Between 2001 and 2011, according to the Oakland Intitute of California, more than two million square miles of countryside, a slightly larger area than that of Mexico, were sold or leased in the United developing to governments and companies in rich countries . In 2010, the World Bank managed to identify (the transactions are closed with great discretion) negotiations to take over 450,000 square kilometers, equivalent to that of Sweden surface. 70% of the total in Africa. The land has ceased to be an asset that passed from father to son and had a cultural significance, to become a financial instrument. In fact, a new generation of institutional investors–Hedge Funds, venture capital instruments, pension funds and even elite universities like Harvard or Vandelbilt are using the fields with the same speculative effort that would use gold or currencies. Using this strategy, buying land has become globalized and has gone from Africa also affect Europe and the United States.