Sup­pose that, one day, a for­eign investor decid­ed to buy a vast tract of fer­tile land in the Unit­ed States. Sup­pose all that is grown or pro­duced on that land, and all prof­its made, would be shipped direct­ly over­seas. Worse, imag­ine that those Amer­i­cans who had been liv­ing off that land for decades, maybe cen­turies, would be forced to move and giv­en lit­tle to no compensation.

Such an event would undoubt­ed­ly spark pub­lic out­rage, yet this sce­nario is not far from real­i­ty – only the roles are reversed. Amer­i­can com­pa­nies have recent­ly been invest­ing heav­i­ly in for­eign land, and many involved in the world­wide strug­gle against hunger believe that is a cause for con­cern. What investors call ​“agri­cul­tur­al devel­op­ment” is described by crit­ics as ​“land grab­bing,” which they say under­mines food secu­ri­ty in devel­op­ing countries.

Land grab­bing is noth­ing new, accord­ing to Flavio Valente, sec­re­tary gen­er­al of Food First Infor­ma­tion and Action Net­work (FIAN) Inter­na­tion­al, a non­prof­it that advo­cates for the right to food. ​“But recent­ly, the prac­tice of land grab­bing has been inten­si­fy­ing and affect­ing the most vul­ner­a­ble – peas­ants, farm­ers and indige­nous peo­ple,” Valente says.

The Food and Agri­cul­ture Orga­ni­za­tion of the Unit­ed Nations (FAO) esti­mates more than 75,000 square miles have been acquired by for­eign inter­ests in Africa alone. A 2010 field study con­duct­ed by FIAN in Ethiopia found that the equiv­a­lent of up to 20 per­cent of the country’s arable land has been bought by or made avail­able to for­eign investors.

Amer­i­can com­pa­nies are among those mak­ing land deals in Africa. New York-based Jarch Cap­i­tal, bought an area the size of Dubai from a war­lord in South Sudan last year, and Domin­ion Farms Ltd., which bought swamp­land in Kenya in 2003 to turn it into a rice plan­ta­tion, has report­ed­ly inten­tion­al­ly flood­ed local farms to force the relo­ca­tion of farmers.

Despite promis­es of cre­at­ing jobs and increas­ing food pro­duc­tion, for­eign invest­ment hard­ly ever ben­e­fits local com­mu­ni­ties because it aims to secure crops and prof­its for those back home, the FIAN report states.

Food secu­ri­ty advo­cates say that even ini­tia­tives tout­ed for pre­sent­ing solu­tions to the land-grab­bing prob­lem, such as the World Bank’s Prin­ci­ples for Respon­si­ble Agri­cul­tur­al Devel­op­ment, fail to address the lack of con­crete mech­a­nisms to hold com­pa­nies and gov­ern­ments account­able. ​“These prin­ci­ples, which are meant to be vol­un­tary and self-reg­u­lat­ed by the pri­vate sec­tor, dis­tract from the fact that what is need­ed is manda­to­ry and strict state reg­u­la­tion of investors in sev­er­al pol­i­cy fields, such as finan­cial mar­kets and agri­cul­ture,” says Sofia Mon­salve Suárez, land pro­gram coor­di­na­tor at FIAN International.

Res­o­lu­tions to reg­u­late for­eign land acqui­si­tion exist, but are inef­fec­tive and weak, Valente says. He is hope­ful that the Com­mit­tee on World Food Secu­ri­ty (CFS), a Unit­ed Nations body which last year became more attuned to indige­nous and peas­ant inter­ests, will act.

“The CFS is the only orga­ni­za­tion with a clear man­date to uphold food secu­ri­ty, and each coun­try gets one vote,” Valente says. ​“Facil­i­tat­ing the par­tic­i­pa­tion of those most affect­ed [by land-grab­bing] was the first step; now we must see if those voic­es will actu­al­ly be heard.”