Last month, I dug into a relatively new phenomenon: the purchase of arable land in the developing world by countries that have largely exhausted their own farm lands and/or aquifers. Done in the name of food security, these wealthier countries are often cordoning off, if not outright displacing, small subsistence farmers from land they could use to meet their own needs.
Last week in Sélingué, Mali, the National Coordination of Farming Organizations (CNOP) and Via Campasina held the first international conference on the “land grab” in Africa. The Oakland Institute released a report on the conference’s focus on Mali, especially the fact that investment in farmland by foreign investors rose 60% between 2009 and 2010. Most of these land deals were struck with just 22 foreign investors.
The report raises several troubling facts about the land leases from Mali’s government, including:
An almost complete lack of transparency for affected local communities Human rights abuses against small-scale landholders in the areas leased A disregard for the concerns of those local residents Planned use of much of these lands not for food crops, but for biofuel feedstocks As The Guardian notes in its coverage of the report, this activity goes against recommendations made by African policymakers, who believe the continent’s food security relies on small farmers. Furthermore, while countries like Saudi Arabia and South Korea are among the investors, American universities like Harvard are also major players in the land grab.
Food security is going to be an issue this century. The spread of conventional agricultural practices during the 20th-century, even in places ill-suited for growing food, has created a tremendous impact on the resources needed to feed a growing global population. It’s hard to see how scooping up land in the poorest parts of the world is a sustainable answer to this crisis.
Take a look at the report, and let us know what jumps out at you.
Guardian Nov 2011 Foreign investment in Mali's arable land jumps by 60% Report says largescale foreign agri-investment offers 'few solutions to the poverty and hunger plaguing the country
oreign investment in arable land in Mali increased by 60% between 2009 and 2010, says a report published on Thursday to coincide with the first international farmers' conference to tackle the global rush for land.
The report, by the US-based Oakland Institute and the Malian national farmers organisation, estimates that more than 544,500 hectares of Malian land have been leased or were under negotiation for lease by the end of 2010. The bulk of these land deals – covering an area the report says could sustain more than half a million small farmers – were negotiated by just 22 foreign agri-investors. Less than 5% of west Africa's largest country is arable.
Mali has been at the centre of agri-investor interest and farmer resistance to the largescale deals that have sparked growing concern from international aid and development organisations.
"Corporations, fund managers and nations anxious to secure their own future food security have sought and secured large landholdings for offshore farms or speculation," says the report, noting that the food and fuel crises of 2008 appear to have jump-started the rush to acquire farmland across Africa. The report updates a study produced by the Oakland Institute earlier this year, which showed Harvard and other major American universities were key emerging investors in the continent's farmland.
Thursday's report notes that 40% of the recent large land deals negotiated in Mali have been flagged for the production of agrofuels, despite government assurances that such investments were to strengthen food security and transform the country into a major food supplier for the region.
An "ideological divide" has blocked progress on negotiating investments that benefit local communities, says the report. "While [industrialised agriculture] may involve smallholder support projects, the purpose is rarely to strengthen and promote traditional farming systems … Rather the aim is to 'modernise' them, increase competitiveness, focus on value chains for commodities, and orient smallholders towards the global marketplace."
The report levels significant blame on the World Bank, which it says has "shaped the economic, fiscal and legal environment of Mali in a way that favours the acquisition of vast tracks of fertile lands by few private interests instead of bringing solutions to the widespread poverty and hunger plaguing the country". Mali ranked 175 out of 187 countries in this year's UN Human Development Index. The most recent figures suggest more than 50% of the population live on less than $1.25 a day and nearly a third of children under the age of five are malnourished.
The famine and food crisis in the Horn of Africa has pushed policymakers to focus on the potential of Africa's small farmers to strengthen countries' food security and ultimately drive economic development on the continent. Smallscale farmers are credited with producing as much as 80% of Africa's food.
Much of Mali's large deals concern state-owned land, where the informal rights of communities living on the land are not protected by law, and rarely recognised by public officials.
Ibrahima Coulibaly, head of the Malian national farmers' organisation, said "land-grabbing is a denial of historical rights", and that in many cases farmers have for generations lived on land that only formally became state assets after independence in the 1960s.
Publication of the report comes as hundreds of smallholder farmers and civil society activists from 30 countries descend on Selingue, in southern Mali, to draft a strategy to strengthen local communities' resistance to "land grabbing".
The conference, which runs from Thursday to Sunday, and is co-ordinated by the Malian national farmers organisation and the international peasants' movement La Via Campesina, plans to focus on examples of farmers' resistance to land grabs. While large land deals have received increasing attention from international organisations, conference organisers argue this has often been directed by large NGOs and rarely by small farmers themselves.
Research by Oxfam, published this year, suggests that nearly 230m hectares of land – an area the size of north-west Europe – have been bought or leased, largely in Africa, mostly by foreign companies, in thousands of secretive deals made since 2001. Earlier, the World Bank had published estimates putting that figure at just under 60m hectares.
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Western corporations are neo colonising Africa by buying arable land to build plantation that will supply food and cash crop for export to Western countries.They will also use those plantation to manipulate the world food commodity price by creating artificial shortage when they dont export the food on purpose.Wall Street and Goldman Sach are behind the buying and leasing of African land for commodities market speculation.
Africa already have a colonial system agriculture were the priority is given to the production of cash crop for the European market while the African people are suffering from malnutrition because of the lack of food,lack of variety of food and occasional drought.
In Latin America it is worst because corporations and rich people by rivers, lakes and water springs created by God for humanity.The people have no access to free water to drink or shower they have to pay those corporations and rich people for the use of water.
African governement should make it illegal for Western, Korean and Saudi Arabian corporations to buy African arable land,this is neo colonialism to allow international capitalist to control your stomach.African governement should create regional Farmers bank that will finance small farmer in their food production, land lease and purchase of equipement and fertilizer.
I think African people know by now that Western institutions like Harvard University investment fund, the World Bank and IMF are not there to help black African people but to help Western governements and corporations
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