{"product_id":"the-land-grabbers-isbn-9780807003244","title":"The Land Grabbers","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e“Raises complex and urgent issues.”—\u003ci\u003eBooklist\u003c\/i\u003e, starred review\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHow Wall Street, Chinese billionaires, oil sheiks, and agribusiness are buying up huge tracts of land in a hungry, crowded world.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAn unprecedented land grab is taking place around the world. Fearing future food shortages or eager to profit from them, the world’s wealthiest and most acquisitive countries, corporations, and individuals have been buying and leasing vast tracts of land around the world. The scale is astounding: parcels the size of small countries are being gobbled up across the plains of Africa, the paddy fields of Southeast Asia, the jungles of South America, and the prairies of Eastern Europe. Veteran science writer Fred Pearce spent a year circling the globe to find out who was doing the buying, whose land was being taken over, and what the effect of these massive land deals seems to be. \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eThe Land Grabbers\u003c\/i\u003e is a first-of-its-kind exposé that reveals the scale and the human costs of the land grab, one of the most profound ethical, environmental, and economic issues facing the globalized world in the twenty-first century. The corporations, speculators, and governments scooping up land cheap in the developing world claim that industrial-scale farming will help local economies. But Pearce’s research reveals a far more troubling reality. While some mega-farms are ethically run, all too often poor farmers and cattle herders are evicted from ancestral lands or cut off from water sources. The good jobs promised by foreign capitalists and home governments alike fail to materialize. Hungry nations are being forced to export their food to the wealthy, and corporate potentates run fiefdoms oblivious to the country beyond their fences. \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Pearce’s story is populated with larger-than-life characters, from financier George Soros and industry tycoon Richard Branson, to Gulf state sheikhs, Russian oligarchs, British barons, and Burmese generals. We discover why Goldman Sachs is buying up the Chinese poultry industry, what Lord Rothschild and a legendary 1970s asset-stripper are doing in the backwoods of Brazil, and what plans a Saudi oil billionaire has for Ethiopia. Along the way, Pearce introduces us to the people who actually live on, and live off of, the supposedly “empty” land that is being grabbed, from Cambodian peasants, victimized first by the Khmer Rouge and now by crony capitalism, to African pastoralists confined to ever-smaller tracts. \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Over the next few decades, land grabbing may matter more, to more of the planet’s people, than even climate change. It will affect who eats and who does not, who gets richer and who gets poorer, and whether agrarian societies can exist outside corporate control. It is the new battle over who owns the planet.\u003c\/p\u003eIntroduction \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePart One : land wars\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eChapter 1 Gambella, Ethiopia \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eTragedy in the Commons \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eChapter 2 Chicago, U.S.A. \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Price of Food \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eChapter 3 Saudi Arabia \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003ePlowing in the Petrodollars \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eChapter 4 South Sudan \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eUp the Nile with the Capitalists of Chaos \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePart Two : White Men in Africa\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eChapter 5 Yala Swamp, Kenya \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eOne Man’s Dominion \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eChapter 6 Liberia \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Resource Curse \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eChapter 7 Palm Bay, Liberia \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eReturn of the Oil Palm \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eChapter 8 London, England \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003ePinstripes and Pitchforks \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePart Three : Across the Globe\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eChapter 9 Ukraine \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eLebensraum \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eChapter 10 Western Bahia, Brazil \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eSoylandia \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eChapter 11 Chaco, Paraguay \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eChaco Apocalyptico \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eChapter 12 Latin America \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe New Conquistadors \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eChapter 13 Patagonia \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Last Place on Earth \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eChapter 14 Australia \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eUnder the Shade of a Coolibah Tree \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePart Four : China ’s backyard\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eChapter 15 Sumatra, Indonesia \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003ePulping the Jungle \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eChapter 16 Papua New Guinea \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e“A Truly Wild Island” \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eChapter 17 Cambodia \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eSweet and Sour \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eChapter 18 Southeast Asia \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eRubber Hits the Road to China \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePart Five : African dreams\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eChapter 19 Maasailand, Tanzania \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe White People’s Place \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eChapter 20 South Africa \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eGreen Grab \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eChapter 21 Africa\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Second Great Trek \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eChapter 22 Mozambique \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Biofuels Bubble \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eChapter 23 Zimbabwe \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eOn the Fast Track \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePart Six : the last enclosure\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eChapter 24 Central Africa \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eLaws of the Jungle \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eChapter 25 Inner Niger Delta, Mali \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eWest African Water Grab \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eChapter 26 Badia, Jordan \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eOn the Commons \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eChapter 27 London, England \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eFeeding the World \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003enotes on sources \u003cbr\u003eindex\"Pearce may be the only person to visit all the critical frontlines worldwide, and his brilliant reporting makes the abstraction real. Probably the most important environmental book anyone could read right now.”—Timothy Searchinger, fellow, German Marshall Fund; research scholar, Princeton University \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Compelling and well-researched ... Dissects the modern rush to acquire land for production, investment, speculation or preservation.”—Wendy Wolford, \u003ci\u003eNature\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Raises complex and urgent issues.”—\u003ci\u003eBooklist\u003c\/i\u003e, starred review\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“A thorough and enlightening exposé.”—\u003ci\u003eConservation \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A well-researched, informative and accessible look at important economic and agricultural issues.”—\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“This is just what the world has been waiting for—a detailed overview of the land grabs that are the principal manifestation of a new geopolitics of food.”—Lester R. Brown, President of Earth Policy Institute and author of \u003ci\u003eWorld on the Edge\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“The remarkable Fred Pearce has done it again: in \u003ci\u003eThe Land Grabbers\u003c\/i\u003e he opens up vastly important new terrain few of us have even noticed. When the rich and powerful start buying up the planet's fundamental resources—land and water—from the poor and vulnerable, we'd all better notice.”—James Gustave Speth, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Wherever on this earth poor villagers, agribusiness magnates, ignorant or corrupt governments, petrodollars, commodity traders and hungry multitudes come together, Fred Pearce is at the nexus, brilliantly reporting on the biggest swindle of the 21st century. With the modern landgrab, the enclosure movement has attained planetary proportions and Pearce is without peer in describing the dire consequences of this ongoing human and environmental disaster.”—Susan George, author, \u003ci\u003eHijacking America\u003c\/i\u003e, board president, the Transnational Institute\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\"In \u003ci\u003eThe Land Grabbers,\u003c\/i\u003e Pearce has produced a powerful piece of journalism that illuminates how the drive for expanded food production is transfomring the planet. anyone who cares where her next meal is coming from should read it.\"–\u003ci\u003eWashington Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eFred Pearce\u003c\/b\u003e is an award-winning author and journalist based in London. He has reported on environment, science, and development issues from sixty-seven countries over the past twenty years. Environment consultant at\u003ci\u003e New Scientist \u003c\/i\u003esince 1992, he also writes regularly for the \u003ci\u003eGuardian\u003c\/i\u003e newspaper and Yale University’s prestigious e360 website. Pearce was voted UK Environment Journalist of the Year in 2001 and CGIAR agricultural research journalist of the year in 2002, and won a lifetime achievement award from the Association of British Science Writers in 2011. His many books include \u003ci\u003eWith Speed and Violence, Confessions of an Eco-Sinner, The Coming Population Crash, \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eWhen the Rivers Run Dry. \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cu\u003eFrom the Introduction\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/u\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Buy land. They’re not making it any more.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e—Mark Twain \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSoaring grain prices and fears about future food supplies are triggering a global land grab. Gulf sheikhs, Chinese state corporations, Wall Street speculators, Russian oligarchs, Indian microchip billionaires, doomsday fatalists, Midwestern missionaries, and City of London hedge-fund slickers are scouring the globe for cheap land to feed their people, their bottom lines, or their consciences. Chunks of land the size of small countries are exchanging hands for a song. So who precisely are the buyers—and whose land is being taken over? \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI spent a year circling the globe to find out, interviewing the grabbers and the grabbed on every continent, from Jeddah, London, and Chicago to Sumatra, Paraguay, and Liberia. Almost everyone seems to be a land grabber today. My cast of characters includes super-financier George Soros and super-industrialist Richard Branson; Colombian narco-terrorists and Italian heiresses; an Irish dairy farmer in the Saudi desert and the recent commander of British land forces, now tilling soil in Guinea; gun runners and the couple who sold the world high fashion with the Patagonia brand before buying the wild lands of the same name. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI discovered how logging concessions in central Africa may have helped elect Nicolas Sarkozy as president of France; what Lord Rothschild and a legendary 1970s asset stripper are doing in the backwoods of Brazil; who is buying Laos and Liberia, and who already owns Swaziland; how Goldman Sachs added tens of millions to the world’s starving; the dramatic contrast between Kenya’s Happy Valley and Zimbabwe’s Hippo Valley; who grabbed a tenth of the new state of South Sudan even before it raised its flag; why Qatar is everywhere; and what links a black-skinned Saudi billionaire to Bill Clinton, Ethiopia’s ex-freedom-fighting prime minister, and rich cattle pastures at the head of the Nile. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI found an evangelical American ex–prison boss draining bogs on the shores of Lake Victoria; a dapper English banker plowing up the Brazilian \u003ci\u003ecerrado \u003c\/i\u003egrasslands; Saudi sheikhs in Sudan, extending the world’s largest sugar farm; the Moonies seeking “heavenly life” by grabbing Paraguayan jungles; and Gaddafi’s doomed henchmen annexing black earth in Ukraine and yellow sands in Mali. The Kidmans and Windsors and Gettys and Khashoggis and Oppenheimers are in there too—and most likely you, or at least your pension fund, have a slice of the action. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSome regard the term \u003ci\u003eland grabbers \u003c\/i\u003eas pejorative. But it is widely used, and the subject of academic conferences. I use it here to describe any contentious acquisition of large-scale land rights by a foreigner or other “outsider,” whatever the legal status of the transaction. It’s not all bad, but it all merits attention. And that is the purpose of this book. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI have been in awe at the grabbers’ sheer ambition, and sometimes at their open-hearted altruism too. Some want to save their nations from a coming “perfect storm” of rising population, changing diets, and climate change. Others look forward to making a killing as the storm hits. Many believe they will do good along the way. But I have been appalled at the damage that often results from their actions. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTheir hosts share much of the blame for what goes wrong. After years of neglecting their agriculture, African governments are suddenly keen to invest. Their desire for a quick fix to deep-seated problems makes foreign investors, with their big promises, attractive. Many governments ask few questions when investors come calling. They clear the land of existing inhabitants, and often don’t even ask for rent. There is often an unspoken cultural cringe, in which foreign is always considered best. The investment, ministers believe, will inevitably bring food and jobs to their people. But such easy assurances rarely work out, for reasons that are social, environ­mental, economic, geopolitical—and sometimes a toxic mix of all four. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThere is much uncertainty about how much land has been “grabbed,” and how firm the grasp of the grabbers is. In 2010, the World Bank came up with a figure of 120 million acres. The Global Land Project, an inter­national research network, hazarded 150 million acres. The Land Deal Politics Initiative, another network of researchers that helped organize a conference in Britain on land grabbing in mid-2011, totted up 200 million acres. Within weeks, Oxfam, an aid agency, published its own estimate of 560 million acres. The truth is nobody knows. There is no central register; there is little national transparency. Some of the largest deals were done in secret and unknown even to the most diligent NGOs, while other deals have attracted headlines but have never come to fruition. I have tried to disentangle the truth about individual projects, but I have not attempted any global figure. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI hope I have reported fairly. I did find new mega-farms with thought­ful managers who make sure to offer secure jobs, food, and basic social services to their workers and their families. I found others with vibrant “out-grower” schemes that supported nearby peasant farmers and bought their produce. I found investors with a long-term view. But I also found poor farmers and cattle herders who woke up to find themselves evicted from their ancestral lands; corporate potentates running enclave fiefdoms oblivious to the country beyond their fences; warlords selling land they don’t own to financiers they have never met; hungry nations forced to ex­port their food to the wealthy; and speculators who buy land and then dis­appear without trace. I was reminded repeatedly of scenes from books like John Steinbeck’s \u003ci\u003eGrapes of Wrath \u003c\/i\u003eand Joseph Conrad’s \u003ci\u003eHeart of Darkness. \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis is not about ideology. It is about what works. What will feed the world and what will feed the world’s poorest. But what works has to do with human rights and access to natural resources, as well as maximizing tons per acre. As one agribusiness proponent, James Siggs of Toronto-based Feronia, admitted at an investment conference in 2011, “exclusively industrial-scale farming displaces and alienates peoples, creates few jobs and causes social disruption.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eYet industrial-scale farming is what most land grabbers have in mind. According to Graham Davies, consultant to the British private equity com­pany Altima Partners, the “vast majority” of investors in Africa are only interested in commercial Western-style agriculture, “largely ignoring” the continent’s 60 million small farms that produce 80 percent of sub-Saharan Africa’s farm produce. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt is important to know what agribusiness can and cannot deliver. But it is equally important to be angered by the appalling injustice of people hav­ing their ancestral land pulled from beneath their feet. And to question the arrogance and ignorance surrounding claims, by home governments and Western investors alike, that huge areas of Africa are “empty” lands only awaiting the magic of foreign hands and foreign capital. And to balk at the patina of virtue that often surrounds environmentalists eagerly taking other people’s land in the interests of protecting wildlife. What right do “green grabbers” have to take peasant fields and pastures to grow biofuels, cordon off rich pastures for nature conservation, shut up forests as carbon stores, and fence in wilderness as playpens and hunting grounds for rich sponsors? They are cooking up a “tragedy of the commons” in reverse. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOver the next few decades I believe land grabbing will matter more, to more of the planet’s people, even than climate change. The new land rush looks increasingly like a final enclosure of the planet’s wild places, a last roundup on the global commons. Is this the inevitable cost of feeding the world and protecting its surviving wildlife? Must the world’s billion or so peasants and pastoralists give up their hinterlands in order to nourish the rest of us? Or is this a new colonialism that should be confronted—the moment when localism and communalism fight back? \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI began and ended my journey round the world in the cockpit of the greatest land grab in history—the unfenced plains of Africa, where gov­ernments, corporations, and peasants seem set to fight for the soil of their continent. I started with a man called Omot.","brand":"Beacon Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44866967175397,"sku":"NP9780807003244","price":27.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780807003244.jpg?v=1742916550","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/the-land-grabbers-isbn-9780807003244","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}