The global food crisis in 2008 saw a rise in basic food staples worldwide as crops failed from climate change while the human population reached new levels. Since the 2008 global food crisis, wealthy Middle Eastern states, such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and others, such as India and China, have been buying up vast areas of arable land across Africa to grow food to feed their burgeoning populations, reported United Press International recently. In a world where humans are now using practically all arable land, this means that many people are losing their ancestral farmlands as governments lease them away. Human rights activists say tens of thousands of people in western Ethiopia are being driven off fertile ancestral lands so the government can lease or sell large tracts of farmland for commercial agriculture to investors, including foreign governments. The people received little compensation and were moved to villages elsewhere that have inadequate food and lack health and education facilities. And this is just the beginning. The Ethiopian government plans to resettle 1.5 million people by the end of 2013 as it continues to lease more land to other countries.
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