The broad trends are international: the crisis in farming is global. In poorer countries the situation is even worse. Half of the world's people still make their living from the land - and it is they who feed the majority of the world's poorest people. In South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa more than 70 per cent of the population makes a living from the land. Agriculture counts, on average, for half of total economic activity. Why is the crisis happening? Somebody, somewhere, must be benefiting. The answer is not hard to discover. It lies not in the soil, but inside the corporations which have become known collectively as 'agribusiness'.