What do City speculators, Gulf oil sheikhs, Chinese entrepreneurs, big-name financiers like George Soros and industry titans like Richard Branson buy when they go shopping? Land. Parcels the size of Wales are being snapped up across the plains of Africa, the paddy fields of Southeast Asia, the jungles of the Amazon and the prairies of Eastern Europe. Why? The money men will tell you that their investments will bring an end to world famine. But is this more about fat profits and food security for the few?
The race is on to grab the world’s most precious and irreplaceable resource. In this brilliant piece of investigative journalism Fred Pearce moves from boardroom and trading floor to goat-herder’s hut and flooded forest. The result is an eye-opening, extraordinarily important examination of the most profound ethical and economic issue in the world today.
- ISBN10 1905811756
- ISBN13 9781905811755
- Publish Date 28 March 2013 (first published 24 May 2012)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Transworld Publishers Ltd
- Imprint Eden Project Books
- Format Paperback (B-Format (198x129 mm))
- Pages 448
- Language English