Landgrabbing: the Swiss connection
In Switzerland, several banks, financial funds and companies are involved in land grabbing.
Banks are thus providing services to companies that invest in land, and offering their customers mutual funds that include those companies' stocks. Credit Suisse and UBS, for example, participated in the Golden Agri-Resources share issue in 2009. The world's largest listed palm oil producer in Indonesia is acquiring huge tracts of land exclusively for palm cultivation.
A good many Swiss-based investment funds have also become specialized in investment in agriculture. The two private banks Pictet and Sarasin, for example, are offering agriculture funds, with the latter openly also engaging in «land finance», which is land purchasing. While Sarasin remains silent about any ethical criteria for company selection, Pictet is collaborating with Ethos, the foundation for sustainable investment. Both banks' funds invest in COSAN, for example, the biggest Brazilian sugar producer. Its activities include speculative purchases of land holdings and farming estates in Brazil so as to profit from value increases.
Other funds are GlobalAgriCap (Zurich), GAIA World Agri Fund (Geneva) and Man Investments (CH) AG (Pfäffikon SZ). They invest in companies that buy land in Europe, Kazakhstan, Brazil and Russia.
The commodity multinational Glencore (Zug) owns over 300,000 hectares of agricultural land in Australia, Kazakhstan, Paraguay, Russia and Ukraine. The Geneva-based Addax Bioenergy company recently made headlines. In February it concluded a contract with the Government of Sierra Leone for a 50-year lease on 15,000 hectares of land. As of 2012, Addax will be producing 100,000 cubic meters of ethanol from sugarcane for the European market. Over 20,000 people live in the region concerned, growing rice, cassava and vegetables. Sierra Leone is one of the world's poorest countries and more than half the population suffers from malnutrition.
Yvan Maillard Ardenti
Yvan Maillard Ardenti is responsible for the International Finance and Corruption desks at Bread for All. The text is based on research he has done for «EinBlick» (German)/«Repères» (French), a Bread for All publication.
Article published in: Alliance Sud News No. 63, Spring 2010
