Translation by Elisabeth Gross and Niels Zwarteveen of the article published as part of report on: “Agricultural land: both a common good and source of tension”. Produced by GREP & Terre de Liens for review, POUR n°220, December 2013.

The recent purchases of farmlands in Berry by Chinese investors have attracted a great deal of media attention. The topic not only raises questions for the world of agriculture, but also has many other implications. This article aims to describe the situation, consider the global context and discuss the broader issues.

The recent surge in large-scale land acquisitions has prompted the international community to launch several initiatives to deal with this phenomenon. So far, the greatest progress has been made in 2012 with the endorsement by the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) of the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security. The Principles for Responsible Investment in Agriculture and Food Systems, recently adopted, (...)

The recent surge in large-scale land acquisitions has prompted the international community to launch several initiatives to deal with this phenomenon. So far, the greatest progress has been made in 2012 with the endorsement by the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) of the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security. The Principles for Responsible Investment in Agriculture and Food Systems, recently adopted, (...)

La FAO a publié fin 2011 un nouveau rapport intitulé "L’état des ressources en terres et en eau pour l’alimentation et l’agriculture dans le monde. Gérer les systèmes en danger." (SOLAW, pour le sigle en anglais). C’est la première publication phare sur ce sujet réalisée par la FAO. Elle devrait faire l’objet d’une nouvelle édition tous les trois à cinq ans.
FAO. 2011. The state of the world’s land and water resources for food and agriculture (SOLAW) - Managing systems at risk. Food and Agriculture (...)

What is an investment?
**The meaning of the word investment has changed over time In the 17th century, ‘investment’ meant the act of being invested with an office, right or endowment, etc. It derived from the verb ‘invest’, from the Latin word investire ‘to clothe in’ or to ‘surround’. Different new meanings related to social relations and balances of power appeared in English and in the Romance languages using the same Latin root. In military language, to ‘invest’ a city means to surround the (...)

The current usage of land surfaces
**The three main databases
There are different databases on the real and potential agricultural use of land at the global level. They are based on statistical data and/or satellite images and record either the different types of land cover or its utilisation. In 2009, Laurence Roudart, Professor at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, supervised a study that analysed the methods and results of the most important data-bases: FAOSTAT, GAEZ and SAGE/GATP. This (...)

The ILO informs us that we at present lack 900 million jobs in order to enable each and every one to work and receive an income. This number corresponds approximately to the level of unemployment within the OECD in addition to the number of people which the World Bank considers as living in extreme poverty. It only takes into consideration the labour force that is those aged 15 and over up to the age of 65, which corresponds to 64% of the world’s population. In fact, no conclusions can be (...)

[*Introduction*] With recent intensification of large-scale agricultural land transfers in many poor Sub-Saharan African countries with the highest risk of food insecurity, debates are stirring on the equity and poverty reducing impacts of such transfers in these poor countries. While some praise recent land deals for having a potential to “inject much-needed investment into agriculture” and thus enhance the scale of agricultural production, local employment opportunities, social (...)

The world in which we live is changing more and more quickly, and the global threats that weigh on humanity are multiplying. One billion people suffer from hunger, not including those children and adults that die every year of famine, malnutrition or lack of access to safe drinking water. One in four people have less than the equivalent of one dollar of income per day. The world changes, but these fig-ures do not improve in spite of the priority given to the discourse around the fight (...)

A. The Growing Interest in Agricultural Land
During the years 2007 and 2008, more and more medias have echoed the obtaining of public and private interest over land rights in vast areas of land in particular Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe.
The members of the NGO GRAIN are among the first to shed light on the proliferation of press articles on this subject. In October 2008 they revealed to the public a compilation of information from the media, more or less crossed with others (...)

Abstract
A key issue in the context of increasing large-scale land acquisitions in developing countries is how poor populations can prevent their land rights being encroached upon by more powerful actors. To date, the majority of policy recommendations have been directed towards the legal recognition and formalization of land rights in order to safeguard local and historical land rights holders, as well as towards the design and implementation of ‘voluntary’ guidelines or codes of conduct (...)

Monique Chemillier-Gendreau, jurist specialized in international law, led AGTER’s 9th thematic meeting, which was organized in the context of the association’s investigation into massive land grabs in the world and natural resource governance.
Monique Chemillier Gendreau explores the reasons behind international law’s current inability to construct laws that are not just proclamatory, but executable as well, through a comprehensive reform of international institutions.
Monique (...)

AGTER took part in the International Conference Global Land Grabbing (Brighton 6-8 April 2011), organized by the Land Deal Politics Initiative (LDPI), the Journal of Peasant Studies et the Future Agricultures Consortium of the Institute of Development Studies (IDS, Sussex University).
Hubert Cochet (Professor, AgroParisTech [Paris Institute of Technology for Food and Environmental Sciences] and Chairman of AGTER) and Michel Merlet (Director of AGTER) presented a paper which explore the (...)

Social movements have marked a milestone in the struggle against land grabing, by unanimously adopting the Dakar Appeal. Back on this success of the WSF.
During the World Social Forum in Dakar, there was no single day without workshops on massive land grabs in the world. Organizations of civil society and farmers’ organizations were present during the forum to explain the many forms take by the process and its many economic, social and environmental impacts. This advocacy work was necessary (...)

In June 2010, the Technical Committee on “Land Tenure and Development” published the document "Large scale land appropriations: Analysis of the phenomenon and proposed guidelines for future action", result of the reflexions facilitated by AGTER about large scale land appropriations. The working group has included members of the Technical Committee, members of the French Interministerial Group on Food Security (GISA) and representatives of civil society organisations.
This process of analysis (...)

Synthesis of the contributions of a working group composed of the ’Land tenure and development’ technical committee’s members and other institutional and NGO’s experts.

During the last 20 years, an increased concern about global issues has emerged. Some problems like global warming, financial instability or global conflicts have led to the development of global governance schemes in order to try to solve them.
Recently, the phenomena of massive land acquisitions in developing countries by private investors or foreign states (usually called “land grab” in the press) have led to a new demand for the implementation of global governance mechanisms in relation (...)

During the first quarter of 2009, AGTER carried out on behalf of the International Land Coalition a scoping study for a worldwide collaborative research on new "Commercial Pressures on Land."
In order to be able to orient the reflection and the different works within this controversial topic, we started elaborating a conceptual framework. It makes clear the nature of the different mechanisms and specifies what is really new and what has been existing for ages.
This reflection has been (...)

In october 2008, the NGO GRAIN published on its website an article which describes and analyses from information gathered in newspapers and on the web massive grabbing of agricultural lands worldwide.
GRAIN hightlights that the phenomenon is not really new. However, under the present situation (high prices of stapple food, high prices of oil, financial crisis), things are moving very fast, and this is new.
"Sovereign funds" of countries that affirm to want to guarantee their food (...)