Land-grabbing: the new colonialism?

It has been labeled a new form of colonialism by its detractors and it's happening more and more. Land-grabbing - when a rich country or corporation buys up vast tracts of land in a poor country, often in Africa, to safeguard its supply of food or energy - has become increasingly common.

Over the last year, since the riots of April 2008 when Haitians (pictured above), Yemenis, Madagascans, Bangladeshis, Mexicans and many others took to the streets because they couldn't afford to eat, millions of hectares of land have been sold in some of the most deprived parts of the world, often only in return for vague promises to improve the surrounding infrastructure and provide jobs. As Paul Vallely reported in an authoritative and important piece for the Independent on Sunday, South Korean firms now own 690,000 hectares of Sudan; the UAE has 324,000 hectares of Pakistani soil.

With the world's population forecasted to surpass nine billion by 2050, and successful speculators such as George Soros frantically getting their hands on as much land as possible, these countries are acting perfectly logically in attempting to safeguard their future.

Millions of hectares have been sold in the most deprived parts of the world

For a Gulf state like Qatar, where only one per cent of land is fertile enough to be farmed, this sort of arrangement cuts out the middle man and saves as much as 20 per cent on food imports, which are twice as expensive as they were five years ago. If you consider that a hectare of land costs $22,000 in Germany, $7,000 in the US and only between $800 and $1,000 in sub-Saharan Africa, it makes sense to buy where it's cheap.

There are also good reasons for governments to sell. Very little of the aid money sent to developing countries over the last twenty years has been invested in agriculture, so they need outside investment and expertise. Then there are the jobs, infrastructure and development that these deals can bring.

However, the landgrabbing phenomenon throws up myriad uncertainties and potential injustices. The most alarming is the prospect that, while food is shipped back to fill supermarket shelves in the Gulf