1. Mapping the Global Land Grab

2. International financial capital has been sorely acquiring land around the world since The offensive involves central/peripheral countries, agricultural companies and capital funds;
This offensive focus on Latin America, Africa and Australia. Since then land has been considered a secure and increasingly valued asset;
The monetary policies that have been practiced by Central Banks in USA, EU and England stimulate this process. We can see an explosion of international liquidity with impact on virtually every ………… asset around the world.
I – GLOBAL SITUATION

4. III - HOW TO UNDERSTAND AND MAP LAND ACQUISITION AROUND THE WORLD?
II – OUR PROBLEM: LAND GRAB
Given this financial environment and the patterns of production/consumption practiced, land will tend to become scarce and expensive catched by this trap.
 III - HOW TO UNDERSTAND AND MAP LAND ACQUISITION AROUND THE WORLD?
Land grabbing - acquisition of large areas of farmland by corporations or states, on a long-term basis in another country and for the production of basic foods aiming to export. (GRAIN).
The origin of the problem, according to GRAIN:
• new food supply strategy by import dependent governments;
• Farmland as new asset class by the financial sector.
What causes the problem? It is possible to consider that the offensive over land is driven by:
1 - International investment funds – Pension Funds, Private Equity Funds and Hedge Funds;
2 - Sovereign Wealth Funds and state-owned industrial
conglomerates;
3 – Agribusiness and Industrial Groups.

5. Main sectors of large foreign acquisition transactions
Top 10 countries of large foreign acquisition transactions /2012 (hectares)
Source: GRAIN 2012.
Main sectors of large foreign acquisition transactions

6. III - ACTIONS AND ACTORS THAT STIMULATE LAND GRAB AROUND THE WORLD
Some countries have been working as a platform for acquiring land. The most important are UK, UAE, USA, China, Argentina.
States seek, support and facilitate the deals. Some kind of benefit and easiness of entry and exit of external investiment (FDI); the support of national development banks to facilitate the land purchase via local subsidiaries; some atracting policies of government sectors responsible for managing lands.
Multilateral agencies promote and stimulate: Development banks, bilateral cooperation and international institutions are involved in promoting these deals.

7. Source: GRAIN, 2012

8. Area sold or leased/arable land available. Selected Countries (1000 ha)
% of farming land
Australia
45.000,0 12
Argentina
18.000,0 10
Paraguai
7.889,1 38
United States
6.434,5 2
South Sudan
5.671,0 8
Brazil
4.500,0
Indonesia
4.240,0
Uruguai
4.000,0 27
Ethiopia
3.610,5
Mozambique
2.700,0 6
Sudan
2.640,0 5
Tanzania
2.444,0 7
Liberia
1.737,0 67

9. MAPPING THE GLOBAL LAND GRAB
Countries of origin of the land grabbers
Host countries of land grab investiment
Coutries that are both origin of land grabbers and host of their investiment
Countries with more than 10 % of population undernourished

10. IV – SOME ACTIONS
1 – FAO – Created a group called the "Voluntary Guidelines on Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries Resources and Forestry in a context of National Food Security “ to help governments protect their natural resources (FAO, May 2012);
2 - Governmental regulation of large foreign acquisitions of land and policies to control the movement of capital inflow;
3 – Stimulating social and political mobilization in each seller country and in international forums seeking the use of these resources for the benefit of people and not for the profitability of capital.

11. V – SOME CONCLUSIONS
Global land acquisition tends to affect sovereignty of the target countries of this strategy (this is not new);
Global land acquisition tends to affect availability of land for providing food around the world, reducing their availability and increasing their prices;
Relationships involved in this new process are very complex to map and difficult to control. There is an international diffusion of a tangle of speculative transactions involving public funding agencies, public and private financial funds, public and private agricultural and industrial companies and even States;
Involved in this complex web land is trapped by a modus operandi that is guided mainly by the opportunity of immediate financial returns bringing lots of risk and uncertainty to this area.