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Investors scrambling for farmland need to assess soil resilience, human rights and access to water in their land and commodity portfolios or risk undermining the value of their investments, says the Earth Security Initiative (ESI). In a report release on Monday, London-based think-tank ESI notes a continuing surge in farmland investments, which has seen foreign investors lease around 227 million hectares of land in developing countries over the past decade for agricultural development. The “scramble [has been] greatly accelerated by the worldwide spike in food prices of 2007–2008”, says the report. They have also piled into developed countries, says the… continue reading