land grabs

Millions of people face being displaced from their homes as new data shows land sales covering an area the size of Germany are now under contract, warns Oxfam.

This report launches a Global Call to Action on Indigenous and Community Land Rights, backed by more than 300 organizations all over the world. It is a manifesto of solidarity with the ongoing struggles of indigenous peoples and local communities seeking to secure their land rights once and for all.

Increasingly, development money is being channelled through third parties such as banks or private equity funds. This report tells the human story behind the high finance and statistics.

The total number of signatories of the petition to the President of Paraguay demanding a postive solution for farmers reached 37,574, according to the organizers of the campaign, “Young with no land = Land with no future”.

PepsiCo, the world’s second largest food and beverage company, today committed to take steps to stop land grabs from happening in its supply chain.

If Europe were to rule out its support of biofuels by 2020, the region could lower its net imports of grain and oilseeds by up to 27 million tons, remarkably reducing its dependence on foreign goods. Global food prices could also drop significantly.

Oxfam, the AFL-CIO, Trillium Asset Management and several other investors today filed a formal shareholder resolution urging PepsiCo to account for land rights violations in its supply chain. A recent investigation by Oxfam revealed that companies supplying sugar to PepsiCo and its franchisees have been implicated in violent land grabs, pushing small farmers off their land and undermining their livelihoods.

The Coca-Cola Company today committed to take steps to stop land grabs from happening in its supply chain after more than 225,000 people signed petitions and took action as part of Oxfam’s campaign to urge food and beverage companies to respect community land rights.

Before the opening of the Committee on Food Security’s annual meeting in Rome (7 October), Oxfam called for Governments to ensure that biofuel policies do not force poor farmers off their land and fuel food price spikes.

The biggest names in the food and drink industry are not doing enough to stop land grabs and conflicts in their supply chains.