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Thursday, November 27, 2014

Valuable Resources - Trade Comes Before Local Populations


As the world's population soars past 7 billion, farmland and freshwater are becoming increasingly valuable resources.
Critics worry that the trade has spurred a rise in 'land grabbing'
And, in response, a growing number of companies and investors — Wall Street traders, Chinese state corporations, Gulf sheiks — have been buying up farmland abroad. The trade has been booming since 2007, when a spike in grain prices got everyone fretting about shortages. The purchases help countries like China and Saudi Arabia secure food supplies and conserve water domestically. But critics worry that the trade has also spurred a rise in "land grabs" — when sellers in countries like Ethiopia or Cambodia forcibly acquire the farmland from locals in the first place.
So how big is the trade? A new study in Environmental Research Letters finds that at least 126 countries are now involved in purchasing or selling global farmland. The most active buyers are investors in the United States, China, Britain, Germany, India, and the Netherlands. They're typically seeking out land in South America, Africa, and Asia — particularly Brazil, Ethiopia, Philippines, Sudan, Madagascar, Mozambique, and Tanzania. The trading map looks like this:


















































The top 20 countries in the global land trade network, ordered by the largest number of trading partners. (Seaquist et al, 2014)

It all adds up: In 2013, a separate study in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences estimated that between 0.7 percent and 1.75 percent of the world's agricultural land was now being transferred to foreign investors from local landholders. That's an area bigger than Germany and France combined.

Why are people buying farmland abroad?

The PNAS study found that foreign investors frequently buy tracts of land that have ample supplies of freshwater, through either local rainfall or underground aquifers. Water has become especially valuable given that supplies are increasingly under strain in countries like China, India, and the United States.

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