SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
agriculture
US Pension Fund TIAA Linked to Brutal Land Grabs and Evictions of Farmers in Brazil
The 10 largest transnational landowners in the world control an area larger than Japan, according to a new report. This accumulation fuels human rights abuse, inequalities, and environmental destruction, and underlines the need for redistributive policies.
Jun 03, 2025
Angelim is a small rural community in Piauí, northeastern Brazil, where small-scale farmers and artisans have lived for generations. Their way of life dramatically changed a few years ago when a company arrived, claiming it had purchased the land. Residents report being threatened by armed men. They have faced forest clearances and the destruction of native vegetation that is essential for their livelihoods and way of life. New monoculture plantations began to dry up the wetlands. The plantations also used pesticides, polluting the ecosystem and threatening residents’ health and livelihoods.
Angelim is located in the municipality of Santa Filomena and is just one of many communities affected by land acquisitions by Radar Propriedades Agrícolas, a company formed in 2008 as a joint venture between U.S. pension fund TIAA and Brazilian agribusiness giant Cosan. In recent years, Radar has acquired more than 3,000 hectares in Santa Filomena, adding to the land it already owns throughout the Matopiba region, which includes the Brazilian states of Maranhão, Tocantins, Piauí, and Bahia—the latest frontier of industrial agriculture in Brazil.
Elite Group
This region sits in the Cerrado, one of the world’s most biodiverse areas, home to 12,000 plant species (35% endemic) and 25 million people, including Indigenous Peoples and small-scale food providers. But 40-55% of the Cerrado has already been converted to commercial tree plantations, large agro-industrial monocultures, and pastures for cattle production. Land grabs, speculation, and deforestation are displacing communities and damaging the environment. One of the major players in this expansion is TIAA and its asset management company, Nuveen.
Tackling land inequality is crucial for a more just and sustainable future.
As revealed in our new report, TIAA is one of the world’s largest landowners and has almost quadrupled its landholdings since 2012. Managing 1.2 million hectares across 10 countries, it ranks 7th among the world’s top 10 transnational landowners, who together control 404,457 square kilometers—an area the size of Japan.
Others in this elite group include financial investors like Blue Carbon from the UAE, Australia-based Macquarie, and Canada’s Manulife; agribusiness giants Olam and Wilmar from Singapore; Chilean timber company Arauco; and U.K.-based Shell via Raízen, a Brazilian subsidiary.
Global Land Grabbing and Concentration Trends
This accumulation of land in the hands of a few transnational companies is part of a global trend of land grabbing that surged after the 2008 financial crisis. Since 2000, transnational investors have acquired an estimated 65 million hectares of land—twice the size of Germany. This has accelerated a dynamic of land concentration, which has resulted in 1% of farms controlling 70% of global farmland, a trend that jeopardizes the livelihoods of 2.5 billion smallholder farmers and 1.4 billion of the world’s poorest, most of whom depend on agriculture.
As the case of the Angelim community shows, land grabbing and land concentration have devastating consequences for communities and ecosystems. Like U.S.-based TIAA, virtually all the top global landowners have reportedly been implicated in forced displacements, environmental destruction, and violence against local people.
Land concentration exacerbates inequality, erodes social cohesion, and fuels conflict. But there are deeper consequences as well: The fact that vast tracts of land, located across different state jurisdictions, are brought under the control of distant corporate entities for the sake of global supply chains or global financial capital flows runs diametrically counter to the principles of state sovereignty and people’s self-determination. In particular, it undermines states’ ability to ensure that land tenure serves the public good and enables the transition to more sustainable economic models.
“Net Zero” Fueling Evictions
The question of who should own and manage land becomes even more pressing in light of climate change and biodiversity loss. Transnational landowners are associated with industrial monoculture plantations, deforestation, and other extractive practices. In contrast, up to 80% of intact forests are found on lands managed by Indigenous Peoples and other rural communities. Moreover, small-scale food providers practicing agroecology support higher biodiversity, better water management, and produce over half the world’s food using just 35% of global cropland.
Ironically, the environmental value of community-managed land has sparked a new wave of land grabs. So-called “green grabs” (land grabs for alleged environmental purposes) now account for about 20% of large-scale land deals. Since 2016, more than 5.2 million hectares in Africa have been acquired for carbon offset projects. The global carbon market is expected to quadruple in the next seven years, and over half of the top 10 global landowners now claim participation in carbon and biodiversity markets. “Net zero” has become a pretext for expelling communities from their lands.
From Deregulation to Redistribution
While global land policy debates in the past 10 years have focused on limiting the harm of land grabs on people and nature, the scale and severity of these trends demand a shift from regulation to redistribution. Neoliberal deregulation, as well as trade and other economic policies, have fueled the massive transfer of land and wealth to the corporate sector and the ultra-rich. Redistributive policies are needed to reverse this trend.
Tackling land inequality is crucial for a more just and sustainable future. However, only very few countries implement land policies and agrarian reform programs that actively attempt to redistribute and return land to dispossessed peoples and communities.
The international human rights framework requires states to structure their land tenure systems in ways that ensure broad and equitable distribution of natural resources and their sustainable use. The tools at the disposal of governments include redistribution, restitution, and the protection of collective and customary tenure systems, as well as measures such as ceilings on land ownership (including by corporate entities), protection and facilitation of use rights over publicly owned land, and participatory and inclusive land-use planning. These efforts must also be matched by redistributive fiscal policies, such as progressive land and property taxes, which remain regressive or ineffective in most countries today, thus perpetuating inequality and enabling wealth concentration.
International Cooperation
Because land grabbing is driven by global capital and the accumulation of land across jurisdictions by transnational corporations and financial entities, international cooperation is essential. The upcoming International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ICARRD) in Colombia in February 2026 offers a critical moment for governments to agree on measures that end land grabbing, reverse land concentration, and ensure broad and sustainable distribution of natural resources.
To be effective, these discussions should connect with initiatives on a global tax convention and an international mechanism to address sovereign debt, empowering states to have the fiscal space to implement human rights-based, redistributive policies and just transitions. Also important are binding legal provisions that prevent transnational corporations from using the power of their money to bend national rules in their pursuit of profits.
In a world facing intersecting crises—climate breakdown, food insecurity, persisting poverty, and social inequality—and a reconfiguration of the global balance of power, there is an opportunity to move away from neoliberal policies that have benefited very few, and to create a more just and sustainable global future for all.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Driven by Groundwater Depletion, Colorado River Basin Has Lost Equivalent of Underground Lake Mead
"Everyone in the U.S. should be worried about it, because we grow a lot of food in the Colorado River Basin, and that's food that's used all over the entire country."
May 28, 2025
The authors of a new study on water loss in the Colorado River Basin say "large-scale industrial farming" is closely tied to a major depletion of groundwater in the Southwest, where the pumping of groundwater is largely unregulated.
Researchers at Arizona State University used satellite data to measure groundwater supplies across the basin, which runs through seven states including Arizona, California, and Utah.
Measuring the Earth's gravity field to estimate the mass of underground water in the region, they found that the area has lost 27.8 million acre-feet of groundwater since 2003—roughly the same volume as the capacity of the nation's largest reservoir, Lake Mead.
The loss of groundwater has especially accelerated in the past decade, and the basin lost more than twice as much groundwater since 2003 as the amount of water taken out of reservoirs.
"Groundwater is disappearing 2.4 times faster than the surface water," Jay Famiglietti, the senior author of the study and a hydrologist at Arizona State University, told The Guardian.
Groundwater pumping is unregulated in much of the region, and the researchers noted that parts of the basin that have experienced the greatest losses are in areas with industrial alfalfa farming operations.
"Groundwater is disappearing 2.4 times faster than the surface water."
"Overpumping" is the main driver of groundwater loss in the past two decades, Famigletti said. "There's nothing illegal about it, it's just unprotected."
The Colorado River provides water to about 40 million people and millions of acres of farmland.
"Everyone in the U.S. should be worried about it, because we grow a lot of food in the Colorado River Basin, and that's food that's used all over the entire country," Famigletti told The Guardian.
While groundwater has been depleted, hotter temperatures fueled by the burning of fossil fuels have also contributed to especially arid conditions in the region over the past two decades. Since the beginning of the century the Colorado River's natural flow has been 13% lower than it was in the middle of the 20th century.
"We need to recognize where all this is happening and work with the state to put the brakes on," Famigletti toldThe Washington Post. "We used to say the Colorado River is the lifeblood of the western United States, but now it's becoming groundwater is the lifeblood."
States in the region were forced to reach a federal agreement in 2023 to limit water usage and try to protect the river's supply.
The more water that is lost from the river, Famigletti toldthe Post, "the more pressure there's going to be on the groundwater" in the basin.
"And then," he said, "it becomes a ticking time bomb."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Scapegoating Wild Birds Won’t Solve Avian Flu: We Need Radical Farming Reform
As we reflect on the wonder of migratory birds, and the spotlight focuses on how our cities and communities can be made more bird-friendly, we must also consider how our food system is posing a threat to their very existence.
May 10, 2025
For migratory and other wild birds, bird flu is a disaster. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, states that 169 million U.S. poultry have been affected by highly pathogenic bird flu since January 2022. Yet worldwide, tens of millions of wild birds have died of bird flu—which has also spread to mammals, including over 1,000 US. dairy herds.
Saturday 10 May is World Migratory Bird Day, a global event for raising awareness of migratory birds and issues related to their conservation. The poultry industry and governments like to blame wild birds for bird flu. However, the Scientific Task Force on Avian Influenza and Wild Birds—which includes the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Organization for Animal Health (WOAH) stresses that wild birds are in fact the victims of highly pathogenic bird flu; they do not cause it. As a recent study states, “This panzootic did not emerge from nowhere, but rather is the result of 20 years of viral evolution in the ever-expanding global poultry population.”
Until recently, the bird flu viruses that circulate naturally in wild birds were usually of low pathogenicity; they generally caused little harm to the birds. It is when it gets into industrial poultry sheds—often on contaminated clothing, feed, or equipment—that low pathogenic avian influenza can evolve into dangerous highly pathogenic avian influenza.
Governments worldwide appear to have no strategy for how to end these regular bird flu outbreaks other than to hope they will eventually die down.
Industrial poultry production, in which thousands of genetically similar, stressed birds are packed into a shed, gives a virus a constant supply of new hosts; it can move very quickly among the birds, perhaps mutating as it does so. In this situation, highly virulent strains can rapidly emerge. The European Food Safety Authority warns that it is important to guard against certain low pathogenic avian influenza subtypes entering poultry farms “as these subtypes are able to mutate into their highly pathogenic forms once circulating in poultry.”
Once highly pathogenic avian influenza strains have developed in poultry farms, they can then be carried back outside—for example, through the large ventilation fans used in intensive poultry operations—and spread to wild birds. The Scientific Task Force states that since the mid-2000s spillover of highly pathogenic bird flu from poultry to wild birds has occurred “on multiple occasions.”
So, low pathogenic bird flu is spread from wild birds to intensive poultry where it can mutate into highly pathogenic bird flu, which then spills over to wild birds and can even return back to poultry in a growing and continuing vicious circle.
Following its evolution in farmed poultry, the highly pathogenic virus has adapted to wild birds, meaning that it is circulating independently in wild populations, with some outbreaks occurring in remote areas that are distant from any poultry farms.
Is There a Health Risk for Humans?
While the health risk to humans from bird flu may be low, it cannot be ignored. Highly pathogenic avian influenza has spread to mammals including otters, foxes, seals, dolphins, sea lions, dogs, and bears. Worryingly, it has been found in a Spanish mink farm where it then was able to spread from one infected mink to another.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has said that cow-to-cow transmission is a factor in the spread of bird flu in dairy herds. The ability for bird flu to move directly from one mammal to another is troubling as a pandemic could ensue if it could move directly from one human to another.
Scientists at Scripps Research reveal that a single mutation in the H5N1 virus that has recently infected U.S. dairy cows could enhance the virus’ ability to attach to human cells, potentially increasing the risk of passing from person to person.
A 2023 joint statement from the World Health Organization, the FAO, and WOAH stated that, while avian influenza viruses normally spread among birds, “the increasing number of H5N1 avian influenza detections among mammals—which are biologically closer to humans than birds are—raises concern that the virus might adapt to infect humans more easily.”
Some mammals may also act as mixing vessels, leading to the emergence of new viruses that could be more harmful.
Pigs as Mixing Vessels
Pigs can be infected by avian and human influenza viruses as well as swine influenza viruses. Pigs can act as mixing vessels in which these viruses can reassort (i.e. swap genes) and new viruses that are a mix of pig, bird, and human viruses can emerge. The U.S. CDC explains that if the resulting new virus infects humans and can spread easily from person to person, a flu pandemic can occur.
Need for a Coherent Strategy to End Bird Flu
Governments worldwide appear to have no strategy for how to end these regular bird flu outbreaks other than to hope they will eventually die down. There is no sign of this happening. Without an exit strategy we are likely to face repeated, devastating outbreaks of bird flu for years to come. We need an action plan to restructure the poultry and pig sectors to reduce their capacity for generating highly pathogenic diseases.
We need to:
- Move to a poultry sector with smaller flocks and lower stocking densities to give the birds more space. Transmission and amplification of bird flu would be much less likely in such conditions.
- End the practice of clustering a large number of poultry farms close together in a particular area. Between-farm spread is a major contributor to the transmission of highly pathogenic bird flu.
- End the use of birds genetically selected for very fast growth. Such birds have impaired immune systems making them more susceptible to disease.
In light of pigs’ capacity for acting as mixing vessels for human, avian, and swine influenza viruses, the pig sector too needs to be restructured to make it less vulnerable to the transmission and amplification of influenza viruses. As with poultry, this would involve reducing stocking densities, smaller group sizes, and avoiding concentrating large numbers of farms in a particular area.
As we reflect on the wonder of migratory birds, and the spotlight focuses on how our cities and communities can be made more bird-friendly, we must also consider how our food system is posing a threat to their very existence. Failure to rethink industrial farming leaves us vulnerable, with the continued devastation of wild birds and poultry, and perhaps even a human pandemic.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular