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| Farm Sunset. (Photo by Ruthanne Reid) |
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The global financial crisis, which began in 2008, has significantly altered the way many speculators and financial institutions invest. Rather than taking huge risks with dodgy derivatives like credit default swaps and mortgage-backed securities, both of which have proven to be particularly volatile, many speculators have instead begun to invest in the most tangible asset of all: land. By doing so, financial institutions, and many governments, have engaged in “land grabbing” – a process by which large amounts of capital are invested in the purchase of land for large-scale agricultural production, while the farmers who have worked the land for generations are displaced and/or become renters on land that was once their own.
This worrying trend is part of a global shift, a consolidation of land and resources in ever fewer hands, while the mass of workers and peasants are made dependent on corporations and governments. Spurred on by the financial crisis and the exponential growth of food and commodity speculation, financiers and their investment institutions (hedge funds, big banks, sovereign wealth funds, etc.) are gobbling up the most fertile land around the world, leading many to wonder what the future of food production and land distribution will look like.
It should be further noted that this trend is not only affecting the poor of the Global South, but also the independent farmers of the so called “developed world.” As such, landgrabbing has become a global phenomenon, one that must be addressed by farmers and working people internationally, with broad-based coalitions and organizations mobilizing resistance and educating the people. Only comprehensive solutions to such a global problem can possibly hope to protect the land, and all of us who depend on it.
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