International investors sold or rented 227 million hectares of land in developing countries

Photo credit: Food Tank

April 22 is the forty-fifth anniversary of Earth Day, and the Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition (BCFN) is encouraging a renewed commitment to sustainable agriculture

300 Million People at Risk as a Result of Land Grabs

Sustainable agriculture a pillar of BCFN’s work and also a goal of the Milan Protocol, which includes participation from almost 100 organizations and institutions and thousands of individuals across the world.

United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon will be deliver the Milan Protocol, commissioned by the Italian government, to the UN on October 16, 2015. BCFN is drawing attention on an important component to sustainable agriculture: access and ownership of land for farmers.

Since 2001, international investors sold or rented 227 million hectares of land in developing countries to international investors, according to a recent BCFN press release. Italy alone has invested in more than 540,000 hectares, mostly in Africa. This gold rush for land is known as land grabbing and has put the food security and nutrition of around 300 million people at risk.

“The phenomenon of land grabbing, and more generally of financial speculation on food products, is one of the global problems for which we most urgently need to find a solution,” says Danielle Nierenberg, president of Food Tank in the press release.

BCFN proposes the following:

Read the full article: Food Tank