obtained, often by aggregating up from regional registries, we find support for the notion of a recent and marked increase in land transfers (Table 2). Total confirmed land transfers over the 2004-2009 period amounted to 4.0 million ha in Sudan, 2.7 million ha in Mozambique, 1.2 million ha in Ethiopia and 1.6 million ha—although mainly through renegotiation of existing agreements—in Liberia. Comparing these figures to the estimated total available area in each country reveals that this respectively amounts to 8.6%, 16.6%, and 25.4% of the total suitable non-forested non-protected area with a population density of less than 25 inhabitants per km<sup>2</sup> for Sudan, Mozambique, and Ethiopia, respectively.

Given the difficulties of obtaining consistent data from official sources, we use information from press articles to get a global picture of the recent demand for large scale land acquisition. Our sample is based on such reports published between Oct. 1, 2008, and Aug. 31, 2009, as reported by the NGO GRAIN.<sup>16</sup> Figure 1 plots the evolution of the IMF food price index and the number of recorded press reports on cross-border land acquisitions. The ―land rush‖, or at least media awareness of it, started with the 2007 2008 commodity price boom. While commodity prices soon returned to more moderate levels, investors‘ interest in land persisted. Using data on the size of projects where available in such reports, Table 3 compares regional rates of land expansion in the 1961-2007 period to demand for land by investors. Press reports suggest that such demand disproportionately focused on Africa where almost 70% of the area of interest to investors was located but also that it was quantitatively large: compared to an annual rate of area expansion in Africa of some 1.8 million ha in 1961-2007, demand for land in Africa in 2009 alone amounted to some 39.7 million hectares--greater than the total agriculturally cultivated area of Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland combined.

Two comments are in order to interpret this figure. First, it refers to demand for land deals rather than actual transactions or area brought under production. Second, as reports of land acquisitions are less likely in countries where press freedom is limited or where land acquisition is not ―new‖ or ―noteworthy‖, it may be biased downward and covering only the largest projects. Efforts to cross-check the information from press reports with administrative data in the countries where such information is available supports this in the sense that while not all the projects mentioned in press reports could be identified in official data–presumably because some had never made it beyond expressions of interest–most lands actually transferred could be traced to press reports. Preliminary results from a recent effort to more systematically cross-check press reports confirm this finding.<sup>17</sup> For each project, we code origin and destination country,<sup>18</sup> size, commodities involved, investor type, and whether any activity had started.<sup>19</sup> The universe

> 16 The data can be accessed at www.farmlandgrab.org.

> 17 Results will soon be posted on ILC‘s website http://www.commercialpressuresonland.org/monitoring-land-transactions. 18 In Sub-Saharan Africa, key target countries are Sudan, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Ghana and Mozambique, which account for 23% of projects. 21% of projects are in Latin America and the Caribbean (mainly Brazil and Argentina), 11% in Europe and Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Russia, and

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