THE GLOBAL GRAB FOR LAND AND RESOURCES

The sale of farmland belonging to the troubled UK Co-operative Group - http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/may/03/co-op-farms-sale-chinese-buyers - has highlighted the global grab for land and resources, of which Britain is both an origin and destination: "In a similar way to central London property, farmland is now seen as a safe bet by foreign investors – while the average value of prime residential property in London has grown by 135% over the last decade, the value of prime British farmland has increased 273% to an average price of £8,500 per acre, according to Savills." In this case, it is the prospect of a single Chinese buyer for the Co-op's 17 000 hectares (44 000 acres) which is cause for concern. However, research by Land Matrix - www.landmatrix.org - shows that the British are just as active in international land investment. An extensive article in the United States Monthly Review - http://monthlyreview.org/2013/11/01/twenty-first-century-land-grabs - by Fred Magdoff, professor emeritus of plant and soil science at the University of Vermont, covers the history of the land grab from a global perspective. However, whilst the present focus of attention is agricultural land, this should be seen in the larger context of a grab for the earth's resources. It is to be hoped, therefore, that environmental and natural resource economics, as well as land economy, will be on the preferred curricula of the International Student Initiative for Pluralist Economics - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Student_Initiative_for_Pluralism_in_Economics - whose open letter (from the Glasgow Unversity Real World Economics Society) in today's Guardian calls for their subject to respond to "the multi-dimensional challenges of the 21st century - from financial stability to food security and climate change".