Press Releases

For Immediate Release--July 9, 2012 Contacts:Adam Mason, [email protected] Goodner, [email protected] Iowa CCI Statement to the Press in Light of New Report from Oakland Institute What the Oakland Institute's new report adds to the story is not that Bruce Rastetter's collusion with Iowa State University for an attempted land grab in Tanzania threatened thousands of refugees with forced displacement. That's been the crux of the story for the last year, despite his company's official denials.

Press Release--Green SceneryFreetown, June 27, 2012 Green Scenery, a non-governmental organization monitoring large scale land investments in Sierra Leone, has been informed that a ten-acre plantation of oil palm, cola nuts, coffee and cacao has been completely destroyed by employees of Socfin Agricultural Company S.L. (SAC) in Malen Chiefdom, Pujehun District. The incident occurred in Kassay, one of the villages in the area leased by SAC to establish a large scale oil palm plantation in the chiefdom. Edison A.

Last June, the Oakland Institute exposed the largest land deal in Tanzania, which had been hidden away from public scrutiny and discussion. A year later, the top news in Iowa is an Associated Press story of incriminating emails concerning Bruce Rastetter. This project, which was once steamrolling in Tanzania, has now ground to a halt. But it hasn’t been stopped for good.

Dear President Obama, your meeting at Camp David on May 19, 2012 to discuss food security with African leaders, including Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, is a major opportunity to address what may be the single largest man-made contributor to food insecurity on the continent today: large-scale land investments by foreign investors.

Madame Ambassador, we are writing this formal letter to you on behalf of a representative community of Ethiopian-Americans and Ethiopians representing Ethiopia’s diverse ethnic, religious, gender and political orientation in the Washington Metropolitan area and are appalled by the social, economic, cultural, political and environmental devastation emanating from land grab in Ethiopia.

A new report today reveals how opening up the process around large-scale land deals in developing countries would benefit local communities, governments and business, and provides direction on how this can be achieved.

April 23-25, New York’s hotel Waldorf Astoria is the venue for the fourth annual Global AgInvesting (GAI) conference. The $3,000 admission ticket is not for the small land holders from Africa or farmers who resemble John Steinbeck’s Joad family. Instead, it targets institutional and global end investors, and fund managers – all mulling over economic opportunities that agricultural lands have to offer.

Join food justice activists, African students, OWS groups, and environmental organizations challenging agricultural investment that harms people at the Global AgInvesting (GAI) conference, April 24 at the Waldorf-Astoria.

We the delegates from eight districts and twenty chiefdoms either affected or about to be affected by large scale land acquisition for agribusiness in Sierra Leone at a conference of land owners and land users at the Saint Edwards Pre-school hall in Freetown from 2 – 3 April, 2012, while: Acknowledging that there is need for investment in agriculture to ensure food security and sustainable development; Being aware of government’s priority in agriculture, particularly with smallholder commercialization and attracting large scale investors in agriculture; Being mindful of the right and access to

Read the final communique from the Conference of Land Owners and Land Users Origin The two-day National Conference on Land Owners and Land Users affected by large scale investments in Agriculture organized by the Sierra Leone Network on the Right to Food (SiLNoRF) and Green Scenery, held on the 2nd and 3rd April, 2012 at the St. Edwards Pre- School Hall, Kingtom, Freetown ended up with a recommendation by participants for the formation of a Civil Society coalition that would serve as a watchdog on land issues in the country.