A/HRC/9/23 page 13 food crisis.21 The statement made by leaders of the Group of eight on global food security makes no reference to the issue. No governmental delegation present at the High-Level Conference on World Food Security mentioned agrarian reform or the need to protect the security of land tenure.22 21. To the extent that the emphasis is on increasing the production of food, the responses to the current global food crisis could, however, lead to new threats to security of land tenure. One danger in the current situation is that, as a result of the renewed interest in agriculture and the race towards the production of agrofuels,23 competition will increase for land in what has been described as “‘an uneven playing field - in many cases between large-scale investors and local land users who often hold no statutory rights over the land they use”.24 The development of transnational investment in agricultural land, by which countries seek to ensure their food security by buying land abroad, and the development of monocultures for exports increase such pressure even further. In this context, developing countries should be encouraged to ensure security of tenure for all land users. While landowners may gain from the increase in the price of land, it constitutes a threat for landless labourers or for those whose title to the land they cultivate is insecure, and it may make it impossible for small holders to acquire more land in order to increase production. Securing land rights would encourage investors seeking to produce crops for export to opt for contract farming with small-holders, thus contributing to a better livelihood for the producers concerned. 22. Not only should the rights of land users on their land be secured; excessive concentration of land should also be avoided, and, where necessary, agrarian reform should be pursued to ensure that those who depend on land for their livelihood have access to it. Article 11(2) (a) of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights refers to developing or reforming agrarian systems as a means of ensuring the fundamental right to be free from hunger. Agrarian reforms should be accelerated, as recommended by Guideline 8.10 of the FAO Guidelines on the Right to Food and by the FAO International Conference on Agrarian Reform 21 The Latin American Presidential Summit, at which 15 delegations were convened on 7 May 2008 in Managua, did express its support for ‘an agrarian reform process, that would provide land to agricultural producers who are currently deprived of this resource to produce food’(‘un proceso de reforma agraria, que provea de tierras a aquellos productores agrícolas, que en este momento no tienen este recurso para producir alimentos’). 22 See International Land Coalition, Access to land and the food crisis: Feedback and reflections by the ILC Secretariat on the FAO High Level Conference on World Food Security, June 2008, www.landcoalition.org. 23 Fuelling Exclusion? The Biofuel Boom and Poor People's Access to Land, by Lorenzo Cotula, Nat Dyer and Sonja Vermeulen, www.iied.org/pubs/pdfs/12551IIED.pdf. 24 International Land Coalition, Access to land and the food crisis, cited above.