Dubbed "Land Grabs" by the media, these commercial land acquisitions, in which investors buy up or lease vast swaths of land in developing countries to develop super-sized farms, pose particular danger for subsistence farmers, women and other pastoralists in developing countries, many of whom have been using their plot of land for generations but have no formal paperwork to prove their legal ownership of the land.
Landesa has written an issue brief on the subject that will help governments, investors, civil society and journalists make better sense of this global trend that has the potential to totally transform - for good or ill - much of the developing world. The stakes are high. Some nations, including Madagascar and Mozambique, have already received requests from investors for more than half of their total cultivable land area. The displacement of local farmers required if all of those projects were to be approved, would be massive.