan are also scouting for land overseas to address their own food shortages.
What are the consequences for countries selling farmland to other nations?
Sue Banford of Grain, an international organization that supports farmers in their struggle against the privatization of biodiversity, believes countries seeking to outsource their domestic food production will cause farmers to lose their rights to land — and their rural livelihoods. Many local communities, she argues in a Guardian News editorial, will be "evicted to make way for the foreign takeover." Locals will lose control of land and won't be able to compete with foreign governments for property rights in their own country. (What family could win a bidding war with the Saudi government?)
Buying land in a foreign country may be a quick fix to one's own food shortages, but it is likely to increase food insecurity and landlessness over the long haul.
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