Asia: Land Grabs Threaten Food Security

[Hannah Bell]

PHNOM PENH, 10 June 2009 (IRIN) -- Sam Pov, a rice farmer in Cambodia’s western Battambang Province, is very worried that his land will be taken over by a foreign investor...

"I've heard the rumours about . I heard they might get our land because they need food," he said.

"Cambodia has plenty of farmland and forests but has been suffering from land grabbing by the government as well as influential people for years," Jin Ju, a food rights activist at the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC), told IRIN from Hong Kong...

The problem of land grabbing by foreign investors and governments, however, extends well beyond the confines of Cambodia...

Land Grabbing in Asia

CAMBODIA:
Land being leased by Kuwait for rice (in negotiations)

100,000ha rubber plantation secured by Vietnam

LAOS:
100,000ha rubber plantation secured by Vietnam

PHILIPPINES:
10,000ha for agro-fishery secured by Bahrain
100,000ha for Qatar
1.24 million hectares for an unknown company in China (on hold)

INDONESIA:
500,000ha, a $4.3 billion rice investment, secured by Bin Laden Group of Saudi Arabia (on hold)

CHINA:
10 poultry farms worth $300 million and pig farms for $250-300 million purchased by Goldman Sachs of USA

Source: International Food Policy Research Institute
http://monthlyreview.org/mrzine/irin100609.html