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SW: →The World Bank: add info
:"One of the highest development priorities in the world must be to improve smallholder agricultural productivity, especially in Africa. Smallholder productivity is essential for reducing poverty and hunger, and more and better investment in agricultural technology, infrastructure, and market access for poor farmers is urgently needed. When done right, larger-scale farming systems can also have a place as one of many tools to promote sustainable agricultural and rural development, and can directly support smallholder productivity, for example, through outgrower programs. However, recent press and other reports about actual or proposed large farmland acquisition by big investors have raised serious concerns about the danger of neglecting local rights and other problems. They have also raised questions about the extent to which such transactions can provide long-term benefits to local populations and con- tribute to poverty reduction and sustainable development."<ref>Klaus Deininger and Derek Byerlee with Jonathan Lindsay, Andrew Norton, Harris Selod, and Mercedes Stickler, "Rising Global Interest in Farmland: Can It Yield Sustainable and Equitable Benefits?," [[World Bank]], September 7, 2010, pp. xiii-xiv.</ref>
In the same report, the Bank recognizes the issues associated with land grabs, saying: "Too often, they have included a lack of documented rights claimed by local people and weak consultation processes that have led to uncompensated loss of land rights, especially by vulnerable groups; a limited capacity to assess a proposed project’s technical and economic viability; and a limited capacity to assess or enforce environmental and social safeguards."<refname="WBxiv">Klaus Deininger and Derek Byerlee with Jonathan Lindsay, Andrew Norton, Harris Selod, and Mercedes Stickler, "Rising Global Interest in Farmland: Can It Yield Sustainable and Equitable Benefits?," [[World Bank]], September 7, 2010, p. xiv.</ref>
However, the Bank sees land grabbing as a potential way to increase farm yields on currently cultivated land, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, without expanding deforestation.<ref>Klaus Deininger and Derek Byerlee with Jonathan Lindsay, Andrew Norton, Harris Selod, and Mercedes Stickler, "Rising Global Interest in Farmland: Can It Yield Sustainable and Equitable Benefits?," [[World Bank]], September 7, 2010, p. xiv.</ref> This sentiment is very much in line with advocates of a "[[Second Green Revolution]]," including many agrochemical companies (such as those within the [[Global Harvest Initiative]]), that expanding industrialized agriculture to Sub-Saharan Africa is the path forward to increasing food production without cutting down the rainforests. To this end, the Bank says: :"In particular, none of the Sub-Saharan African countries of most interest to investors is now achieving more than 30 percent of the potential yield on currently cultivated areas. So, increasing productivity on existing farmland would have a much bigger impact than simply expanding the land area at current yields."<ref name="WBxiv"/>
==Resources and articles==
