{"product_id":"9780807003251","title":"The Land Grabbers: The New Fight over Who Owns the Earth","description":"\u003cb\u003eHow Wall Street, Chinese billionaires, oil sheiks, and  agribusiness are buying up huge tracts of land in a hungry, crowded  world.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAn unprecedented land grab is taking place around the world. Fearing  future food shortages or eager to profit from them, the world’s  wealthiest and most acquisitive countries, corporations, and individuals  have been buying and leasing vast tracts of land around the world. The  scale is astounding: parcels the size of small countries are being  gobbled up across the plains of Africa, the paddy fields of Southeast  Asia, the jungles of South America, and the prairies of Eastern Europe.  Veteran science writer Fred Pearce spent a year circling the globe to  find out who was doing the buying, whose land was being taken over, and  what the effect of these massive land deals seems to be. \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eThe Land Grabbers\u003c\/i\u003e is a first-of-its-kind exposé that reveals the scale and the human  costs of the land grab, one of the most profound ethical, environmental,  and economic issues facing the globalized world in the twenty-first  century. The corporations, speculators, and governments scooping up land  cheap in the developing world claim that industrial-scale farming will  help local economies. But Pearce’s research reveals a far more troubling  reality. While some mega-farms are ethically run, all too often poor  farmers and cattle herders are evicted from ancestral lands or cut off  from water sources. The good jobs promised by foreign capitalists and  home governments alike fail to materialize. Hungry nations are being  forced to export their food to the wealthy, and corporate potentates run  fiefdoms oblivious to the country beyond their fences. \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Pearce’s story is populated with larger-than-life characters, from  financier George Soros and industry tycoon Richard Branson, to Gulf  state sheikhs, Russian oligarchs, British barons, and Burmese generals.  We discover why Goldman Sachs is buying up the Chinese poultry industry,  what Lord Rothschild and a legendary 1970s asset-stripper are doing in  the backwoods of Brazil, and what plans a Saudi oil billionaire has for  Ethiopia. Along the way, Pearce introduces us to the people who actually  live on, and live off of, the supposedly “empty” land that is being  grabbed, from Cambodian peasants, victimized first by the Khmer Rouge  and now by crony capitalism, to African pastoralists confined to  ever-smaller tracts. \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Over the next few decades, land grabbing  may matter more, to more of the planet’s people, than even climate  change. It will affect who eats and who does not, who gets richer and  who gets poorer, and whether agrarian societies can exist outside  corporate control. It is the new battle over who owns the planet.","brand":"Beacon Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47123746881776,"sku":"9780807003251","price":13.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780807003251_p0.jpg?v=1763725993","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780807003251","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}