The rich prep for doomsday

[flipflop]

Rich countries launch great land grab to safeguard food supply

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/nov/22/food-biofuels-land-grab

• States and companies target developing nations
• Small farmers at risk from industrial-scale deals

Julian Borger, diplomatic editor guardian.co.uk,
Saturday November 22 2008 00.01 GMT The Guardian

Rich governments and corporations are triggering alarm for the poor as they buy up the rights to millions of hectares of agricultural land in developing countries in an effort to secure their own long-term food supplies.

The head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, Jacques Diouf, has warned that the controversial rise in land deals could create a form of "neo-colonialism", with poor states producing food for the rich at the expense of their own hungry people.

Rising food prices have already set off a second "scramble for Africa". This week, the South Korean firm Daewoo Logistics announced plans to buy a 99-year lease on a million hectares in Madagascar. Its aim is to grow 5m tonnes of corn a year by 2023, and produce palm oil from a further lease of 120,000 hectares (296,000 acres), relying on a largely South African workforce. Production would be mainly earmarked for South Korea, which wants to lessen dependence on imports.

"These deals can be purely commercial ventures on one level, but sitting behind it is often a food security imperative backed by a government," said Carl Atkin, a consultant at Bidwells Agribusiness, a Cambridge firm helping to arrange some of the big international land deals.

Madagascar's government said that an environmental impact assessment would have to be carried out before the Daewoo deal could be approved, but it welcomed the investment. The massive lease is the largest so far in an accelerating number of land deals that have been arranged since the surge in food prices late last year.

"In the context of arable land sales, this is unprecedented," Atkin said. "We're used to seeing 100,000-hectare sales. This is more than 10 times as much."

At a food security summit in Rome, in June, there was agreement to channel more investment and development aid to African farmers to help them respond to higher prices by producing more. But governments and corporations in some cash-rich but land-poor states, mostly in the Middle East, have opted not to wait for world markets to respond and are trying to guarantee their own long-term access to food by buying up land in poorer countries.

According to diplomats, the Saudi Binladin Group is planning an investment in Indonesia to grow basmati rice, while tens of thousands of hectares in Pakistan have been sold to Abu Dhabi investors.

Arab investors, including the Abu Dhabi Fund for Development, have also bought direct stakes in Sudanese agriculture. The president of the UEA, Khalifa bin Zayed, has said his country was considering large-scale agricultural projects in Kazakhstan to ensure a stable food supply.

Even China, which has plenty of land but is now getting short of water as it pursues breakneck industrialisation, has begun to explore land deals in south-east Asia. Laos, meanwhile, has signed away between 2m-3m hectares, or 15% of its viable farmland. Libya has secured 250,000 hectares of Ukrainian farmland, and Egypt is believed to want similar access. Kuwait and Qatar have been chasing deals for prime tracts of Cambodia rice fields.

Eager buyers generally have been welcomed by sellers in developing world governments desperate for capital in a recession. Madagascar's land reform minister said revenue would go to infrastructure and development in flood-prone areas.

Sudan is trying to attract investors for almost 900,000 hectares of its land, and the Ethiopian prime minister, Meles Zenawi, has been courting would-be Saudi investors.

"If this was a negotiation between equals, it could be a good thing. It could bring investment, stable prices and predictability to the market," said Duncan Green, Oxfam's head of research. "But the problem is, [in] this scramble for soil I don't see any place for the small farmers."

Alex Evans, at the Centre on International Cooperation, at New York University, said: "The small farmers are losing out already. People without solid title are likely to be turfed off the land."

Details of land deals have been kept secret so it is unknown whether they have built-in safeguards for local populations.

Steve Wiggins, a rural development expert at the Overseas Development Institute, said: "There are very few economies of scale in most agriculture above the level of family farm because managing [the] labour is extremely difficult." Investors might also have to contend with hostility. "If I was a political-risk adviser to [investors] I'd say 'you are taking a very big risk'. Land is an extremely sensitive thing. This could go horribly wrong if you don't learn the lessons of history."

[Woodsman]

Not just food = they want all the timber, oil and minerals too. I know a CEO of a large employees compensation firm in Chicago who bought 1200 acres the next county over and has the entire thing bermed and fenced with 10' high fencing and signage all the way around the thing. Even his secretary called it a "compound". I suspect he purchased this so when all hell breaks loose, he and his security personnel can stave the locals off his corn field and miniature petroleum refinery equipment and sawmill.


LOL - I love this forum. I'd spend more time in here, but too busy elsewhere looking at your cool pics, ff.

[Penta]

This is not exactly tin-foil hattery.

It's exactly the dispute they've been having in Paraguay, where Brazilian farmers, backed by the big international agri-business corporations like Cargill, have been buying up vast tracts of land to grow soya. Small farmers and particularly their labourers are naturally thrown out of their homes and off the land, the latter with no compensation, no skills other than subsistence farming, no money and nowhere to go - and naturally end up in the slums of the cities. And all just as world food prices are rocketing.

[Woodsman]

This is not exactly tin-foil hattery.

It's exactly the dispute they've been having in Paraguay, where Brazilian farmers, backed by the big international agri-business corporations like Cargill, have been buying up vast tracts of land to grow soya. Small farmers and particularly their labourers are naturally thrown out of their homes and off the land, the latter with no compensation, no skills other than subsistence farming, no money and nowhere to go - and naturally end up in the slums of the cities. And all just as world food prices are rocketing.

[Mr.Obvious]The totally silly part is of course Penta, is that while all these lands are changing hands, nothing - nothing in the big picture has changed at all - it's just business as usual.[/Mr.Obvious]

[Penta]

Well it has. Before people were growing their own food and a bit of surplus for market. Now the corporations are using the land for biofuels or food additives for processed food or cattle (which requires so much more land - and, as Holland pointed out in another thread, producing loads of greenhouse gases themselves) to feed rich people who already eat too much. And the poor go hungrier. While those who used to work it are left destitute. As far as they're concerned, it's rather a large change for the worse.

[Sri Lanky]

The gap between the rich and the poor is going to increase.

[Penta]

I'm an optimist. It has been increasing, for ages. Now there's a real chance to start reversing the trend.

[Woodsman]

I'm an optimist. It has been increasing, for ages. Now there's a real chance to start reversing the trend.

There is always a chance to start reversing the trend, but people typically make the wrong decisions out of their own ignorance, despite their good intentions. I see this ALL the time in my business - Forest management. Cutting trees isn't at all Forest management - it's mill or logging profits management. the choices as to what trees are cut and why is. Unfortunately, most people have no idea the difference in these two - and what happens more often than not is a botched outcome. Balance is necessary in land management - Few people understand it.

There has been at least one Billionaire who consistently went against that balance down in the Amazon and lost all of his billions trying to come up with a way to "beat" mother nature. The outcome was thousands upon thousands of monocultured pine plantations and an abandoned (IIRC) paper mill and depressed economy when he could no longer afford to run the operation.

You could take the same land and extract timber from it for hundreds of generations - a sustained extremely efficient economy - if it was done properly - but sadly, most humans are not altruistic enough to bother doing it. Instead of producing something truly "great" they look no further than becoming richer quicker despite the future.

It's going to take people who understand the problems and have enough cash to combat them to work. I'm only half there. If you know anyone who has a bunch of cash and wants to better understand the problems, send them my way. I see these problems all the time - It's painfully present as I drive down the roads in America.

[Sri Lanky]

Well,Penta,Sir Geldof just happens to be in Manitoba on Dec. 3....now THAT is TFHC-worthy.

One thing I agree with is his statement,"it's to our benefit to have the poor brought into the economic loop.".....so who's benefitting right now from keeping people poor?

When do politicians EVER live up to the promises they've told their electorate?...they don't because they are bought and payed for.

[denise]

I'm an optimist.

optimism is presumptuous.

[Sri Lanky]

You know what?....fucking Geldof,Bono,and McCartney should stay in the British Isles and bring our political leaders with them. This way the collective IQ's of both Britain and Canada will be raised.