Wall Street's Scary African Landgrab

ColorLines' Imara Jones says that financiers around the world are trying to get their hands on the continent, and predicts that the world's poorest regions stand to be harmed if they're successful.            

Wall Street is at again.

The nation's financial sector is on a crusade to dominate an irreplaceable African resource that the world increasingly needs: massive tracts of open land available for large scale industrial farming. The pace of land purchases is flying so furiously that it is now commonly referred to as "a land grab."

It's the latest phase in Wall Street's never-ending quest for profits at-any-cost, but this time the focus of finance's predatory gaze is the world's poorest region. The reason is simple: There's an ocean of money to be made by doing so.

The potential riches stem from the fact that the world needs more food. For Wall Street, scarce resources translate into massive profits, and U.S. financial firms are at the head of the pack to make them.

Global population growth, the rise of middle class diets in fast-developing economies, especially China and India, and falling crop yields due to climate change mean that the planet is in a scramble to increase agricultural output. This year's drought highlights the problem …

These acquisitions are another example of the way in which the financial system thrives off of inequality, both internationally and here at home.

Read Imara Jones' entire article at Colorlines.

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