Corporate stranglehold of farmland a risk to world food security, study says

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/may/28/farmland-food-security-small-farmers

Small farmers are being squeezed out as mega-farms and plantations gobble up their land

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• John Vidal
• theguardian.com, Wednesday 28 May 2014 16.02 BST
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Companies taking over small farms has serious implication for global food security. Photograph: David Bagnall /Alamy

The world's food supplies are at risk because farmland is becoming rapidly concentrated in the hands of wealthy elites and corporations, a study has found.

Small farmers, the UN says, grow 70% of the world's food but a new analysis of government data suggests the land which they control is shrinking every year as mega-farms and plantations squeeze them onto less than 25% of the world's available farmland, says international land-use group Grain. These mega-farms are less productive in terms of amount of food they produce per area of land, the report argues.