Coke, Pepsi accused of global land grab from poor

Land as big as the size of Italy has been taken from indigenous communities around the world by Coca Cola and Pepsi, according to a major new report.

The two companies have been criticized by Oxfam for their links to land disputes.

The charity has alleged that nearly 800 large-scale land deals by foreign investors have seen 33 million hectares taken into corporate ownership globally since 2000.

According to the Independent, the research claims that poor communities from Brazil to Cambodia are losing their homes to make way for lucrative sugar crops.

Anti-poverty campaigners are now calling for major multinational companies to do more to stop indigenous communities from around the world from being forced from their homes.

Sally Copley, Oxfam's campaigns director, said that they need to be sure that what people eat and drink does not make the poorest and most vulnerable across the world homeless or landless.

He added that PepsiCo, Coca-Cola and ABF are the three big giants in the sugar industry and must lead the way in making sure that people across the globe are not affected by this.

Oxfam said the increasing appetite for sugar has gone largely unnoticed as a contributory factor to land grabs in the developing world.

This is when local communities that rely on the land are evicted without consent or compensation - often violently - to make way for sugar plantations, the report said.

Oxfam's report includes allegations that a fishing community on the Sirinhaem estuary in Brazil is fighting for access to their land after being violently evicted to make way for a sugar mill.

Meanwhile in south-west Brazil activists in Mato Grosso do Sul are fighting the occupation of their land by a sugar plantation supplying a mill owned by Bunge.

Coca-Cola admits it buys sugar from Bunge, but added that it does not buy from this particular mill.