UN report says pressure on land affects millions of farmer

A new report by the UN independent expert on Right to Food, has said that about 30 million hectares of farmland is yearly lost to environmental degradation, conversion to industrial use or urbanization. It said that the trend has affected hundreds of millions of farmers, fishermen and indigenous people, globally. Today, Up to 30 million hectares (75 million acres) of land, an area of the size of Italy, is lost each year to environmental degradation, industrialization and urbanization, Olivier De Schutter, UN special rapporteur on the right to food, said 500 million small farmers suffer from hunger partly because "their right to land is under attack." As rural populations grow and competition with large industrial units increases, the plots cultivated by smallholders are shrinking year after year. Farmers are often relegated to soils that are arid, hilly or without irrigation, the envoy told the UN General Assembly. He gave the example of India where the average landholding fell from 2.6 hectares in 1960 to 1.4 hectares in 2000 and is still shrinking. In eastern and southern Africa, the amount of cultivated land per capita declined by half over the past generation. An area of cultivated land the size of Italy is lost each year to environmental degradation, industrialization and urbanization, the UN expert said. Between five and 10 million hectares of farm land are lost each year because of severe degradation and another 19.5 million hectares to industrial use and urbanization. The report disclosed that the combination of environmental degradation, urbanization and large-scale land acquisitions by foreign investors form 'an explosive cocktail', while the pressure on land suitable for agriculture was increasing at an unprecedented rate. ''Each year, investors express an interest in the acquisition of over 40 million hectares of farmland, often for the production of agrofuels, a major driver behind the recent wave of large-scale acquisitions of land,' the report noted. It also said that, 'measures adopted for climate change mitigation or environmental conservation have also increased the pressure on agricultural land'. It added that, 'the planting of forests in order to benefit from the 'clean development mechanism' has sometimes led to evictions, against which the local populations concerned are insufficiently protected'. According to De Schutter: 'All these developments have a huge impact on smallholders, indigenous peoples, herders and fisherfolk who depend on access to land and water for their livelihoods. 'States should therefore confer legal security of tenure upon those persons, households and communities. 'However, evidence shows that individual land titling and the creation of a market for land rights may not be the most appropriate means to achieve this protection,' he noted. He also said: 'The titling process may confirm the unequal distribution of land, resulting in practice in a counter-agrarian reform. 'Furthermore, land sales tend to favour not those who can make the most efficient use of land, but those who have access to capital and whose ability to purchase land is greatest,'' the UN expert said. 'Rather than focusing on strengthening the rights of landowners, States should encourage communal ownership systems, strengthen customary land tenure systems and reinforce tenancy laws to improve the protection of land-users,' De Schutter added