‘Land Grabbing’: The Global Search For Food Security In Southeast Asia

By the end of the last decade, the total area of farmland globally that was acquired by government-backed foreign investors amounted to nearly half the size of Europe. In addition to Latin America, Africa and Central Asia, this trend has also reached Southeast Asia (SEA). The civil society and media refer to these land acquisition investments, encouraged by governments to boost the national economy, as ‘land grab’. It is against this background that this May’s first Issue of the NTS Alert, attempts to highlight the ‘land grab’ phenomenon in the region. The second Issue will discuss the pros and cons of these land acquisition deals.