Book description
What do City speculators, Gulf oil sheikhs, Chinese entrepreneurs,
big-name financiers like George Soros and industry titans like Richard
Branson buy when they go shopping? Land. Parcels the size of Wales are
being snapped up across the plains of Africa, the paddy fields of
Southeast Asia, the jungles of the Amazon and the prairies of Eastern
Europe. Why? The money men will tell you that their investments will
bring an end to world famine. But is this more about fat profits and
food security for the few?
The race is on to grab the world's most precious and irreplaceable
resource. In this brilliant piece of investigative journalism Fred
Pearce moves from boardroom and trading floor to goat-herder's hut and
flooded forest. The result is an eye-opening, extraordinarily
important examination of the most profound ethical and economic issue
in the world today.
Fred Pearce is the environmental and development consultant for
New Scientist and writes regularly for the Guardian.
He has won many awards including UK Environmental Journalist of the
Year. In 2011 he received the ABSW Science Writers' Lifetime
Achievement Award. His previous books include When the Rivers Run
Dry - voted among the all-time 'Top 50' books by Cambridge
University's Programme for Sustainable Leadership - The Last
Generation, Confessions of an Eco-Sinner - longlisted for the
Samuel Johnson Prize - and Peoplequake.
