World Divided Over New Scramble for African Land
http://allafrica.com/stories/201010040147.html
Paul Redfern
4 October 2010
Nairobi – A World Bank report has confirmed that 45 million hectares of land
in developing countries were bought in 2009, a tenfold jump from the
previous decade.
Moreover, two-thirds of these controversial “land grabs” have been in Africa
where critics say public and governmental institutions offer weak defences
against western multinationals and Far Eastern state companies seeking farm
land for food and biofuels.
While many development agencies and African campaigners are aghast at the
latest news some believe that good land development projects are exactly
what the world needs to solve the food crisis as they bring investment,
knowhow, and transport links, as well as creating jobs.
But the morality of the global land rush is finely balanced and even the
World Bank appears deeply torn.
While the report endorses the Bank’s open-door globalisation agenda, the
report acknowledges “large land acquisitions come at a high cost. The veil
of secrecy that often surrounds these deals must be lifted,” it said.
It warns of a “resource curse” that may enrich a small elite, leaving
wreckage behind. Proposals are not properly screened. Peasants are forcibly
displaced.
Communal grazing lands are closed off. Some investors manipulate opinion
with a media blitz of false promises. Nothing has been produced so far on
almost 80 per cent of the land purchased.
Euan Denholm/IRIN
… two-thirds being in Africa where …
Benefits are often minimal, “even non-existent.” In Africa, the land rush is
diverting effort from the core task of helping small farmers raise yields.
The Bank implicitly questions whether it is wise to divert half of the
world’s increased output of maize and wheat over the next decade into
biofuels to meet government “mandates.”
Theoretical reservoir
However, the world needs more food and there is a theoretical reservoir of
445 million hectares of unforested cropland in the world, on top of the 1.5
billion hectares in production.
“Productive agricultural land with water on site, will be very valuable in
the future. And I’ve put a good amount of money into that,” Michael Burry, a
Western entrepreneur told the Daily Telegraph.The issue has set off a fierce
backlash in particular in Madasgascar, where a deal with Korea’s Daiwoo
Logistics to plant corn on territory half the size of Belgium led to the
downfall of the government in 2008. The lease was subsequently revoked when
the new president said “Madagascar’s land is neither for sale nor for rent.”
The allure of African land is obvious. The World Bank says industrial and
“transition” countries are losing 2.9 million hectares of cultivated
farmland each year.
China is paving over its fertile belt on the eastern seaboard, and depleting
the water basin of the North China Plain for crop irrigation.
The World Bank says global food production needs to rise 70 per cent by 2050
to meet a triad of converging demands: Extra mouths; rising use of animal
feed from grains as Asia moves towards a more meat-based diet; and the
biofuel drive.
This, the Telegraph report notes “will not be easy. The great leap forward
in crop yields is fading.”
The World Bank said rises in wheat and soya yields have declined from two
per cent a year to zero since the 1970s in the West. Yield growth for rice
and soya in emerging economies has fallen from three per cent to one per
cent.
“With few breakthrough technologies on the horizon, the scope for yield
gains seems lower than in the past. Irrigation has contributed to past
growth in crop yields, but water scarcity in many regions is now a major
constraint,” it said. The Green Revolution is “exhausted.”
Wheat prices have doubled since June. The World Bank said the number of
people who go to bed hungry each night has risen from 830 million to more
than one billion over the past three years.