Corporate investors lead the rush for control over overseas farmland.

This new report [1] from GRAIN brings to light the role of the financial industry in today's global land grab for overseas food production. While so much attention has been focused on the involvement of states, like Saudi Arabia, China or South Korea, the report points out that the lead actors in the global farmland grab are not countries or governments but corporations.

The report includes a table [2] outlining over 120 investment structures, most of them newly created, which are busy acquiring farmland overseas in the aftermath of the financial crisis. Their engagement, whether materialised or targeted, rises into the tens of billions of dollars. The table makes plain that today's emerging new farm owners are private equity fund managers, specialised farmland fund operators, hedge funds, pension funds, big banks and the like. A new, powerful lobby of corporate interests is thus coming together, which wants favourable conditions to facilitate and protect their farmland investments. The funds are also exclusively geared towards large-scale agribusiness operations that produce for export markets. They will inevitably take away access for peasants and pastoralists to the land, water and other resources they need for local food production. One farmers' leader from Synérgie Paysanne in Benin rightly says these land grabs are "exporting food insecurity".

In light of these findings, GRAIN cautions those contemplating the various "win-win" scenarios that are being promoted to look more closely at who the investors are and what they really want. It should be apparent that making these investments work is simply not the right starting point. Supporting small farmers' efforts for real food sovereignty is where the solution to the food crisis lies.

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[1] GRAIN, The new farm owners - Corporate investors lead the rush for control over overseas farmland, Against the grain, October 2009, www.grain.org/articles/?id=55

[2] GRAIN, The new farm owners table, Against the grain, October 2009, www.grain.org/m/?id=266