“China, the U.S., Britain, Germany, Singapore and a small group of other nations account for the majority of global land acquisition” according to research by Sweden’s Lund University, says the Thomson Reuters Foundation. A study by the university says the deals are “increasingly drivers of land change” with the threat of loss of livelihoods for small farmers. A scientific journal says up to 82 million hectares, equal to 1 percent of agricultural land, were traded in international deals from 2000-2012. “Rights groups consider large-scale land investments ‘land grabs’ if local farmers are displaced from their fields by investors, or if the production from farms financed by outside capital is exported away from countries where food is scarce,” says the story. One analyst says the pace of the sales has declined recently.