With the world's population forecasted to surpass nine billion by 2050, and successful speculators such as George Soros frantically getting their hands on as much land as possible, these countries are acting perfectly logically in attempting to safeguard their future.

Millions of hectares have been sold in the most deprived parts of the world

Land-grabbing can also lead to exploitation. After a Norwegian biofuels company sought to turn a vast area of forest in northern Ghana, where the locals earn their livings by foraging for shea nuts, into a jatropha plantation, they were accused of deceiving an illiterate chief into signing away 38,000 hectares with his thumbprint.

It seems certain, that where the new landowners don't charm locals by providing an improved quality of life, and where foreign workers, earning what they would back home, retreat into the safety of gated compounds, that this land-grabbing will lead to widespread resentment. If, as in Madagascar, a government is seen to side with the foreigners, it polarizes society on wealth lines and provides populist leaders - whether they be charismatic leftists like Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, or right-wing nationalists - with the chance to campaign with the rhetoric of 'us versus them' divisions.

For a worst case scenario, one need only look at the Central American 'banana republics', and the conflicts that pitted the United Fruit Company against the local poor. Or the current violent hostility in the Niger Delta between oil multinationals, supported by the Nigerian government, and an angry, violent guerrilla resistance. Or simply back to last April, when people all around the world took to the streets in unprecedented numbers, because they were starving.