TerraProject

LAND Inc.

Land Inc. is a journey across Brazil, Dubai, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Madagascar the Philippines and Ukraine to document what some define as a form of neocolonialism, and others as a chance for development: land grabbing and the growing investments in industrial farming and plantations.

In 2009 we first learnt about the impact of the previous year’s food crisis on changes in government and private sector investment strategies. Countries that relied on imports to satisfy internal food demand began acquiring or leasing fertile land from other nations to cycle food back to their internal markets, while private investors saw food and biofuel production as a new and booming source of profit. This rush for fertile lands had a series of repercussions in the affected countries. Indigenous people and farmers started to get displaced, losing access to their only source of livelihood.

Monocultural large estates began replacing small-scale farms, reducing the biodiversity of locally grown crops. And with the expansion of the biofuel market, land and water started to get increasingly utilized to cultivate non-food crops. In many cases, this phenomenon also had environmental impacts, such as deforestation, pollution and control over water resources. Land Inc. is a documentation of the actors and the forces behind this phenomenon.