Claire Provost in the globaldevelopment blog at the Guardian(UK): Almost 5% of Africa's agricultural land has been bought or leased by
investors since 2000, according to an international coalition of researchers
and NGOs that has released the world's largest public database of international
land deals.
The database, launched on Thursday, lifts the lid on a
decade of secretive deals struck by governments, investors and speculators
seeking large tracts of fertile land in developing countries around the world.
The past five years have seen a flood of reports of
investors snapping up land at rock-bottom prices in some of the world's poorest
countries. But, despite growing concern about the local impacts of so-called
"land grabs", the lack of reliable data has made it difficult to pin
down the real extent and nature of the global rush for land.
Researchers estimate that more than 200m hectares (495m
acres) of land – roughly eight times the size of the UK – were sold or leased
between 2000 and 2010. Details of 1,006 deals covering 70.2m hectares mostly in
Africa, Asia and Latin America were published by the Land Matrix project, an
international partnership involving five major European research centres and 40
civil society and research groups from around the world.
It is the first time a comprehensive list of international
land deals has been collected and made public. The database relies on a wide
variety of sources – including media reports, academic research and field-based
investigations – to add detail to a global phenomenon notoriously shrouded in
secrecy....
A postcard from the French Congo depicting a plantation, around 1905
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