To the Harvard Corporation:

We, the undersigned Harvard affiliates and concerned community members, demand that you immediately stop investing in new farmland, return the lands already acquired to affected communities, and pay reparations for the undeniable harm of Harvard’s global land business.

We are ashamed that Harvard University – an institution that prides itself on helping to create a more just world – makes speculative investments with farmland that so directly harm rural communities’ health, safety, and livelihoods. According to investigative reporting, Harvard has spent nearly $1 billion acquiring farmland globally since 2008, making it a leading institution operating in farmland markets. These land deals, which span from California to Brazil to Russia, have failed miserably.

Foremost, we are troubled that Harvard’s disregard for the social impact of its business. According to reporting compiled by the Network for Social Justice and Human Rights and GRAIN, Harvard-owned companies have displaced and harassed traditional communities — at times sending in armed security guards, bribing locals, and turning neighbors against each other. Harvard-owned agribusiness ventures have been linked to the pollution of waterways, destroying biodiversity and the livelihoods of local people.

We are deeply concerned that Harvard’s business in biodiverse regions like the Brazilian Cerrado will contribute to rising greenhouse gas emissions, habitat loss, and critical environmental harms. As of 2019, Harvard owned at least 1 million acres of land in the Cerrado region in an effort to profit from the agribusiness industry and other speculative exploits. Much of Harvard’s land in Brazil is believed to have been affected by massive wildfires linked to agribusiness expansion driven by companies like Harvard.

Furthermore, we recognize that these land investments, especially those in the Brazilian Cerrado, have reportedly lost Harvard large amounts of money. According to Bloomberg, auditors wrote down one of Harvard’s Brazilian farmland projects by $200 million in 2017. Not only have Harvard’s land holdings put a moral stain on its reputation, but they have also failed to benefit the university financially.

The Harvard Corporation’s silence on these matters is alarming. The Harvard community deserves full transparency, rather than relying on third-party investigative reports to uncover the extent of its harm.

Altamiran Lopes Ribeiro, an organizer from the Brazilian state of Piaui, visited Harvard in 2019 to call on the university to address its land holdings. Sitting in front of Memorial hall, he said,

“We cannot allow [Harvard] to say they’re investing there to guarantee the future of the University and those who will have their pensions and investments, because that’s a big lie. The profit that comes from those investments is a profit that is tainted with blood, pain, and suffering from those communities.”

We, the undersigned, stand in solidarity with land activists and impacted communities around the globe who have been calling on Harvard for years to redress the harms of its investments. We demand that:

Harvard Management Company (HMC) give full transparency about the scope and impacts of the endowment’s land holdings and those held by companies or funds it is invested in

Harvard immediately begin to return land back to affected communities

Harvard pay reparations to affected communities for the harms of its investments

HMC adopt a policy of making no new farmland investments