It’s strange that a farmer’s market should make news, but when it’s in Qatar, one of the driest and least food secure nations on earth, a farmer’s market is a big deal. So much so that local professional photographer Mohammed Ismail stopped by for a shoot. Located 30 kilometers outside of the capital Doha, where […]
Back in early 2012, Human Rights Watch warned that tens of thousands of Ethiopians were being made destitute so their land could be leased to foreign investors such as Gulf Arab states Following last week’s news that rich Middle Eastern royals were threatening Maasai land, I look back at land grab stories which have involved the […]
According to the Worldwatch Institute’s latest report on land grab, the oil-rich Gulf nations are big buyers of foreign land Since 2000, an estimated 70.2 million hectares of agricultural land worldwide has been sold or leased by private or public investors. Most of that land grab took place between 2008 and 2010 and most of […]
An Islamic bank in Jordan, Sanabel, has bought up over a quarter of a Congo forest for ‘sustainable projects’ When I first read about the acquisition of 500,000 hectares of high value forest in the Democratic Republic of Congo by an Islamic investment bank in Jordan, I thought one thing: land grab. Over the last […]
Within 50 years, water trapped hundreds of thousands of years ago will be depleted by Saudi desert farms using pivot irrigation. Water is a non-renewable resource in the Saudi desert, which only receives one inch of rain a year, so it makes sense to use existing resources very, very carefully, right? For ancient desert dwellers, […]
This image taken in the western Gambella region of Ethiopia shows irrigation canals being dug by the agricultural firm owned by Saudi-Ethiopian billionaire Mohammed Al Amoudi. Last week BBC News reported that 70,000 indigenous people have been forced to relocate in the western Gambella region of Ethiopia to new villages that lack adequate resources for […]
Even though it seems like the earth couldn’t possibly handle 10 billion people, an article published in Nature shows that it is possible to feed them all. Read on for five handy tips. So, all this worrying about the burgeoning population was for nought? We don’t need to be concerned that we are rapidly reaching […]