“Large scale land investments” and “land grabbing” are the terms most commonly used to describe the rising global trend where foreign and local agribusinesses, mining corporations, governments, and investment houses obtain long term rights over large areas of land. Perhaps the most famous of these is the attempt by the Daewoo Group of South Korea to lease 1.3 million hectares, or more than half of the productive agricultural lands of Madagascar, in Africa.

Commentary: Land Confiscation;
Situation of land confiscation in Nam-Zarng and Kun-Hing;
Land confiscated, villagers house destroyed, in Nam-Zarng;
Cultivated land confiscated in Nam-Zarng;
Farmlands and cemetery ground confiscated in Nam-Zarng;
Lands confiscated, forced labour used, to build new military bases and an airstrip, in Kun-Hing;
Confiscation of land with regard to mining projects;
Land Confiscation due to coal mining concession in Murng-Sart;

Commentary: Land Confiscation...
Situation of land confiscation in Nam-Zarng and Kun-Hing...
Land confiscated, villagers house destroyed, in Nam-Zarng...
Cultivated land confiscated in Nam-Zarng...
Farmlands and cemetery ground confiscated in Nam-Zarng...
Lands confiscated, forced labour used, to build new military bases and an airstrip, in Kun-Hing...
Confiscation of land with regard to mining projects...
Land Confiscation due to coal mining concession in Murng-Sart...

A VISITING land expert has warned against falling for the “dominant model” of land grabbing, which sees small-scale farmers replaced by agri-businesses that are in many cases less productive.

Mr Robin Palmer, who has worked on land issues for more than 35 years as both an academic and for British NGO Oxfam, said last week that population pressures and the increasing consumption of meat and dairy products in developing countries were often used to justify plantation farming, with peasant farmers and traditional pastoralists dismissed as “romantic nonsense”.

textabstractMainstream adherence to land titling as a strategy to address rural poverty has gained even more sway against the backdrop of the contemporary phenomenon of large-scale farmland acquisitions, known to some as “global land grabbing”. The orthodox narrative, embraced in toto by organisations such as the World Bank, is that formal property rights mitigate the risks of these land acquisitions and allow the poor to access the benefits of these acquisitions.

Khin Shwe, the chairman of Zay Kabar Company and a member of Burma’s Lower House, will face a lawsuit filed by farmers from Rangoon’s Mingaladon Township whose farmland he allegedly confiscated.

The farmers were previously allowed to continue growing paddy and other crops even after their lands were seized, but they are no longer permitted to do so. Many have been threatened and told to vacate the land, that’s why they are preparing to sue him, said Kyaw Sein, a farmer who lost 50 acres of land...

...Pho Phyu estimates that since the new government took office in March last year some 10,000 acres of farmland have been seized in Rangoon and Irrawaddy divisions alone.

“Under the new law, millions of acres that have been seized by big companies will legally belong to them, and not the farmers,” says Pho Phyu.

This report contains the full transcript of an interview conducted by a KHRG researcher in September 2011. The villager interviewed Saw Ca---, a 45-year-old rubber, betelnut and durian plantation owner from Kawkareik Township, Dooplaya District, who described the survey of at least 167 acres of productive and established agricultural land belonging to 26 villagers for the expansion of a Tatmadaw camp, transport infrastructure, and the construction of houses for Tatmadaw soldiers' families.

Northern Burma’s borderlands have undergone dramatic changes in the last two decades. Three main and
interconnected developments are simultaneously taking place in Shan State and Kachin State: (1) the increase
in opium cultivation in Burma since 2006 after a decade of steady decline; (2) the increase at about the same
time in Chinese agricultural investments in northern Burma under China’s opium substitution programme,
especially in rubber; and (3) the related increase in dispossession of local communities’ land and livelihoods

Includes current trends � levels of activity, crops and markets, sources of investment, contract transparency, geographical distribution; focus of existing discourse; land and security; weaving land into conflict narratives; risks; conclusion. Argues that access to accurate information about the extent and nature of large-scale foreign investment in Ethiopian and Sudanese land is extremely limited, so broader narratives of ‘land grabbing’ are a potentially misleading oversimplification.

BURMA: Farmers' land fight celebrated in new booklet...

(Hong Kong, January 10, 2012) A Burma-based rights group has released a new publication documenting and recounting the courageous fight against land expropriation, intimidation and false prosecution of a group of rural villagers.

On 23rd of January the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development has launched a new position paper on large scale investment in land and its implication on development policies. Objective of the position paper is to reflect the recent dynamics. Currently the paper is available in German only.