As the Movement for Black Lives demands alternatives to racist systems in our country, communities of color around the world press on in their struggles for land and self-determination. Last fall, Afro-Brazilian activist Altamiran Ribeiro came to Howard University to denounce how large soybean farms, funded by U.S. firm TIAA, are seizing peasants’ lands, devastating forests and poisoning water. He explained how villagers face death threats and intimidation by private security guards and land grabbers.
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As the Amazon rainforest continues to burn, members of Divest Harvard — a student group demanding the University divest from fossil fuels — are renewing their calls on Harvard to withdraw its holdings in farmland across the globe, including in Brazil.
In a statement released last week, Divest Harvard specifically condemned the role Brazilian agribusiness has played in the Amazon fires. The statement noted that, according to a 2018 report by activist group Genetic Resources Action International, the Harvard Management
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Another Harvard University farmland investment in Brazil may go awry.
The prosecutor’s office in the state of Bahia said it’s reviewing allegations that a company linked to Harvard’s endowment isn’t the rightful owner of land in the region, and it’s determining whether to sue to reclaim the titles.
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Fourteen years ago, a Brazilian farmer named Ruthardo Grun says he was terrorized by armed thugs who shot at him, burned down his shack, and chased him from land he was preparing to farm. Little did he know his battle to get the property back would end up pitting him against a company controlled by the world’s richest school: Harvard University.
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Four years ago, Harvard University bought an old cattle ranch in the foothills of the Sierra Madre Mountains. On an arid expanse north of Santa Barbara, California, the school’s endowment set out to make money from a notoriously tricky business: vineyards.
Thirsty wine grapes need water, a lot of it. So Grapevine Capital Partners, which manages Harvard’s investment, won county approval for huge ponds to store groundwater as part of an irrigation system for
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Biggest endowment struggled to unload a troubled investment.
Colin Butterfield was frantic. The Harvard University endowment executive wanted to unload a disastrous $270 million investment in Brazilian farmland. But the school had no takers, and it was burning through millions of dollars.
“Why I’m freaking out is that we’re running out of money,” Butterfield said in a November
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