The documentary film “The Grab,” narrated by Nathan Halverson of the Center for Investigative Reporting, talks about how foreign interests are seeking to buy up farmland in both the US and worldwide in order to provide sufficient food and water for their own people.
In 2012, massive uprisings known as “Arab Spring” toppled or nearly toppled numerous Middle Eastern governments. Egypt and Tunisia were toppled, and another such uprising, in Syria, led to the current civil war there, which recently flared up again when anti-Assad forces there captured Aleppo, from where they had been forced out several years ago.
As a result, other governments, including China, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, are in the process of buying up massive amounts of land, especially in places such as the US and Africa, in order to import food and water resources in order to keep their people fed in order to prevent uprisings in their own countries.
Terrorist groups like ISIS pop up in places like Syria, Somalia, Libya, and other places. Halverson noted that the Somali pirates, used to be fishermen, but they were displaced because massive trawling by outside interests meant the destruction of their livelihoods.
The documentary featured Smithfield Foods, which purchased Premium Standard Farms in 2008, including their facilities near Princeton. In 2013, Shuanghui Group of China purchased Smithfield Foods and their 500 farms for $4.72 billion, for which, reports Halverson, the Bank of China (controlled by the Chinese government) arranged the financing. In 2014, Shuanghui changed its name to WH Group.
The Chinese government has a stated goal of acquiring land abroad in order to prevent starvation of its people. Xi Jinping, the leader of China, was shown recounting growing up during the Great Famine of China from 1959 to 1961. As a result, anywhere from 15 million to 55 million people were killed.
Increasingly, food is being seen as a national security issue; the documentary features numerous interviews with people in the US national security community who focused on these issues. More and more, wars are likely to be fought over scarce resources. As one source put it, “If the US quits exporting food to the world, there wou ld be Armageddon.”
Naturally, these plans by foreign interests to buy up land to provide food and water to their people have drawn opposition. For instance, Halverson documented efforts by a group of people in Zambia to fight efforts to push them off their ancestral homelands and into government-made tents. However, these efforts, aided by a lawyer who went to South Africa to get his law degree, were stopped.
In La Paz County, Arizona, the documentary reported there were angry town hall meetings consisting of residents who had adequate water supplies for decades before Saudi interests came in, bought 15 square miles of land, pumped 3,500 gallons of water a minute, and drained all the local water reserves, forcing families to either spend a lot of money to redrill their wells or move elsewhere.
Closer to home, local legislators were furious when the Grain Belt Express came through Missouri with an 800 mile transmission line carrying renewable energy from Kansas to elsewhere. Invenergy, the company building the line, got final approval in 2023. They are allowed to use eminent domain to build on property of landowners who don’t agree; some of the lines run across private property. Landowners are compensated whether it is done voluntarily or through eminent domain.
The war between Russia and Ukraine broke out as the documentary was being completed. Halverson reported on some of the goals for Russia. With the planet warming up and subject to more extreme weather, Russia is seeking to position itself as an exporter of food. As the planet warms up, more Russian land will become arable. The problem is that there are not enough Russian farmers to work the land; Russian development companies, with Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s support, are recruiting American cowboys to come and teach Russians how to farm. The documentary showed a rodeo in Russia where a cowboy originally from Nebraska was showing the Russians how to work cattle. His wife posted his resume to the Russian company in question as a joke; to everyone’s shock, they heard right back from them and hired him on the spot.
In 2014, Russia seized Crimea following the overthrow of the Ukrainian government. Subsequently, Ukraine cut off the water supply from Crimea by building a huge dam on the North Crimean Canal. Before Russia annexed Crimea, 85% of its water had come from Ukraine. Subsequently, the land, which had been some of the most arable land in the world, was difficult to farm due to lack of water. The documentary says that seizing the dam and destroying it was one of the reasons why Putin launched his “Special Military Operation.”
The Grab is available for viewing at the Magnolia Pictures website at www.magpictures.com/thegrab/home.
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