Editor's Note: The Bible prophesies of a time when multitudes of people will die of starvation and hunger. The insidious policies of converting food producing farmland to other use such as for ethanol corn and other bio-fuels is a sure way of starving off billions of people in the third world. India is a nation of 1,3 billion people and its politicians have wholly sold off the country to multinational bankers and corporations such as Monanto. This does not bode well for the people of India,and the future of India.
Revelation 6:8 And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.
Matthew 24:8 or nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.
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2 million kilometers of foreign purchased land in developing countries is either idle or used for Western biofuel production, according to a British charity. Oxfam's report estimates an area the size of London is sold every six days. The report states that between 2000 and 2010, 60% of investment in agricultural land by foreign traders occurred in developing countries with hunger problems.
Yet two thirds of those investors plan to export everything they produce. While 60% of deals are to produce crops that can be used for biofuels. Land can also be left idle, as speculators wait for its value to increase.
Oxfam estimates that this land could have fed 1 billion people.
According to the International Land Coalition, an NGO based in Italy, 106 million hectares of land in developing countries has been acquired by foreign investors in a period between 2000-2010, with some disastrous results.
30% of all land in Liberia has been handed out in large scale concessions in the last 5 years, while up to 63% of all available land in Cambodia has been passed on to private companies.
Farmers forced out
Oxfam emphasizes that much of the land sold off was already being used for small scale and subsistence farming or other types of natural resource use.
The report dismissed claims by the World Bank that most of the sold land remains idle, waiting to be developed. In fact most agricultural land deals target quality farm land, particularly land that is irrigated and offers good access to markets.
A 2010 study by the Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) – the official monitoring and evaluation body of the World Bank – supported Oxfam’s findings.
It found that 30% of World Bank projects involved involuntary resettlement. The study estimated that 1 million people are involuntarily resettled in projects financed by the World Bank. In some cases people were violently evicted from their land without consultation or compensation.
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