Land grab or development opportunity? (AfricaFiles)

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AfricaFiles

Title: Agricultural investment and international land deals in Africa
Author: L. Cotula, S. Vermeulen, R. Leonard, J, Keeley,
Category: Africa General
Date: 12/2/2009
Source: FAO
Source Website: ftp.fao.org <http://www.africafiles.org/database/ftp.fao.org>

African Charter Article# 21: All peoples shall freely dispose of their wealth and natural resources for their exclusive interest, eliminating all forms of foreign economic exploitation.

Summary & Comment: Efforts must be stepped up in many countries to secure local land rights that help local people avoid being arbitrarily dispossessed of their land and enable them to obtain better deals from incoming investors. Land contracts must be structured to maximise the investment’s contribution to local and national sustainable development. DN

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Land grab or development opportunity?

– Agricultural investment and international land deals in Africa

ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/011/ak241e/ak241e.pdf

Lorenzo Cotula, Sonja Vermeulen, Rebeca Leonard and James Keeley

This report is a collaboration of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, the International Fund for Agricultural Development,  and the International Institute for Environment and Development. There are links with a parallel World Bank, IIED, and FAO study.

The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of FAO or IFAD.

MALI: Land grab fears linger (IRIN)

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MALI: Land grab fears linger

SEGOU, 2 December 2009 (IRIN) – In Mali the government has approved long-term leases for outside investors to develop more than 160,000 hectares of land. Government officials say the country could not develop its cultivable land otherwise, but local farmers say they fear being pushed out.

Rice producer Siaka Daou from Niono, 300km north of the capital Bamako, told IRIN he is worried about becoming a day labourer for industrial agriculture giants.

“The way the government is parcelling out land from Office of Niger [region] is worrisome. This will stamp out small producers. We will no longer have land to cultivate and will be forced to work for industrial agriculture producers.”

The region, 300km northeast of Bamako, contains some of the most fertile rain-fed land in Mali.

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Foreign acquisitions: some opportunities, but many see threats (AfricaFiles / United Nations Africa Renewal)

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AfricaFiles

Title: Foreign land acquisitions: some opportunities, many threats
Author: Roy Laishley
Category: Africa General
Date: 11/11/2009
Source: United Nations Africa Renewal
Source Website: http://farmlandgrab.org/8861

African Charter Article# 20: All peoples shall have the right to existence and self determination and the right to free themselves from the bonds of domination.

Summary & Comment: The purchase of African land by foreign companies and governments to grow food and other crops for export has set alarm bells ringing.

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Foreign acquisitions: some opportunities, but many see threats

An apparent surge in the purchase of African land by foreign companies and governments to grow food and other crops for export has set alarm bells ringing on and off the continent. The headlines have been strident: „The Second Scramble for Africa Starts,‰ „Quest for Food Security Breeds Neo-Colonists,‰ „Food Security or Economic Slavery?‰ The outcries reflect the continuing impact of the continent‚s history, when as recently as the last century colonial powers and foreign settler populations arbitrarily seized African land and displaced those who lived on it, lending considerable emotion to the current volatile issue.

Jacques Diouf, the Senegalese director-general of the UN‚s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), wonders whether such land deals could lead to a form of „neo-colonialism.‰ But immediate, practical concerns are also prominent. „This is a worrisome trend,‰ Akinwumi Adesina, of the advocacy group Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), told a science forum in the Netherlands in June. Such foreign land acquisitions, he argued, have the potential to hurt domestic efforts to raise food production and could limit broad-based economic growth. Many deals have little oversight, transparency or regulation, have no environmental safeguards and fail to protect smallholder farmers from losing their customary rights to use land, Mr. Adesina said.

Corporate investors lead rush for control over overseas farmland (AfricaFiles)

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AfricaFiles

Title: Corporate investors lead Africa farmland grab
Author: GRAIN, Winnipeg
Category: Africa General
Date: 10/20/2009
Source: GRAIN
Source Website: http://www.grain.org <http://www.grain.org/>

African Charter Article# 20: All peoples shall have the right to existence and self determination and the right to free themselves from the bonds of domination.

Summary & Comment: This is a sharp look at land grabbers and some possible consequences. Companies, are leading the land grab in Africa, and elsewhere. Corporate investors have very different interests that national governments and local communities. Their main interest is profit. Not feeding local people, but shipping the food to the place of highest investment return. That likely means shipping the food psst starving folks to lucrative markets. ES

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Corporate investors lead rush for control over overseas farmland

http://www.grain.org/articles/?id=55#

Kenya : Get rid of land-grabbing (AfricaFiles)

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AfricaFiles

Title: Get rid of public land-grabbing
Author: Muchemi Wachira, Nairobi
Category: Kenya
Date: 10/16/2009
Source: The Daily Nation, Nairobi
Source Website: http://farmlandgrab.org <http://farmlandgrab.org/>

African Charter Article# 3: be equal before the law, and equally protected by it.

Summary & Comment: A parliamentary committee on land and natural resources has pledged to ensure that the draft National Land Policy becomes law. Defined and documented communal land will be protected from grabbers through registration. The draft will determine who occupies land in a given community, and all people displaced from their original land will be resettled. The law will also harmonise inheritance and the transfer of land rights from one living person to another. DN

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Proposed law to rid country of rampant public land-grabbing

http://farmlandgrab.org/8287

Corporate farming or land grab (SCOPE Pakistan)

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Civil society activists and experts rejected Corporate Agriculture in Pakistan at Roundtable on

“Corporate farming or land grab”

Karachi 17 October:

A roundtable held at local hotel in Karachi on “Corporate Farming or Land Grab” on 17 October 2009, organized by Society for Conservation and Protection of Environment (SCOPE). Tanveer Arif, CEO of SCOPE and Ms. Najma Sadeque, a renowned scholar gave presentations. Ms. Sharmila Farooqui, Adviser to Chief Minister of Sindh attended the roundtable and responded concerns of stakeholders about corporate agriculture farming (CAF). In their presentations Tanveer Arif and Ms. Najma Sadeque elaborated that they said that more than one billion people in the world are suffering from hunger, and there is growing poverty, unemployment, and displacement in the rural sector. The world community demands urgency in more investment in agriculture sector. The food crisis is due to unstable markets and low reserves, has led governments to seek measures to meet their food security needs. Governments and corporations looking to outsource food and energy more directly are promoting a new wave of land acquisitions, also known as “land grabs.” Persian Gulf states are working out land deals in Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe.