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A new wave of land grabbing, a surge in green grabs for carbon schemes, the rising loss of farmland to mining, urbanization and mega-developments, as well as the loss of control over food production and land use are putting enormous pressures on farmland and small-scale food producers, a new IPES-Food report has revealed. These pressures lead to widespread land concentration and degradation, critically undermining the livelihoods of farmers, pastoralists, Indigenous Peoples, and marginalized groups and posing major threats to food security. According to the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food), a global thinktank that unites 25 food system experts from around the world, land inequality is on the rise in all regions. Since 2000, an area twice the size of Germany has been acquired through transnational land deals. Between 2008 and 2022, land prices nearly doubled globally – and tripled in Central-Eastern Europe. “Land isn’t just dirt beneath our feet, it’s the bedrock of our food systems keeping us all fed. Yet we’re seeing soaring land prices and grabs driving an unprecedented ‘land squeeze’, accelerating inequality and threatening food production,” says IPES-Food expert Susan Chomba who works at the World Resources Institute, Kenya. [+] more ...