The global economy is hard at work ensuring that the rich countries will have enough food to feed their affluent citizens, and now they are even ensuring that a large percentage of those crops will be raised for fuel, for the same people.

We know that international investors are busily traveling around the world, either buying up land outright, or leasing land for a long term (as long as 99 years) in some of the nations where the people are in great need of food and development. For such investors, anything that will bring in the profits is an object of their interest.

Everybody eats, so food is naturally something that will not lose its value, so investors are plunging headlong into farmland and food processing operations. Years ago, some of the most powerful corporations in the U.S. realized that food was a good bet for making money over the long haul. Otherwise, why would Philip Morris, a tobacco company, have made huge investments in food and food companies, such as Kraft? The apparent rationale was that, even if people stopped smoking, they weren’t going to stop eating, and they were right. The company even changed its name in 2007, to Altria.

The hunt is on by investors for farmland to buy, both in the U.S. and in other countries, particularly in Africa, South America, India, and some other parts of Asia. In early March, La Via Campesina, a worldwide advocacy organization of peasant farmers, indigenous farmers, landless peoples, and others who are on the fringes of society in their countries, reported that Saudi Arabia now owns l.6 million hectares of land in Indonesia and Sudan. The group also reported that about 1.3 million hectares of land in Madagascar were leased, bought, or transferred to South Korean private corporations.

All of this follows hard on the heels of similar purchases in Somalia and other places in the Horn of Africa, where the people live in extreme poverty and development is particularly slow. We’re not talking about bullet trains and malls here, but by “development” is meant constructing systems for potable water, roads that can take goods to market in most weather, and rudimentary train or bus systems that will provide low-cost and efficient transportation for the people.

The point is that land grabbing is not a new phenomenon. It has been around in its current form for at least a decade and is just now getting the attention of supporters of egalitarian development around the world. A major concern is that the crops that will be grown by foreign owners will not even be for food, but for biofuels. Development of such fuels will make certain that no one will benefit nutritionally from the crops grown.

“Selling of land to foreign investors and the de-nationalization of land degrades natural ecosystems by monoculture farming practices,” according to Sister Ana Maria Siufi, of Argentina and the Sisters of Mercy, whose work with people at the village and neighborhood level takes them around the globe. “Genetically modified crops and crops for biofuels replace a variety of food crops. Small and medium producers are rendered bankrupt and dispossessed when they cannot compete with large multinationals and are forced to sell their land.”

A direct result of land grabs in the developing world is hunger among those who already are hungry, especially when there is no rain, or there are typhoons and floods, or crops fail for some other reason. La via Campesina recently quoted Jean Ziegler, former UN special rapporteur, on the right to food, who said: “Land grabbing is clearly a gross violation of the rights of peasants. Most of these land grabs are not even for food production but for agrofuels, which are destroying our land, society, environment and our food sovereignty...We have to forbid land grabbing, if we want to protect our food system.”

Land grabs in the developing world will eventually affect the nations of the North, where most countries are already “developed,” because cheap food exported from the South to the North will make it very difficult for farmers and operators of industrial farming models to make a living. That economic condition is just taking shape, so it isn’t easy to make hard and fast predictions about who will be hurt most.

What is clear, however, is that women and their right to own or lease land on their own, and their right to own various kinds of property (such as seeds, tools, and other materials) in the developing countries will be harmed. This is happening and will continue to happen at an increasing rate, even though women raise the bulk of the food crops in most of the poorer countries. As the amount of land that is grabbed by nations and transnational corporations increases, the problem of hunger and stunted growth will continue to be a problem of monstrous proportions.

Madagascar is a prime example of the problems of development and exploitation of natural resources and the people. Human settlements on the island of Madagascar go back some 2,500 years, when Austronesian travelers arrived from Borneo in their dugout canoes. Since that time, many different groups settled there, off the east coast of Southern Africa, including the Bantu, who crossed the Mozambique Channel about 1,000 years ago. Ruled as a kingdom for most of its human history, it became part of the French colonial empire in 1896. Madagascar gained its independence in 1960, during the wave of fights for freedom from the various European empires. The last elected leader was routed by a coup d’état in 2009.

Ninety percent of the approximately 21.9 million people live on $2-$3 a day. There is the classic problem of how to feed, house, educate, and provide health care for so many impoverished people. During the French colonial era, there were cash crops for export and some other enterprises that brought in some income to the economy, but the majority of the people kept their old ways involving small scale farming or fishing, since most of the benefits of empire in the 19th and 20th Centuries went to the foreign investors.

That is an old story and what it happening now to countries like Madagascar is causing alarm among the people whose subsistence living is even being threatened. These are people who have seen the “investments” in land ownership or long-term leases and what they ultimately mean for the country and its people.

This is happening in country after country and, as in Madagascar, the people do not have much political power, any more than they have economic power. The official aid organizations and agencies of the developed countries are working hand in hand with the corporations and international investment firms, to convince politicians and the people that it is the wise thing to do, to give over land to foreign entities as a way to improve local economies. With 1.3 million hectares (about 3,211,000 acres) of Madagascar controlled by South Korea, it is not likely that the people of Madagascar will benefit greatly.

Through some three centuries before World War II, there were imperial powers that exercised dominance and control over vast areas of the world, especially in places where the natural resources were needed by the conquering nation. Colonialism was a fact of life for such large parts of the world…and the people of those nations rarely saw any “benefits” (including such things as the imparting of the idea of civil service by England in India). As far as self-determination, equality, and self-rule, the people of the subject nations were out of luck.

After World War II, peoples everywhere began to stir and to demand control over their own nations and, by 1960, most of the former colonies had gained their independence and embarked on the very difficult works involving self-rule. Most are still working at it, but the scars of imperialism remained and wounds of colonialism are still open.

What the world is seeing now is a new kind of empire…the empire of money, economics, and “free” trade. As always, everything is free, except the people. The new colonialism will result in the same exploitation and suffering as the old, but we should hope that it will not take hundreds of years to eliminate it. The solution will only come from the demands of the people of the rich nations. Their politicians and the corporations which they allow to function in the world must be held accountable and must be required to change their ways. The disparity in wealth in the U.S. is tearing the country apart. How much worse is the disparity among nations? Such disparity will tear the world apart. The time to act is now.

BlackCommentator.com Columnist, John Funiciello, is a labor organizer and former union organizer. His union work started when he became a local president of The Newspaper Guild in the early 1970s. He was a reporter for 14 years for newspapers in New York State. In addition to labor work, he is organizing family farmers as they struggle to stay on the land under enormous pressure from factory food producers and land developers. Click here to contact Mr. Funiciello.