Cerrado: U.S. investment spurs land theft, deforestation in Brazil, say experts

[Judi Lynn]

by Alicia Prager and Flávia Milhorance on 28 March 2018

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Edjarsson Cardoso places folders full of documents — some more than 20 years old — on the pool table of a dimly lit bar in the rural Brazilian town of Riachão das Neves. With him stand seven other men who wish to prove their right to use farmland, a place they called home, stolen from them all those years ago.

One-by-one, all of them were driven off the land where they once grew their food. After changing ownership for decades, today that property belongs to a Brazilian subsidiary of Harvard University’s endowment fund.

It appears that Harvard’s US$37.1 billion endowment fund and its manager Harvard Management Company (HMC) has invested in the Brazilian agribusiness frontier — investments steeped in past accusations of forged land titles, illegal deforestation and violent expulsion of small-scale farmers from their homes.

This is not an isolated case of financial investments fuelling land grabbing. During the global financial crisis of 2007/08, international investment firms, when faced with turbulent financial markets, increasingly turned toward rural farmland speculation in developing nations, regarding it as a relatively safe asset.

More:
https://news.mongabay.com/2018/03/cerrado-u-s-investment-spurs-land-theft-deforestation-in-brazil-say-experts/