The author's article is based in the idea that "land grabs" are a bad thing, but she provides no way of distinguishing between a common-or-garden purchase of land, and a 'land grab'.

While ever people talk about economic phenomena in terms of vast collectivities, like 'countries', they will fail to understand the underlying social processes at work. Human action always takes place by and through individuals; the hangman, not the state, hangs the condemned man.

A country is not a decision-making entity. A state is. But a state is not the country, it is not the nation, it is not the people. It is a minority political class claiming a legal monopoly on the use of coercion over a subject territory.

"Yet, in this dog-eat-dog world, the very actions that the rich countries are taking will increase the likelihood of a global food shortage."

Thus it is *states* that, according to the author, are increasing the likelihood of a global food shortage.

Try this thought experiment. Suppose there were a land as big and fertile as America, but populated only by its indigenous inhabitants, producing food at a much lower rate of productivity than everywhere else in the world. If people elsewhere are going hungry, should they be expected to starve? Should they not only refrain from invading, but refrain from even *buying* the land so as to feed a much greater number with their more productive techniques?

This is what is happening in Africa. The indigenous methods of agriculture are capital-poor, and therefore lower in productivity, compared to their potential. If other people with an interest in greatly increasing food production want to buy them by importing scarce capital that the locals lack, that is not necessarily and automatically to be condemned. If it results in higher food production overall, that is good from the point of view of feeding the hungry. It does not necessarily involve the further impoverishment of the local population, and has the potential to further enrich them. But even if it did, we are back to the original ethical problem in the thought experiment.

Sue finishes off with a crying catch all climate change statement, "With the destruction of the ecosystems comes the dispersal of the peasantry and other traditional communities of farmers and herders, who have a profound knowledge of the local biodiversity. These communities could play a crucial role in combating climate change". Sue, what about your so called peasants and their desires to a better education and wealth for their children in advancing their modern lifestyle choices. It would be very interesting if the peasants became educated through mechanization and were able to write about how the so called enlightened held them back under the catch all phrase climate change.

"The Sudanese government has sold a 99-year lease on 1.5 million hectares of prime farmland to the Gulf states, Egypt and South Korea. But Sudan is also the world’s largest recipient of foreign aid, with 5.6 million of its citizens dependent on food packages from abroad. All principles of basic justice tell us that Sudan should be using this land to feed its own people."
What have "principles of basic justice" to do with the argument about use of 'prime farmland" in Sudan by non-Sudanese states? If the non-Sudanese states did not acquire use of the land would it make a scrap of difference to the welfare of Sudanese people? What is currently stopping Sudan from utilizing this "prime agricultural" land to feed its people? Perhaps thirty years of civil war and a totalitarian regime might provide some answers.

Land is not the only source of world food supply. In ther SW Pacific region traditional fish resource devastation and collapse of associated trade is causing chronic poverty, malnutrition, preventable death, irritability, argument, fights, recrimination, civil unrest, coup's and threat to peace. Government in Australian is turning a blind eye to sewage nutrient pollution that is devastating the ocean food web, fish stocks and even coral. It is city and town sewage nutrient pollution feeding algae that is smothering and killing Great Barrier Reef coral, not farmers and not CO2.

Despite numerous warnings of fish depletion and islander malnutrition, requests for assistance appear to have been ignored. No assistance has been provided to offset developed nation population impact on the SW Pacific Ocean environment and indigenous seafood dependent islanders. In Solomon Islands there is now a 69% increase in maternal mortality, the data from about 5,000 hospital/clinic patients, perhaps another 30,000 remote pregnancies not counted.

Causing or allowing hard times and holding humans down in order to gain control of land is a threat to peace and world food supply sustainability that are now on a knife edge.

JF Aus
Declining fish stocks are causing coups? What, are they jumping up onto land and holding politicians at gunpoint?

'No assistance has been provided...'

Did you provide any assistance yourself? Have you formed a voluntary association to raise the funds voluntarily? Or are you just using this as a pretext to grandstand for taking other people's money to pay for your values? Well, better get in the queue buddy, because in case you haven't noticed, OLO is replete with every stripe of philosopher kings all claiming that nothing could have greater priority for confiscated funds than their own hobby horse.

'Causing or allowing hard times and holding humans down in order to gain control of land is a threat to peace and world food supply sustainability that are now on a knife edge.'

Well how were you going to raise the money you want to hand out, other than by holding humans down in order to gain control of it?

There is only one way to raise the material standard of living, and that is to produce more and better goods.

There is no evidence or reason to support the assumption that this can be done by giving more power to government. The political class gets all its revenue by forcibly confiscating it from the productive class. Indeed the problems cited are caused by the governmental ownership and control of resources.

The economic effect of political interventions is to move production from areas of higher output per unit of input, to areas of lower output per unit of input. Those who urge for more governmental interventions are fighting for a lower standard of living, and for food shortages for those at the margins of subsistence.

Peter H,
Not declining fish stocks, they are already devastated. Impact involves seafood dependent people becoming irritable and violent. Yes people hold politicians at gunpoint. Google; Bartholemew Ulufa'alu coup.

No due assistance has been provided to our neighbours in real and worsening trouble. I am not into money collection, nor am I the newspaper mogul. It is government responsibility to manage the environment and assist suffering impacted people.

It's not all about giving money. Ulufa'alu was an economist and I explained the level of fish devastation to him. He knew barter trade had collapsed in the process. He told me he knew the problem in Solomon Islands was occurring at the bottom of the economy. People subsisting at the bottom of the economy used to have free fish to eat or trade but no longer generally.

Ulufa'alu apparently thought about it and 6 months later told me that now the Solomons economy needs to be monetized. He asked for a proposal that I subsequently focused on EU, UN, WB, IMF and G8 monetized development of bottom of economy employment and business, ongoing productive projects, roads for transport and tourism. It was about sustainable employment producing infrastructure, not about short term stimulus for lenders.

Now Australian government is trying to establish a free trade zone in the region, apparently while taking what they can at the same time. The lending of money to people unable to repay cash usually results in forfeiture of property. You probably know the scene.

It looks like some people would even like to take all of Fiji but some Fijian's seem onto that. During the hardship and turmoil essential rehabilitation and regeneration of the ocean environment is not happening. Meanwhile CO2 is being blamed for damage to the GBR while categorical empirical evidence of substance shows the damage is being caused by sewage nutrient pollution.

Of course there is impact of the world having lost abundance of available land and ocean natural food resources. Asia Pacific and world peace is on a knife edge. No authority or science can establish otherwise.

JF Aus "Asia Pacific and world peace is on a knife edge", you are kidding aren't you?

This is just another breathlessly hysterical cry for someone to do something or we'll all be doomed, on OLO?

Is this becoming the age of catatrophic prophesy?

In the past when there were false prophets, they killed them, nowadays we give them Nobel Peace Prizes, make them Australians of the Year and the media wait on their every word e.g. the Age, Guardian, MSNBC.

I sure hope none of you have children that you are frightening with this endless hatred of the human race, because at the end of it that's all it is.

We're not perfect, but we try, that's the human condition - now you folks would prefer to order everyone around in what you think is a rational way - I'd rather the random way we go about things now thanks.

"It is government responsibility to manage the environment and assist suffering impacted people."

Where in the Constitution does it give power to the government to "manage the environment"?

If government manages the environment as it does the oceans, how will it avoid a tragedy of the commons situation, which is the original problem you are trying to fix?

Don't tell me, lemme guess: by more regulations, right?

So it's a government responsibility to "assist" "suffering" "impacted" people? What? Everywhere? The whole of Africa, Asia, South America, Oceania?

You can see that's just a superstitious belief in magic pudding, can't you?

"I am not into money collection".

So it's okay for politicians to hold people at gunpoint, it's just not okay for people to hold politicians at gunpoint. It's okay for you to get money at gunpoint, but not okay for others to do it to you. That's pretty much it, right?

Odo,
I am not kidding, are you? Are you sure this is just another hysterical cry? I admit the cry wolf story does involve truth. This world food sustainability problem is very real especially with ocean fish stocks devastated already. Do you think the ocean has escaped impact of humans? Continue to go about things the random way you say, that is what is causing ocean life devastation.

Peter H,
The environment had not been impacted by so many humans when The Constitution was drawn up. I don't like more restrictions either. Real management is not about restrictions, it's about sustaining the process and developing new opportunities to achieve sustained viable productivity. If that can be achieved with business and industry sustaining the environment then why not? With the whole ocean it's a big task and all possible government's worldwide would need to participate in initial development, various aspects then handed over to private enterprise. The environment includes land and ocean and both have value in keeping this planet alive and the people fed and watered. It is possible to develop industry to rehabilitate the environment, creating millions of jobs at the same time.

Take time to understand. The ocean is not being managed, that's why it's in the mess it's in right now with already low population marine animals dying due to starvation for the first time in known human history

It has been pointed out that we should be mindful of the desire of peasants to a "better education and wealth for their children in advancing their modern lifestyle choices".
We so often devalue traditional lifestyles without stopping to look beyond a modern industrial viewpoint. And what is better education?...it is only a different education.
Throughout history traditional societies have educated their youth by hands-on apprenticeship in the skills and knowledge necessary for that particular society to sustain itself.
I submit that the western industrial world never gave anything of intrinsic human value to the developing world that it didn't already have. Globalization destroys local culture and western corporations are more inclined to employ various guises to take advantage of developing societies to increase their profits.
The globalisation of food production blights traditional society's ability to save, share and pass on knowledge and materials. Eradication of specialist knowledge comes swiftly on its heels.
We should not be so arrogant as to devalue the knowledge base and educational imperatives of traditional societies. Nor should we write off land as unproductive because it is "only" supporting indigenous inhabitants.
As Vandana Shiva pointed out in a Reith 2000 lecture, yield and output are measured differently. The mentality of the globalised world looks at yield by measuring production from a principal crop. Traditional societies rely on a diverse selection of food produced in their local regions and this supplementary "output" is often ten times the measured "yield".
Western society is shot full of psychological maladies, material inequities and cultural deformity. The term "modern lifestyle choice" is nothing but jargon to those who live an authentic life.