Land Squeeze Report
Source: Down To Earth
GS III: Environment
Overview
- About the Land Squeeze Report
- Key Facts in the report
- India in the report
Why in the News?
Land Squeeze, the report released May 13, 2024, exposed the alarming escalation of land grabbing in various forms
About the Land Squeeze Report
- The new report by the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food).
- The 2008 global financial crisis led to significant land grabbing, and the pressure on farmland has persisted.
- Fifteen years later, global land prices have doubled, and farmers are facing increasing challenges from multiple directions.
Key Facts in the report
- The report revealed the concerning rise of land grabbing, the use of opaque financial instruments and speculation, rapid resource extraction, and intensive export crop production.
- Major new pressures were emerging from ‘green grabs’ for carbon and biodiversity offset projects.
- Green grabs for which huge swathes of farmland were being acquired by governments
- Corporations, now account for 20 per cent of large-scale land deals.
- Sizeable Area Acquired
- The size of Germany has been acquired through transnational land deals.
- 1 per cent of the world’s largest farms now control 70 per cent of the world’s farmland.
- Affecting sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America.
- Land inequality is growing fastest in central-eastern Europe, North and Latin America and South Asia.
IPES-Food identifies four trends driving this land squeeze
- Land Grabbing 2.0
- Powerful governments, financial actors, speculators, and large agribusinesses are taking control of land, converting it into a financial asset and disadvantaging small and medium-scale farmers.
- Between 2005 and 2018, agricultural investment funds increased tenfold.
- Additionally, the phenomenon of ‘water grabs’ and ‘resource grabs’ is on the rise, targeting crucial resources for quick value extraction.
- Notably, 87% of land grabs take place in areas with high biodiversity.
- Green Grabbing
- Support a new wave of top-down conservation and carbon offsetting schemes that exclude local land users and food producers.
- Governments have committed to using cropland for carbon removal projects, with over half of these pledges potentially disrupting small-scale farmers and Indigenous Peoples.
- Carbon and biodiversity offset markets are driving significant land transactions, involving major polluters in land markets.
- Expansion and Encroachment
- Urbanization and mega-infrastructure developments in Asia and Africa are claiming prime farmland.
- Mining projects accounted for 14% of large-scale land deals over the past ten years.
- Instead of protecting communities, dubious investment laws are protecting polluters.
- Food System Reconfiguration
- Industrial agriculture is expanding worldwide, leading to rapid degradation of farmland and displacing small-scale farmers.
- Agribusiness corporations are engaging in monopolistic practices, which increase costs for farmers.
- These trends are contributing to widespread economic instability for farmers.
How take countermeasures?
- Instead of opening the floodgates to speculative capital, governments need to take concrete steps to halt bogus green grabs.
- Invest in rural development, sustainable farming and community-led conservation.
- Build integrated land, environmental, and food systems governance to halt green grabs, recentre communities and ensure a just and human rights-based transition.
- Strengthen self-determined land governance systems, through democratic spatial planning processes, community led mapping and digitization, and democratic land agencies.
India in the report
- The top 10 per cent own 45 per cent of farmland (Source: 2020 Global Land Inequality).
- Land squeeze is inflaming land inequality and making small- and medium-scale food production increasingly unviable.
- Farmers, peasants and Indigenous Peoples are losing their land (or forced to downsize), while young farmers face significant barriers in accessing land to farm.
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