According to the Washington D.C.-based International Food Policy Research Institute, foreign governments and companies have acquired almost 20-million hectares of farmland in Africa and Latin America.

The land is being bought up or leased at an increasing pace by countries such as China and the United Arab Emirates, which are worried about future food and water supplies. According to the institute, increased pressures on natural resources, water scarcity and a growing distrust in regional and global markets have pushed countries short in land and water to find alternative means of producing food. The institute says while these land acquisitions have the potential to inject much-needed investment into agriculture in rural areas in developing countries, they also raise concerns about the impacts on poor local people who risk losing access to and control over land on which they depend.

The details are laid out in a report called "Land Grabbing by Foreign Investors in Developing Countries," by the institute's director general Joachim von Braun and senior researcher Ruth Meinzen-Dick. In the report, von Braun notes the land purchased so far equals about 25 per cent of all farmland in Europe.

It's a complicated issue, but what it boils down to is that these countries have developed their land to a point where their growing ability and water supplies are almost deleted.

Last week the Fraser Institute, a conservative think tank, released a report arguing the Agricultural Land Reserve is a failed experiment and the reason why Vancouver's housing market is one of the most expensive in North America. The Agricultural Land Reserve was developed in 1973 by the NDP government of the day, which said farmland had to be protected from development to ensure a local food supply.

According to the report's author, Diane Katz, a director at the Fraser Institute, farming in B.C. is a thing of the past. Struggling farmers should be allowed to remove their property from the ALR and sell it to developers for subdivisions. Part of her reasoning is that there are "fewer merits to locally produced food." Take that, 100 Mile Diet.

Katz has a lot to say in the study, but one of the highlights is, "The current fashionable stream of thought is that locally produced food is safer, healthier and better for the environment. But evidence clearly shows this is fanciful thinking and many B.C. consumers show an undeniable preference for a greater choice of products." Take that, local farmers markets. Katz says Canadians love Brazilian coffee and bananas, French cheese and wine, and gin from Britain.

What I found interesting last week is that the day before the Fraser Institute report was released, the president of a construction company, Steve Lornie, wrote a guest column for the Vancouver Sun saying exactly the same thing. Coincidence? I think not.

Lornie says we must stop pretending food security is achieved by growing our own food. "It is not," he says. He also warns we must stop confusing the concepts of food security with food safety.

"There are only two things these subjects have in common," he says. "Both are used by the left to attack free markets, and neither one is a problem worthy of more than our passing attention."

He says the ALR has less to do with food security than protecting high real estate values and controlling growth in semi-urban areas.

If the Fraser Institute manages to convince our government of the day to dissolve the ALR, we need to look no further than China and the United Arab Emirates for inspiration. Meanwhile, I hear farmland in Sudan is still a bargain.

sthomas@vancourier.com