The rush by investors into agricultural land is becoming a hot issue, as we’ve noted before. This week, for example, Fortune had a long piece about a hedge fund manager buying up farm land for investment in the U.S., but the same trend is underway globally.
Now, Olivier De Schutter, the United Nations special rapporteur on the right to food, has voiced caution over the way these investments are unfolding, the NY Times Green Inc blog reports. He warned that the biofuel driven “land grab” in Africa and Asia could compete for food production in the most food challenged areas of the world.
About one-fifth of the activities that Mr. De Schutter deemed as “land grabs” – often backed by hedge funds or sovereign wealth funds – are projects in parts of Africa and Asia aimed at growing crops to make feedstock for biofuels.
The Times said De Schutter was in Brussels to propose a set of principles and measures to curb “land grabbing” by investors seeking lands for major crops, like soy and jatropha, which are often exported to produce food for rich-world consumers or to produce biofuels.
These investments may make business sense, but on a sustainability scale — that takes into account indigenous farmers, competition for scarce water resources and the export of crops from food scarce regions — they may well fall short.