Read all posts from ‘The great land rush’

Keeping this massive exports bill, that reaches to a total of roughly &5 billion dollars annually, Pakistan would be loosing a lot more than just this $5 billions. Though the government is adamant that they are not selling or doing away these lands but locals tell a completely different story. The other statements of raising the productivity also fall short of reality because the government has failed completely to help the farmers to export their products due to lack of facilities. A raised productivity level would not mean anything if there aren’t sufficient resources available to ship the products abroad.

“India has certainly arrived”, exclaimed Sandeep, my neighbor (a passionate sports fan) talking about the recent Formula 1 Grand Prix on a glistening, newly-built race track. For some, India is definitely shining. And after all, it’s quite something to belong to a nation with promising GDP growth and the potential […]

Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realise we cannot eat money. – Cree Indian Proverb (Or, in the case of Australia, ‘when the last plot of arable agricultural land has been mined…’) Food security is […]

In launching the “Agenda for Change” in 2008, the Government of Sierra Leone declared “agricultural development and food security to be the foundation of the country’s economic development and poverty reduction” strategy.   But is the large-scale acquisition of arable farmland in Sierra Leone by foreign investors part of this […]

Nothing is more frightening than witnessing the extremities of climate change & there is no starker example of this in recent history than the flooding of the desert areas in the Thar and Badin district of Pakistan. As part of a community-based relief organization I had the misfortune to experience this […]