AFRICA: AGRICULTURE:
'Land rush' rules postponed

5/5/2012 1:57:11 PM
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FREETOWN - The adoption of international guidelines to regulate so-called land grabs has been postponed after negotiators failed to agree on conditions for large-scale land investments and enforcement. - The guidelines, in the making for several years, were sparked by fears that a "land rush" is leading to hunger, conflict and human rights abuses. More investors have flocked to the developing world over the past decade, snapping up huge tracts of farmland. Investment has intensified since the 2008 food and fuel price crisis. Once in place, the United Nations’s Committee on World Food Security guidelines are meant to protect people, mainly in poor countries such as Sierra Leone, from "land grabbing". A September 2011 report by Oxfam International estimated as many as 227 million hectares of land in developing countries has been sold or leased since 2001. Most of that acquisition has occurred since 2008 and most has been into the hands of international investors, says the Land and Power report. (END/RADIO BULLETIN EDITOR/2012)

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