FAO chief calls for a sheriff to curb "land grabs"

More attention is being paid to "land grabs" by the highest levels of the United Nations. The head of the Food and Agriculture Organization says it is time to put some laws in place to curb the practice.

Large global investors are grabbing up large swaths of farm-able land in Africa and Asia. Often the governments that allow this to happen are corrupt and just do it for the money. The practice decreases the amount of land used in growing food for local consumption even further. Many experts feel that land grabs are one of the leading factors causing food insecurity of poor nations.

From the Guardian. writer Mark Tran recorded the FAO director general's comments.  

José Graziano da Silva, the FAO's director general, conceded it was not possible to stop large investors buying land, but said deals in poor countries needed to be brought under control.

"I don't see that it's possible to stop it. They are private investors," said Graziano da Silva in a telephone interview. "We do not have the tools and instruments to stop big companies buying land. Land acquisitions are a reality. We can't wish them away, but we have to find a proper way of limiting them. It appears to be like the wild west and we need a sheriff and law in place."

Large land deals have accelerated since the surge in food prices in 2007-08, prompting companies and sovereign wealth funds to take steps to guarantee food supplies. But, four to five years on, in Africa only 10-15% of land is actually being developed, claimed Graziano da Silva. Some of these investments have involved the loss of jobs, as labour intensive farming is replaced by mechanised farming or some degree of loss of tenure rights.

Oxfam said the global land rush is out of control and urged the World Bank to freeze its investments in large-scale land acquisitions to send a strong signal to global investors to stop.

Graziano da Silva, who was in charge of Brazil's widely praised "zero hunger" programme, expressed his frustration at the slow pace of creating a global governance structure to deal with land grabs, food security and similar problems. In 2008, the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, created a high-level task force on food security on which Graziano Da Silva serves as vice-chairman.

...

As for the perennial debate on the respective merits of large- and small-scale farming, the FAO boss said Africa had room for both, adding that Brazil had managed it.

"In some areas of Africa – Mozambique and South Africa – there is scope for large farms, but this approach is only valid for some grains, where the entire cycle is mechanical," he said. "But this is not suitable for fruits, vegetables or many other local products. Cassava has nothing to do with mechanised agriculture and efficiency does not mean big scale. It's the way you combine crops, the use of water you have available. In Africa today, efficiency means better seeds rather than big tractors. The two models have been there forever in agriculture. Sometimes big-scale will provide exports, but local markets are based on small-scale agriculture."

OXFAM says land "grabbed" by foreign investors could have fed 1 billion people

In the past decade over 261 million acres of farm-able land were scooped up by foreign investors. According to a new report today from OXFAM, most of that land had either sat idle, or is being used to grow crops for bio-fuels. OXFAM says that instead the land could have grown enough food to feed one billion people.

From the Guardian, writer John Vidal tells us more about what is in the report.

In a report, published on Thursday, Oxfam says the global land rush is out of control and urges the World Bank to freeze its investments in large-scale land acquisitions to send a strong signal to global investors to stop "land grabs".

"More than 60% of investments in agricultural land by foreign investors between 2000 and 2010 were in developing countries with serious hunger problems. But two-thirds of those investors plan to export everything they produce on the land. Nearly 60% of the deals have been to grow crops that can be used for biofuels," says the report.

Very few, if any, of these land investments benefit local people or help to fight hunger, says Oxfam. "Instead, the land is either being left idle, as speculators wait for its value to increase … or it is predominantly used to grow crops for export, often for use as biofuels."

The bank has tripled its support for land projects to $6bn-$8bn (£3.7bn-£5bn) a year in the last decade, but no data is available on how much goes to acquisitions, or any links between its lending and conflict.

Since 2008, says Oxfam, 21 formal complaints have been brought by communities affected by World Bank investments, in which they claim that these have violated their land rights.

Oxfam's chief executive, Barbara Stocking, said: "The rush for land is out of control and some of the world's poorest people are suffering hunger, violence and greater poverty as a result. The World Bank is in a unique position to help stop land grabs becoming one of the biggest scandals of the century."

American pension funds linked to African land grabs

We often hear of China grabbing land from Africa so they can farm it to feed their own people. Recent research suggests that China is only a minor participant in this practice. A study released last month linked the land grabs to American Universities. Today, we learn of the volume of involvement from American and European pension funds.

From the Guardian, writer Mark Tran details the latest study on who is really grabbing the land.

Grain, a research group that supports small farmers, says pension funds - often managed by private companies on behalf of unions, governments, individuals and employers - are investing US$100bn (£62.4bn) in commodities, with some $5bn-$15bn reportedly going into farmland acquisitions.

"We usually read about Gulf states or China investing in farmland, but some of the biggest investors are much closer to home," said Henk Hobbelink, one of Grain's co-founders. "As a percentage of the total funds they manage it is not large, but in terms of their impact on small farmers it has a tremendous impact."

International investment in farmland in developing countries, such as Sudan and Ethiopia, has sparked accusations from Grain and other NGOs of "land grabs" that often fail to deliver the promised benefits of jobs and economic development, while contributing to environmental and social problems in the poorest countries in the world. Grain also says the new surge of money will push up global food prices that will hit the poor and rural communities the hardest.

Figures from the Grain report shows that the three pension funds with the biggest investment in agriculture are from the Netherlands, the US and Sweden. APG, in the Netherlands, (administering the national civil pension fund) has invested euro 1bn (£904m) - 0.5% of total assets under management - Ascencion Health, in the US has invested $1.1bn and AP2 Second Swedish National Pension Fund has invested $500m in grain farmlands in America, Australia and New Zealand. The other big players, according to Grain, are CalPers (California Public Employees' Retirement System), Dow Chemical, New Zealand Superannuation Fund, PGGM, also from the Netherlands, and PKA, from Denmark.

Study links land grabs to American Universities

African land that is equal to the size of France has been purchased by foreign companies over the last three years. The practice has been termed "land grabbing" where the company uses the land for its own profit. The practice is often attributed to Chinese companies, but a study today shows that American Universities may be involved as well.

From the Guardian, writers John Vidal and Claire Provost take a look at the study that followed the money trail from the land grabs to US education.

The new report on land acquisitions in seven African countries suggests that Harvard, Vanderbilt and many other US colleges with large endowment funds have invested heavily in African land in the past few years. Much of the money is said to be channelled through London-based Emergent asset management, which runs one of Africa's largest land acquisition funds, run by former JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs currency dealers.

Researchers at the California-based Oakland Institute think that Emergent's clients in the US may have invested up to $500m in some of the most fertile land in the expectation of making 25% returns.

Emergent said the deals were handled responsibly. "Yes, university endowment funds and pension funds are long-term investors," a spokesman said. "We are investing in African agriculture and setting up businesses and employing people. We are doing it in a responsible way … The amounts are large. They can be hundreds of millions of dollars. This is not landgrabbing. We want to make the land more valuable. Being big makes an impact, economies of scale can be more productive."
...

In Tanzania, the memorandum of understanding between the local government and US-based farm development corporation AgriSol Energy, which is working with Iowa University, stipulates that the two main locations – Katumba and Mishamo – for their project are refugee settlements holding as many as 162,000 people that will have to be closed before the $700m project can start. The refugees have been farming this land for 40 years.

In Ethiopia, a process of "villagisation" by the government is moving tens of thousands of people from traditional lands into new centres while big land deals are being struck with international companies.

The largest land deal in South Sudan, where as much as 9% of the land is said by Norwegian analysts to have been bought in the last few years, was negotiated between a Texas-based firm, Nile Trading and Development and a local co-operative run by absent chiefs. The 49-year lease of 400,000 hectares of central Equatoria for around $25,000 (£15,000) allows the company to exploit all natural resources including oil and timber. The company, headed by former US Ambassador Howard Eugene Douglas, says it intends to apply for UN-backed carbon credits that could provide it with millions of pounds a year in revenues.

Grabbing land from Argentina

Running out of farm land to feed all of its people, China has been buying up land in other parts of the world. The so-called "land grabs" have been criticized as being unfair to the people near the purchased land. The food grown in the purchased land goes overseas instead of into the mouths of local residents. Since most of this land has been purchased in Africa the concern is that the food is being taken away from people who often face starvation.

From the Guardian, we learn of another large land purchase in Argentina. Writer Felicity Lawrence says that local Argentinians are concerned that the Chinese will put too great of a strain on local water resources.

Last year it was confirmed that the company had signed an agreement, with the government of Patagonia's Río Negro province, which provides the framework for it to acquire up to 320,000 hectares (790,000 acres) of privately owned farmland, along with irrigation rights and a concession on the San Antonio port.

Details of the deal, alleged to have been kept quiet, have been emerging in recent weeks as Chinese technicians have started work.

Beidahuang has also reported a 2008 deal on 200,000 ha in the Philippines, and says it plans to buy palm oil plantations and grain terminals this year as it pursues the Chinese government's policy of securing food supply lines from abroad.

Beidahuang, based in the north-eastern province of Heilongjiang, is the leading soya producer in China and one of the country's five largest soya processors. It also raises more than 600,000 cows, 1.3m pigs and more than 6m chickens at any one time.
...

Environmentalists in Río Negro say the Chinese arrival will mean heavy use of agrochemicals, ecological degradation and severe strain on the region's water resources. Some of the land in question is virgin forest that would be deforested.

Dams have already cut the flow of the Negro river, they say, and Chinese plans to invest $20m (£12m) immediately to build irrigation infrastructure would strain resources further. The campaigners say that since soya cultivation is highly mechanised it will prompt unemployment in the area, as it has elsewhere in the country where many rural communities have seen an increase in deep poverty as jobs are lost.

Elvio Mendioroz, president of Uñopatún, an agro-ecoclogical group that opposes the Chinese deal, said the agreement had been kept secret. "China has run out of land to feed its people, and is suffering drought and soil erosion, so they come here.

A roundup on the launch of "Grow"

OXFAM launches a new targeted campaign today that focuses on growing more food and removing the barriers that contribute to starvation. The campaign called "Grow" is being compared to previous high profile  efforts such as "Make Poverty History"  

OXFAM says that the system that controls the food growing process is broken and unfair. They say that examples of the broken system show up in the problems of climate change, land grabs, food price hikes and intensive farming. "Grow" hopes to get people involved to speak up against the vested interests that are behind these problems. 

OXFAM hopes that "Grow" will spur change in three areas; sustainable production, equality and resilience of the food system. A sustainable food system has to be created to meet the growing demand for food and with less farm land and water to meet that demand. They also hope to make the system more equitable as the rich world throws away too much food. Finally, OXFAM hopes to improve the resilience of farming as a single flood can lead an entire nation to starvation.

Here is some commentary from a few bloggers about the launch of Grow. First, the pro side from OXFAM consultant Alex Evans who blogs at Global Dashboard.

For one thing, the campaign marks a major break with traditional single issue campaigning. This isn’t just a campaign about biofuels, or landgrabs, or making agricultural trade fair, or climate change, or competition for land and water, or women’s rights. It’s about all these things, united beneath the overall banner of ‘food justice in a resource constrained world’. I’ve felt for ages that NGOs need to move on from single issue campaigning towards ways of pushing for whole system change – and Oxfam are going for it in a big way.

For the con side, Ranil Dissanayake from Aid Thoughts has the following critique.

This wouldn’t be Aid Thoughts if I didn’t have some gripes, though. There are two big areas where I’m doubtful. The first relates to one of the good things about the report: it recognizes that there are really powerful vested interests aligned against the changes the report calls for. The problem is that I don’t see a clear strategy for dealing with these interests beyond ‘naming and shaming’ and advocacy for better practices. I suspect this will only make private vested interests (normally corporations) change just enough to buy breathing space. Real success in the sphere depends on changing the incentives at work for these vested interests, by changing their risk/reward/cost ratios. This is the hardest thing to do, but ultimately it’s the one with the biggest potential. How do we go about it? I’m not sure, but I’d like to see an attempt at a strategy.

The other major concern I have with the report is the high regard it has for smallholder farming.

It is true that some countries have made amazing advances in smallholder agriculture, and a couple have even developed or gone very far down that road on the back of smallholdings. These are outliers, and Vietnam is one of them, though in part attributable to the fact that there are over 2000 rivers in the country over 10km long – that’s a lot of available water. Grow goes so far as to smash some myths about smallholder farming, that they are unproductive and averse to risk, markets and technology. They are correct to do so. However, one thing they don’t address is that smallholder farms have a far, far tougher job colluding to take advantage of the massive economies of scale available to large farms. Irrigation, mechanization, crop rotation, research and development, fertilizer purchase, agri-processing: all are far easier for a larger agricultural unit.

Finally, a detailed account of the launch and why OXFAM thinks the campagn is important from their press release.

A broken food system and environmental crises are now reversing decades of progress against hunger according to new Oxfam analysis. Spiralling food prices and endless cycles of regional food crises will create millions more hungry people unless we transform the way we grow and share food. Tomorrow, Oxfam launches a new global campaign to ensure everyone has enough to eat always.

Oxfam’s GROW campaign is backed by high profile supporters including former President Lula of Brazil, Archbishop Emeritus Tutu and actress Scarlett Johansson.

A new report, ‘Growing a Better Future’, catalogues the symptoms of today’s broken food system: growing hunger, flat-lining yields, a scramble for fertile land and water and rising food prices. It warns we have entered a new age of crisis where depletion of the earth’s natural resources and increasingly severe climate change impacts will create millions more hungry people.

New research predicts that the price of staple foods such as maize, already at an all time high, will more than double in the next 20 years. Up to half of this increase will be due to climate change. The world’s poorest people who spend up to 80 percent of their income on food will be hardest hit.

Eight million people face chronic food shortages in East Africa today. Increasing numbers of regional and local crises could see demand for food aid double in the next 10 years.

By 2050 demand for food will rise 70 per cent yet our capacity to increase food production is declining. The average growth rate in agricultural yields has almost halved since 1990 and is set to decline to a fraction of one percent in the next decade.

Jeremy Hobbs, Executive Director of Oxfam said, “Our world is capable of feeding all of humanity yet one in seven of us are hungry today. In this new age of crisis, as climate change impacts become increasingly severe and fertile land and fresh water supplies become increasingly scarce, feeding the world will get harder still. Millions more men, women and children will go hungry unless we transform our broken food system.”

Oxfam’s GROW campaign will expose the governments whose failed policies are propping up the broken food system and the clique of 300 – 500 powerful companies who benefit from and lobby hard to maintain it. For example:

India: Despite doubling the size of it economy between 1990 and 2005 the number of hungry people in India increased by 65 million - more than the population of France - because economic development excluded the rural poor and social protection schemes failed to reach them. Today one in four of the world’s hungry people live in India.

United States: US policy ensures 15 percent of the world’s maize is diverted to engines, even at times of severe food crisis. The grain required to fill the petrol tank of an SUV with biofuels is sufficient to feed one person for a year.

Traders: Four global companies control the movement of most of the world’s food. Three companies - Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge and Cargill – control an estimated 90 per cent of the world’s grain trade. Their activities help drive volatile food prices and they profit from them. In the first quarter of 2008, at the height of a global food price crisis, Cargill’s profits were up 86 percent and the company is now heading for its most profitable year yet on the back of further disruptions to global food supplies.

Oxfam has been responding to food crises for 70 years. Now it is calling on governments - especially the powerful G20 - to lead the transformation to a fairer more sustainable food system by investing in agriculture, valuing the world’s natural resources, managing the food system better and delivering equality for women who produce much of the world's food. It is calling on the private sector to shift to a business model where profit does not come at the expense of poor producers, consumers and the environment.

Jeremy Hobbs, Executive Director of Oxfam said: “For too long governments have put the interests of big business and powerful elites above the interests of the seven billion of us who produce and consume food. G20 Governments meeting in France this year must now kick start the transformation of our global food system.

"The G20 must invest in the 500 million small scale farms in developing countries which offer the greatest potential for increasing global yields – and they must help them adapt to a changing climate. They must regulate commodity markets and reform flawed biofuels policies to keep food prices in check.

“Governments must also ensure that women, who produce much of the world’s food, have the same rights to land, resources and opportunities as men – with equal rights women producers could feed themselves, their families, and up to 150 million additional people,” said Hobbs.

Former President Lula of Brazil said: "We can't wait anymore. Political leaders and global companies must act now to ensure that all people can put food on their table. There are no excuses. We have the capacity to feed everyone on the planet now and in the future. If the political will is there no one will be denied their fundamental human right to be free from hunger."

Archbishop Desmond Tutu said: "Many governments and companies will be resistant to change through habit, ideology or the pursuit of profit. It is up to us – you and me – to persuade them by choosing food that’s produced fairly and sustainably, by cutting our carbon footprints and by joining with Oxfam and others to demand change.”

Oxfam global ambassador Scarlett Johansson said, “Sharing food is one of life’s pleasures. On a global scale, we don’t share fairly. Close to a billion people go to bed hungry every night. The fact is: the global food system is a broken one. All of us, from Kentucky to Kenya, deserve enough to eat. That’s why I’m joining Oxfam’s GROW Campaign.”

More evidence against the practice of "land grabs"

One of the big stories in development lately has been the land for development deals that are going on mostly in Africa. A rich nation will buy land from a poor nation and promise to give back jobs, tax money or help on other development projects.

Evidence is mounting that these deals do little to help the poor nations. The cases where the poor government or it's people actually receive the benefits are very rare.

From the Economist, we find out more about the latest study on the land for development deals. The full study results can be found at the Future Agricultures website.

Still, some conclusions seem warranted. When land deals were first proposed, they were said to offer the host countries four main benefits: more jobs, new technology, better infrastructure and extra tax revenues. None of these promises has been fulfilled.

Locals usually regard jobs as the most important of these. But so far they have been scarce, and only partly because many projects are not yet up and running. In Mozambique, the World Bank found, one project had promised 2,650 jobs and created a mere 35-40 full-time positions. A survey by Thea Hilhorst of 99 smaller projects in Benin, Burkina Faso and Niger reported “hardly any” rural job creation. Only one of the publicly available contracts studied by Mr Cotula even specifies a number of new jobs to be created. And when there are jobs, foreign investors often bring in outsiders to staff them, leading to “conflict or accusations of cheating”, according to the World Bank. The manager of one project was killed during an argument about jobs.

Evidence of the transfer of technology and skills is mixed. Ms Hilhorst found almost no impetus towards greater professionalism in farming, although she concedes that closer links with food processors and distributors might improve matters. The World Bank’s study argued that technological improvements in Ukraine and Mexico had helped reduce rural out-migration (though this was surprising: you might have expected new labour-saving technologies to encourage underemployed farmers to leave the land). Mr Cotula’s study of land-deal contracts found few examples in which the foreign investor was obliged to exchange materials or ideas with local farmers. At the moment, land-grabbing foreigners seem to be creating islands for themselves, cut off from the poverty-stricken countryside.

Grabbing sans giving

Some projects’ operators have done better in building new schools, clinics and other “social infrastructure”. Madagascar may be a surprising example as it witnessed what is perhaps the most notorious land grab of all: a South Korean company was offered half the country’s arable land—a proposal that fuelled protests which eventually toppled the government who approved the deal. Two years later Perrine Burnod of CIRAD, a French research organisation, found that the number of land deals on the island had fallen by two-thirds. And those that remained had begun to look more like aid projects, with investors committing themselves to building schools and clinics. Local mayors were welcoming them in to help finance projects no longer supported by the cash-strapped central government.

Yet this is atypical. Most land deals contribute little or nothing to the public purse. Because markets for land are so ill-developed in Africa and governments so weak, rents are piffling: $2 per hectare per year in Ethiopia; $5 in Liberia. Tax and rent holidays are common. Indeed, it is not unusual for foreign investors to pay less tax than local smallholders. And upfront compensation to local farmers for use of their land is derisory: often just a few months of income for agreeing to a 100-year lease.

“The risks associated with such investments are immense,” concludes the World Bank. “In many cases public institutions were unable to cope with the surge in demand…Land acquisitions often deprived local people, in particular the vulnerable, of their rights…Consultations, if conducted at all, were superficial…and environmental and social safeguards were widely neglected.”

Food can overthrow a government

Just a couple of years ago, Madagascar went through an overthrow of government that was caused by a lack of food. Half of the country is chronically malnourished despite having enough farm-able land to feed all of the people. The ruling government however was leasing half of that land to the company Daewoo. The people grew tired of seeing food grown for South Koreans instead for themselves and revolted.

From this Christian Science Monitor article that we found at MinnPost, writer Scott Baldauf gives us this background on Madagascar and on other so-called "land-grabs" throughout Africa.

Madagascar looks quite unlike the lush tropical paradise portrayed in the Disney movie of the same name. In the dry season, viewed from a plane at 36,000 feet, the island off the southeast coast of the African mainland looks like a giant plate of potatoes au gratin. Every square inch of the island – an area roughly the size of Texas – is chopped up into small, overlapping, often parched, dust-colored terraced plots.

Farmed for centuries by traditional slash-and-burn techniques, Madagascar's soil is depleted, and the pressure of a growing population – now 19 million – means that farmers must struggle to feed more people with less fertile land.

How large well-funded corporate commercial farms can make a go of land that small subsistence farmers have given up on is a story of 20th-century farming technology and 21st-century venture capital funds. Like the green revolution, which favored those with access to modern tractors and irrigation, chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and specialized seeds, today's corporate farming groups like Daewoo have the technology and financial backing to make unused land bloom.

Without much of that kind of investment, Madagascar is a net food importer, with 40 to 50 percent of the population, by UNICEF estimates, suffering chronic malnutrition, even during good harvests.

"In some areas, people go without their main food staple, rice, for four to six months," says Patrice Charpentier, project manager for food security at Land O'Lakes, an aid group. "Production is erratic. People don't want to overproduce if they're not sure they can sell it on the market. So they produce just enough to survive."

In an average year, people are able to make do with the rice they have saved up and fruit they find in the wild. But the boom-and-bust period of 2007-08 was no average year. Driven by the pell-mell growth of China and India, which demanded increasing fuel and raw materials, crude oil prices surged upward.

The price spike was a temptation for large agricultural companies to divert corn intended for food staples like cornmeal into more profitable biofuels like ethanol instead. It was classic supply-and-demand economics, and it sparked a land rush to buy up farmland across Africa.

But for the ordinary African consumer, it was a disaster. Corn prices jumped 119 percent from June 2007 to June 2008.

The economic collapse in the United States and much of Europe helped to cool things off, but the sleepy world of African subsistence farming had changed forever: The 21st-century African land rush had begun.

The World Bank estimates that worldwide, 115 million acres of land are leased to foreign investors, and the bulk of that is in Africa. A small sampling of countries targeted by foreign agricultural investors documented in the past five years by the International Food Policy Research Institute includes:

Democratic Republic of Congo: 7 million acres secured by the Chinese firm ZTE to grow oil palm for bio­fuels; and 24.7 million acres offered to the South African farmers' union, AgriSA.

Mozambique: Nearly 250,000 acres secured by the Swedish firm Skebab to produce biofuels.

Tanzania: Nearly 1.25 million acres requested by the Saudi Arabian government for food production; more than 110,000 acres purchased by the British firm CAMS Group for biofuels made from sweet sorghum.

Sudan: 1.7 million acres secured by the South Korean government to grow wheat; nearly 1 million acres secured by US-based Jarch Capital; nearly 75,000 acres secured by the Abu Dhabi Fund for Development to grow corn and alfalfa.

Ethiopia: More than 32,000 acres secured by the German firm Flora EcoPower to produce biofuels.

Not all deals are made alike, to be sure. Deals on leased farmland to produce food do manage to create jobs and can also help to transfer state-of-the-art farming skills, such as erosion control, to the local farm-labor force. Deals to grow crops for biofuels sometimes also involve simple refining, which also creates jobs. But many land deals are decidedly one-sided, with all food produced sent away for export

"Setting aside the 'you're selling our land' histrionics," says a Western diplomat who has closely studied Madagascar's agriculture sector, "I think that countries of Africa would benefit from foreign investment by creating low-end jobs, some of it on larger commercial plantations and even some on the small-holder farms."

1 million Chinese living and working in Africa

There are around one million Chinese living and working in Africa. The number of Chinese nationals living in the continent has grown exponentially since 1990 when it was only 100,000.

The Chinese leave for Africa mostly at the request of employers. Some state owned businesses are involved in the infrastructure for land exchanges between China and African governments. Other people leave for Africa because they see economic opportunity for themselves, and a few leave just for the slower pace of life.

From the Guardian, writer Xan Rice has an outstanding article that profiles some of the Chinese making a living in Africa.

In December 1999, a 24-year-old Chinese man called Zhang Hao left behind the freezing winter of his native Shenyang city to fly to Uganda. Zhang was nervous. He spoke no English. The journey was not even his idea, but that of his father, who had worked in Uganda a few years before on a fishing project involving the Chinese government.

"If you want to start something – and be the boss – Africa is the place to do it," Zhang's father had told him when he asked for business advice.

Zhang had quit university to travel to east Africa, but he did not need a degree to spot easy money-making opportunities as soon as he set foot in Kampala: goods that were available cheaply in every city in China were either expensive here, or unavailable. He started by importing shoes. Then schoolbags. Then fishing nets, nails and bicycles.

"I imported everything. At that time they needed everything!" recalls Zhang, an affable man with rimless glasses.

His business grew quickly; he made money and local friends. But after a few years he grew weary of the long buying trips to China. So he and his wife bought a large plot of land in Kampala. On it they constructed a spectacular Chinese-Korean restaurant, with private dining areas, karaoke rooms and a giant 500-seat dining hall. To the side of the restaurant they built a bedroom, which became their home. The business prospered, and soon he started additional enterprises including a bakery, a firm selling flat-screen televisions and a security company.

"Chinese don't think, they just try without studying the market too much. Otherwise, the chance is gone," he says.

At the site of each new enterprise, Zhang built a room for his family – he had a son in 2007 – to sleep in. They literally live at work.

It has paid off. Zhang says he is now the biggest Chinese employer in the country, with 1,200 local staff. He has even been offered a Ugandan passport, but has refused, just as he has declined to take an English first name.

"I am Chinese, and we need to build a Chinese name here – to let people know that our country is not like before. We are richer, catching up the world."

Leaked "land grab" report officially released

A couple of weeks ago we mentioned the leaked World Bank report on the land grabs of Africa. The report has now been officially released by the World Bank, as they decided to move up the release date due to the leak.

The so-called "land grabs" are when emerging countries such as China are buying up farmland from African nations to provide a lower cost food for their own people. This practice has drawn much criticism as it leaves Africa with even less land to feed themselves and less land for Africans to own.

From the IPS, writer Hilaire Avril provides some quotes from the report.

The World Bank report, titled "Rising Global Interest in Farmland. Can It Yield Sustainable and Equitable Benefits?" and released on Sep 8, cautions that "an astonishing lack of awareness of what is happening on the ground" exists -- even by the public sector institutions mandated to control this phenomenon.

It estimates that 2009 saw 45 million hectares of farmland deals going through and predicts that, "given commodity price volatility, growing human and environmental pressures, and worries about food security, this interest will increase, especially in the developing world".

At the beginning of Sep 2010, riots over steep increases in the price of bread left seven people dead and hundreds injured in Maputo, the capital of the southern African country Mozambique, sparking fears of another food crisis like the one that affected several African countries two years ago.

That same week, the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation announced that, "surging wheat prices drove international food prices up five percent (in Aug 2010) in the biggest month-on-month increase since November 2009."

Several huge farmland investment deals have been decried for bringing uncertain benefits to recipient countries, and sometime for leading to smallholders’ eviction from their land and adversely affecting local livelihoods.

The World Bank report reckons that "one of the highest development priorities in the world must be to improve smallholder agricultural productivity, especially in Africa".

But the report deems that "when done right, larger scale farming systems can also have a place as one of many tools to promote sustainable agricultural and rural development". It then proceeds to detail many conditions for these deals to benefit developing countries.

Leaked report shows the negatives of African "land grabs"

A leaked World Bank report calls into question the "land grabs" that have been taking place in Africa. Countries or companies that needed land to grow food have been leasing land from African governments at a low price. The leased land grows more food for the hungry in China, India or middle eastern countries. However, the new study says that it might keep the poor even poorer.

From the Guardian, writer Katie Allen tells us about the leaked report on the African land rush.

The growing interest has prompted the World Bank to launch its own research into how developing nations could benefit from the foreign money. The full report is due any day now but the release has already been delayed several times. A leaked draft suggested that so far, wealthy investors have largely threatened local resources and exploitatively targeted countries with lax laws and low charges.

It is hardly the ideal outcome supporters of land deals have in mind: that the investor makes financial or food-security gains, while the recipient gets local jobs, higher yields and some share in the profits and crops.

NGOs were hardly surprised by the headlines from the World Bank leak. Opinion varies between them over whether investment, when responsible, can bring benefits. Oxfam, for example, has said it can. Others believe land sovereignty is paramount. African land should remain in African hands. But there is broad agreement that deals are often done under-the-counter and fail to involve local people.

Survival International highlights the example of the tribes of the Lower Omo Valley in Ethiopia. The charity says that after losing their hunting land as national parks were created in the 1960s and 1970s, local people then saw part of their territory turned into a state-run farm. Now the government is brokering deals to lease out tracts of tribal land to foreigners, so that they grow cash crops including biofuels. Survival says local tribes have had no say in the matter. It is a tale echoed by other NGOs, which report incidences elsewhere of consultations being held but letters inviting locals arriving after the fact.

This is not just about isolated tribes. The sheer numbers of Africans dependent on agriculture should raise alarm bells over what is at stake if opaque, bargain-basement land deals are to continue. In West and East Africa, agriculture contributed about a third to GDP between 2003 and 2007, compared with just 1.6% in developed economies, according to the UN Conference on Trade and Development. Agriculture accounted for more than half of total employment between 2002 and 2006.

Those farmers stand to gain from new technology but they also risk being disenfranchised and left hungry. In reality, the dream of a win-win relationship is often a skewed flow of profits to the investors. Go back to the proposition: a 99-year lease on arable land at $1 a hectare. To put that in context, farmland in Britain is selling at about £15,000 per hectare, according to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.

If you do not believe the low African land price quoted, how about the first-hand account of the farmer and philanthropist Howard Buffett, son of billionaire Warren. He recounts the recent offer of an equity stake in a land deal being brokered by a hedge fund. The host government would provide 70% of the financing and a 98-year lease, requiring no payments for four years. After that, the cost would be $2.91 per acre per year. Another fund pledged yields of 15-20%, dwarfing the average return on US agricultural land of 6%. As Buffett says: "If I didn't know better, this would sound like a great opportunity!"

But then he spells it out. "Here's what I'm sure of: these deals will make the rich richer and the poor poorer, creating clear winners who benefit, while the losers are denied their livelihoods," he writes in the foreword to the report (Mis)Investment in Agriculture: The Role of the International Finance Corporation in the Global Land Grab, by the Oakland Institute, a US thinktank.

Land grabs in Ethiopia

A chunk of land the size of Nebraska has been sold off in Ethiopia in recent years. The government there is leasing farm land to wealthier nations, who hope to use the land to help feed their own people.

Critics of the fast selling say that the land should be used to feed hungry Ethiopians, meanwhile those who apologize for the land grabs hope it will help feed a booming population world wide.

From the Washington Post comes this video that summaries the entire story.



Also from the Washington Post writer Stephanie McCrummen recieves arguments from both sides of the debate.

The scale and pace of the land scramble have alarmed policymakers and others concerned about the implications for food security in countries such as Ethiopia, where officials recently appealed for food aid for about 6 million people as drought devastates parts of East Africa. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is in the midst of a food security summit in Rome, where some of the 62 heads of state attending are to discuss a code of conduct to govern land deals, which are being struck with little public input.

"These contracts are pretty thin; no safeguards are being introduced," said David Hallam, a deputy director at the FAO. "You see statements from ministers where they're basically promising everything with no controls, no conditions."

The harshest critics of the practice conjure images of poor Africans starving as food is hauled off to rich countries. Some express concern that decades of industrial farming will leave good land spoiled even as local populations surge. And skeptics also say the political contexts cannot be ignored.

"We don't trust this government," said Merera Gudina, a leading opposition figure here who accuses Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi of using the land policy to hold on to power. "We are afraid this government is buying diplomatic support by giving away land."

But many experts are cautiously hopeful, saying that big agribusiness could feed millions by industrializing agriculture in countries such as Ethiopia, where about 80 percent of its 75 million people are farmers who plow their fields with oxen.

"If these deals are negotiated well, I tell you, it will change the dynamics of the food economy in this country," said Mafa Chipeta, the FAO's representative in Ethiopia, dismissing the worst-case scenarios. "I can't believe Ethiopia or any other government would allow their country to be used like an empty womb. The human spirit would not allow it."