Growing foreign appetite for Brazilian land
28 March 2008
As wealthy local and foreign investors purchase more and more Brazilian land, wuestions over how to contain rising land prices emerge.
According to Inter Press Service (IPS), rising interest in biofuels is attracting many wealthy local and foreign investors to purchase land in Brazil. Global financier George Soros, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, the owners of Google and former U.S. president Bill Clinton are among the many foreign investors who are buying up land used for cultivation of grains and sugar. As a result, the price of land per hectare in the country has risen by an average on 18 percent in 2007 in areas where biofuel production is occurring.
While Brazil has laws that regulate foreign purchases of land, business leaders, government officials and civil society are at odds over the effectiveness of these existing land regulations. Business interests want to guarantee the "right to property, free of xenophobia", while civil society groups worry that expanding the possibilities for transnational companies to purchase Brazilian land will exacerbate current environmental problems.