Land grabs by foreign companies in poor parts of Africa and Asia could feed an extra 100 million people if the land is used to grow crops. But the gain will be minimal if the grabbers export the produce to countries that are already well fed.
Massive areas of land in poor countries have been bought up by powerful companies over the last decade. The aim is to use it for farming, but these land grabs have displaced and harmed many local people, so several charities and non-governmental organisations are campaigning against this.
Cristina Rulli of the Polytechnic University of Milan in Italy and Paolo D'Odorico of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia, looked at a global database of 31 million hectares of land deals concluded since 2000. The largest targets for land-grabbers were Sudan, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea.