The Green Gold Rush

Abstract

Following the global financial crisis, triggered by the collapse of the major investment banks in 2007, the agricultural sector was hit by a series of profound shocks and changes that will significantly alter its features in the coming decades. One of the emerging phenomena provoked by these profound changes, is the so called land grabbing, which involves both the major investing countries (not only those in the occident, but also the Emirates and China), the major financial firms and those in the agro-business, in a frantic rush to the signing of lease contracts lasting almost a century, and bargain prices for hundreds of hectares cultivated in third world countries or in emerging countries like Brazil. The purpose of these negotiations is to reach new farmland to produce food commodities to be imported into domestic countries in order to ensure sufficient supplies to meet their needs; or even to devote land to produce biofuel feedstocks (this phenomenon was triggered by recent decisions on the international institutional landscape, which stimulate the production of biofuels with low CO2 emissions), or more simply to gain an increasingly rare and valuable asset: the land. The “land grab” phenomenon has rapidly achieved a significant relevance by the media, so that it was promptly dubbed the "new colonialism". But if on the one hand this type of negotiation takes in most cases the characteristics of a real forced expropriation of land areas intended for different uses, it should not be underestimated the importance that this new business can have both as regards the development of poorest countries, and for the supply of food resources. Up to what point this phenomenon should be considered dangerous? What are the criticisms that public opinion moves to local governments, that yield hundreds of acres leased to the first bidder? What are the advantages which, under a proper regulation, this type of phenomenon can lead to?