Land Grabbing
The global “land grab” was coined by the international non-profit organization GRAIN to describe the global farmland buying spree that intensified in response to simultaneous crises in food and finances in 2008. Governments of some countries began buying up farmland outside their borders as a way to ensure future food and biofuel supplies for their own populations, while corporations and private investors looked to farmland as a stable and relatively profitable form of investment in the face of financial crises and food insecurity.
Land grabbing displaces local and Indigenous communities, often through violence. Thus, it is fundamentally opposed to the NFU’s support of food sovereignty.
The global “land grab” was coined by the international non-profit organization GRAIN to describe the global farmland buying spree that intensified in response to simultaneous crises in food and finances in 2008. Governments of some countries began buying up farmland outside their borders as a way to ensure future food and biofuel supplies for their own populations, while corporations and private investors looked to farmland as a stable and relatively profitable form of investment in the face of financial crises and food insecurity. Land grabbing displaces local and Indigenous communities, often through violence. Thus, it is fundamentally opposed to the NFU’s support of food sovereignty.
Even when land grabbing occurs in countries far beyond our borders, Canadian companies are actively engaged. The NFU has publicly called for Canadian pension funds and other financial entities to divest from these activities. More broadly, the NFU addresses this issue through our work with La Via Campesina, a global movement for peasant agriculture. La Via Campesina has called out global institutions like the World Bank for facilitating land grabs.
Further reading
October 11, 2018: World Bank–IMF Guilty of Promoting Land Grabs, Increasing Inequality, says LVC
February 6, 2017: Call to Pension Funds – Stop Landgrabbing in Brazil
March 6, 2013: Land Grabs: Industrial agriculture displaces the world’s poor for profit
