The great land heist: how the world is paving the way for corporate land grabs

For millions of people living in the world’s poorest countries, access to land is a matter not of wealth, but of survival, identity and belonging. Most of the 1.4 billion people earning less than US$1.25 a day live in rural areas and depend largely on agriculture for their livelihoods, while an estimated 2.5 billion people are involved in full- or part-time smallholder agriculture.

Smallholder farmers, pastoral societies, forest dwellers and fishermen and women all rely directly on land and natural resources for their livelihoods, as a primary source of food for their families, and for the innate value their environment often holds as the centre of their cultural identity.