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' Land grabs ' leave people hungry & homeless -- Oxfam - -

By Louise Gray

'Land grabs' leave people hungry and homeless - Oxfam

Demand for cheap food and fuel in the rich world is driving poor people from their homes, according to Oxfam, as big business, including British companies, buy up millions of acres of land in the developing world in increasingly violent ‘land grabs’.

"Demand
In Uganda it is claimed more than 20,000 people lost their homes and land in evictions to make way for a UK-based timber company, the New Forests Company, to grow plantations Photo: AP

The trend for buying up huge areas of land in poorer countries to grow cash crops like sugar harks back to the Colonial era.

But the problem has not gone away and may even be getting worse due to the increasing demand for food, the pressures of climate change, water scarcity and competition for land from non-food crops such as biofuels to power vehicles.

In a new report to highlight the scale of land grabs today, Oxfam estimate that 227 million hectares (560 million acres) have been sold, leased or licensed in large-scale land deals since 2001, mostly by international investors.

A lack of transparency over the deals makes them hard to confirm. However 1,100 deals covering 67 million hectares (165 million acres) - an area the size of Germany - have been cross-checked by the Land Matrix Partnership, a coalition of academic, research and non-governmental organisations.

Dame Barbara Stocking, Chief Executive of Oxfam, said communities rarely have full legal title to the land documented and women, who produce up to 80 per cent of food in some countries, generally have weaker land rights.