International food experts and African politicians are pushing for guidelines to prevent the surging trend of rich investors buying land in developing countries from hurting poor farmers and causing food crises.
The amount of land under negotiation in deals to help cash-rich countries in the Gulf and Asia secure food supplies for their growing populations has reached 15 to 20 million hectares, roughly equivalent to cropland in Germany or France, estimates the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). The monetary value is a huge - $20 to $30 billion.
IFPRI argues in a new policy brief that there are both opportunities and threats for poor nations - many of them in east and southern Africa - that are leasing or selling vast tracts of their land to foreign investors.
On the positive side, land acquisitions have the potential to inject much-needed investment into agriculture and rural areas, boosting food production and jobs. But that depends on the terms and conditions.
"The potential here is great. The question is the extent to which this translates into benefits for the poor and smallholders in the developing countries becoming hosts to these arrangements," said IFPRI research fellow Ruth Meinzen-Dick. "The question is, do these people...get new jobs and income, or do they lose access to the land they have been relying on?"
There's also a fear that, with many east African countries suffering food shortages, renting out land to foreign governments and companies to feed people overseas will make hunger at home even worse.
"Food security would be jeopardised if land that is currently in use for local production and local consumption is used entirely for export, and then the food availability of the nation would be reduced," IFPRI director-general Joachim von Braun told reporters.
But, he added, foreign investment could help improve supplies if it supports rapid expansion of domestic agricultural production and leads to jobs and higher incomes, allowing people to buy imported food.
IFPRI is pushing for an international code of conduct to ensure that the impact for smallholder farmers and the rural poor is more positive than negative - which has often not been the case so far.
Its policy brief points out that the scale, terms and speed of land acquisition have provoked opposition in some target countries. For example, Mozambicans have resisted the settlement of thousands of Chinese agricultural workers on leased lands. And in Madagascar, local dissatisfaction over a deal with Daewoo Logistics Corporation to lease 1.3 million hectares for maize and oil palm is reported to have been a factor in the recent overthrow of the government.
Increasingly, developing countries are realising they need to push for more equitable production and trade arrangements if the phenomenon that's become known as "land-grabbing" is to prove mutually beneficial and take into account the interests of local people.
African Union (AU) ministers last week agreed on guidelines for negotiating with foreign investors, which will be presented to leaders for ratification at a summit in July, the organisation's agriculture commissioner, Rhoda Peace Tumusiime, told Reuters this week. Von Braun said IFPRI is collaborating with the AU on developing the guidelines.
One of the provisions IFPRI wants included is that foreign investors should not have the right to export during an acute national food crisis.
Meinzen-Dick said poor communities should be concerned if their land becomes devoted to producing food entirely for export, without restrictions.
"That is one reason why we're saying the code of conduct should include provisions that when national food security is at risk, like in a drought or flooding, domestic consumption should have priority and in those cases, exports need to be curtailed to ensure that there is sufficient food is available at the local and even at the national level," she explained.
"Having that kind of provision made explicit, I think, would make communities more comfortable with these kinds of deals," she said.
Whether or not investors, both governments and corporations, would agree to this stipulation is unclear given the countries where they are securing land - including Kenya, Ethiopia and Sudan - often experience droughts and food emergencies.
Other conditions IFPRI recommends are that negotiations should be transparent and involve local landholders; existing land rights, including customary and common property rights, must be respected; benefits should be shared with local communities; and the new agricultural schemes must avoid causing environmental damage.
"All of these elements need to be in place for there to be sustainable transactions, otherwise there will be protests and problems in the future," warned Meinzen-Dick.
IFPRI says the most favourable type of arrangements for local communities are contract farming or "out-grower" schemes, because they allow smallholders to keep control of their land while delivering their production to the outside investor.
One example cited by von Braun is a sorghum-growing programme in Uganda in which several thousand farmers are planting higher-yielding varieties to produce low-cost beer for poorer consumers.
"If smart technology for food security and income earning is combined with this foreign direct investment, it can be win-win for small farmers," said von Braun.
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