Mitchell Beer
The Advocate
An unprecedented 15-year trend of land grabbing has doubled the global price of farmland and is squeezing farmers on all sides, the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems concludes in a new report released this month.
Around the world, “farmers and rural communities are losing land access as economic and tenure security deteriorate — making small-holder agriculture increasingly untenable,” the organization stated in a summary of the 87-page report.
While powerful investors and big agri-business tighten their control over land, international panel’s report adds, some parts of the response to the climate and biodiversity crises are adding to the pressure. “Green grabs” for carbon offsets, large-scale nature conservation, “clean” fuel production, and critical mineral extraction are all opening up new opportunities to commoditize farmland.
The research focuses mostly on developing countries, but Saskatchewan organic farmer and panel member Nettie Wiebe was one of the contributing authors.
“Imagine trying to start a farm when 70-per-cent of farmland is already controlled by just 1 per cent of the largest farms — and when land prices have risen for 20 years in a row, like in North America,” Wiebe said. “That’s the stark reality young farmers face. Farmland is increasingly owned not by farmers, but by speculators, pension funds and big agri-businesses looking to cash in.”
“Instead of opening the floodgates to speculative capital, governments need to halt bogus ‘green grabs’ and invest in rural development, sustainable farming and community-led conservation,” added panel member Sofía Monsalve Suárez, secretary general of FIAN International, an international human rights organization working for the right to food and nutrition. “We’ve got to make serious changes to democratize land if we want to ensure a sustainable future for nature, food and rural communities.”
The summary materials accompanying the report list four “leverage points” to shift the dire picture the panel paints:
• Halting green grabs and taking speculative investment out of land markets;
• Setting up integrated governance systems for land, environment and food systems;
• Supporting collective ownership and innovative financing for farmers;
• Developing a “new social contract” and ringing in a “new generation of land and agrarian reforms.”