An international campaign – Our Land; Our Business – is urging the World Bank to abandon its Benchmarking the Business of Agriculture (BBA) programme, claiming it will serve only to encourage corporate land grabs and undermine the smallholder farmers who produce 80% of the food consumed in the developing world. The campaign asserts that by ranking countries according to the ease of which foreign investors are able to do business there, this new programme encourages the streamlining of FDI to the detriment of the rest of the country – especially smallholder farmers. Countries looking to attract foreign investment go to great lengths, such as the removal of environmental and social regulations or suppressing trade barriers, to earn favourable rankings.
Courtesy of Our Land; Our Business: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koI6lGxhPj8