Folks,

It is our Human Rights that we are human beings and that we deserve to
live with dignity, respect and honor.  We have a right over how we must be governed and must demand that our leaders perform and deliver.  In achieving true prosperity, we must, in a popular participation, get involved in building our Nation through PARTNERSHIP with the GOVERNMENT. This is why, we demand ACCOUNTABILITY and TRANSPARENCY in matters of PUBLIC FINANCES AND UTILITY.  These include all money received from the International Community as well as money spend.  Public money must be spend thriftly, cautiously and with much care.  Money received for public development program, must go to do the project at which it was intended with going corner corner. This is a show of maturity and responsibility.

We must demand to support our full interest in the CONSTITUTION (People Supremacy Adjective-qualifier) that without real land policy
enactment which includes protection of public utility and consent from public in any land deals is null and void and is treated as Human Rights Abuse and Crime Against Humanity.  Land must not be sold to foreigners without public consent, and after all avenues to secure the same is agreed upon.  Our Academicians, scholars, professionals, Civil Society, Faith Based, and other Citizenship stakeholders must be consulted before land can be leased.  There should be no land buying by foreigners and leasehold must be renewable every 20 years not 90 years (by 90 years, I will dead before I am able to pressure for review of the
same).

Politicians have formed a habit to sell land to foreigners irregularly, and
without following public land protocol, which is posing real danger to ordinary local Citizen and to invasion. This can easily cause people to be driven from their Community owned land to camps. Therefore, land
Grabbing is a serious threat to all Kenyans and our folks in the whole of Africa.

Citizens as their own custodians and they must stand-up and unite in a hurry to protect their destiny from Politician greed.

Things are getting worse by the day and if these Politicians are not given proper directives what to do and what not to do, to have control gadget limitation, we will find ourselves as squatters with not land for food or for trading. We have seen how our Politicians can become thick skin, uncaring and uncooperative with its Citizens, we have to device a formula how we must be noticed and co-exist in partnership for development purposes for our survival.

We must also keep our eyes wide open like a hawk (achuth) and be aggressive in demanding to work together with the Government in partnership for development.  We must stop being rubber-stamp for election (which comes only once a year) when election demands our votes, but we must be co-partners in economic development as well.

There is no easy way out sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers.  Our Leaders must begin to see things differently, they must learn to share and give away easy loans to the poor people and peasant farmers together with local small traders so people can engage in Agricultural farming to be able to produce enough food for themselves and their families and be able to do trading in large scales to be able to compete with the rest of the world. We want our Faith Based, Civil Society, Cooperative Organizations, The Business Community, Scholars, Professionals and Experts to be consulted for improvement of our Nation and equally be partners of Developing Kenya as well as joining hands for Africa.

We must DEMAND and agree in a consensus to be recognized in a MEMORUNDUM OF UNDERSTANDING that must be drawn and handed over through Kenya Parliament for deliberation.  At the referendum we
must confirm our interests are Sealed.  We will then be ready to support candidates who will agree to work alongside Public Demands and Wishes.

If we must stop the culture of corruption, tribalism and impunity, this
is how people!

I love you all, Merry Christmas with Blessings Upon You all in the coming  New Year!

Cheers!

Judy Miriga
Diaspora Spokesperson
Executive Director
Confederation Council Foundation for Africa Inc.,  USA
http://socioeconomicforum50.blogspot.com

http://www.oaklandinstitute.org/pdfs/LandGrab_final_web.pdf

Land ‘grabs’ by foreigners on the
rise

Large scale farmland in Rift Valley province of Kenya. In Kenya a draft national policy is proposing how much land should be owned by foreigners. Picture: Anthony Kamau

By FRANCIS AYIEKO  (email the author)

Posted Monday, June 8 2009 at 00:00

Thousands of poor people in East Africa could be among millions on the continent at risk of suffering evictions or losing access to their land to foreigners who are on an acquisition spree.

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• Kenya seeks to abolish absolute land ownership by aliens

According to a new report by the Food and Agriculture Organisation, land acquisitions by foreigners are on the increase in Africa, yet many countries on the continent do not have sufficient mechanisms to protect local land rights and take account of local interests.

This, the report says, is going to increase landlessness among the poor who would not think twice about selling their parcels of land to  foreigners.

“Land acquisitions are on the increase in Africa and other continents, raising the risk, if not made properly, that poor people will be evicted or lose access to land, water and other resources,” says the report.

The report reveals a lack of transparency and checks and balances in contract negotiations, a fact that more often than not promotes deals that do not guarantee public interest.

It says that insecure local land rights, inaccessible registration procedures, vaguely defined productive use requirements, legislative gaps and other factors too often undermine the position of local people.

This means that East African countries like Kenya and Uganda where land laws are still weak and unco-ordinated, are likely to witness massive landlessness as their mainly poverty-stricken citizens sell their parcels of land at throwaway prices to moneyed foreign investors.

Kenya, for instance, has never had a single and clearly defined national land policy that could address such loopholes. A draft national land policy, which among other things, would address sensitive issues like how much land can be owned by foreigners and under what terms, is yet to be approved by the Cabinet.

Titled, Land Grab or Development Opportunity? Agricultural Investments and International Land Deals in Africa, the new study covered Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, Sudan, Tanzania and Zambia, among other countries.

It warns that such deals can bring many opportunities — guaranteed outlets, employment, investment in infrastructures, increases in agricultural productivity — but can also cause great harm if local people are excluded from decisions about land allocation and if their land rights are not protected.

The study highlights a number of misconceptions about what have been termed land grabs. It found that land-based investments have been on the rise in the past five years. But while foreign investment dominates, domestic investors are also playing a big role in land acquisitions.

Private sector deals are more common than government-to-government ones, though governments are using a range of tools to indirectly support private deals, it reveals.

Concerns about food and energy security are key drivers, but other factors such as business opportunities, demand for agricultural commodities for industry and recipient country agency are also at play.

Although large-scale land claims remain a small proportion of suitable land in any one country, contrary to widespread perceptions there is very little “empty” land as most remaining suitable land is already under use or claim, often by local people.

The report found that many countries do not have sufficient mechanisms to protect local rights or take into account local interests, livelihoods and welfare.

AFRICA: Could Regulation Ease Fears Over Land Grabs?
By Busani Bafana

Kenya’s River Tana delta: 40,000 hectares of valuable land here has been leased to Qatari investors, potentially affecting tens of thousands of local farmers and herders. Credit: R.A. Ward/US DoD

STOCKHOLM, Oct 23 (IPS) – The ‘land rush’ across
Africa by international investors should be regulated to protect
smallholder farmers from deals that could leave them landless and
hungry.

Farmer organisations, civil society
representatives and researchers at a debate at the European
Development Days expressed concern about the impact of selling or leasing large tracts of land to foreign governments and companies.
They fear it will harm Africa’s ability to feed itself by improving the productivity of its small holder farmers.

The Eastern Africa Farmers Federation (EAFF) says these land deals exclude farmers and threaten their livelihoods.

“We have seen land acquisition taking place in Africa and the trend has been accelerated by the food and energy crisis,” said EAFF president
Philip Kiriro.

“The victims of land acquisitions depend on agriculture and we are worried about the acquisition arrangements.
Who are the players? Government to government, private companies and government: it is not the people and government, and it’s not the
indigenous private sector. Our priority is to ensure we have well-negotiated policies to govern land.”

Citing 2008 figures from Food and Agriculture Organisation, Kiriro said Africa is estimated to have in excess of 800 million hectares of cultivatable land yet only 197 million hectares are being farmed.

“Land acquisition is targeting the proportion of this land (that is) in government hands and those coming to access this land have a feeling
that there is land we are not able to cultivate ourselves, but the situation is different. If we had the basic facilities and better capacity we would cultivate that land,” Kiriro said.

He said it was critical that there are checks and balances on land acquisition to prevent smallholder farmers from losing their livelihoods. He said in Kenya, for example, farmers had been pushed off their land in the Tana Delta in Kenya where 40,000 hectares have been leased to a Qatari investor.

A 2009 study titled “Land grab or development opportunity?” says there has been a build up of interest in agriculture lands fuelled by a commodities price boom.
International investors have been leasing large tracts of land over the past 18 months, with a view to growing crops to export food to or produce biofuels.

The study, jointly produced by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the International Fund for Agricultural Development and the International Institute for Environment and Development, analysed land allocations of 1000 hectares or more between 2004 and 2009 from four countries, Ethiopia, Ghana, Madagascar and Mali).

According to the study, about two million hectares of land across the four countries have been signed over to foreign interests, including a 10,000-hectare project in Mali and a massive 450,000-hectare plantation for biofuel in Madagascar. IIED director Camilla Toulmin said it is often high value land that is allocated to investors.

“We have a number of concerns,” said Henk Hobbelink, coordinator of GRAIN. “There are clear trends where companies and corporations that have never been involved in agriculture are now massively starting to rating to lease or buy land elsewhere.”

GRAIN recently compiled a list of 120 corporations from the finance sector that Hobbelink said were speculating that land, water and resources are new commodities on which money can be made.

“Yes, we need investment in agriculture, but we need investment in a way that the majority of farmers in the world are being held (onto) and not thrown off the land. If we are talking about monoculture and big plantations, at least for Africa, we are heading in the wrong direction,”
Hobbelink noted.

“Do we really want to put the fate of food production and the fate of agriculture in the world in the hands of these private companies, many of them being banks?”

Akin Adesina, vice president of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in
Africa (AGRA), a partnership to boost productivity of small-scale
farming supported by the Rockefeller and Gates Foundations, said the
sale or lease of African land should be done in a transparent manner.

“The challenges of this so called land rush include the risk of moving towards large mechanised farms like in Latin America, the Green Revolution we are talking about in Africa is one that focuses on farmers and allows them to rapidly raise agriculture productivity and for them to do so in ways that are environmentally sound. Moving toward large scale mechanisation of in agriculture in my view will be a mistake.”

Participants at the roundtable debate discussed the potential of to create a win-win situation with land acquisitions by suggesting involving farmers at the start of negotiations for such deals. There was also a call for the development and implementation of a global code of conduct to
regulate the land deals.

“There is scope for a code of conduct,” said Ishmael Sunga, CEO of the Southern African Confederation of Agricultural of Agricultural Unions. “However, it does not make sense to have a code of conduct for ‘land grabbing’. Rather, it should be for foreign investors, both from other countries in Africa as well as from outside the continent.

“Why should we regulate investment coming from outside Africa only when some of the deals being made by African investors could equally be bad?”

DEVELOPMENT-KENYA:
Fears Over New Land Deal Joyce
Mulama

Credit: R.A. Ward/US DoD Activists say as many as 150,000 people in the Tana River delta could be displaced by a land-lease deal.

NAIROBI, Jul 4 (IPS) – Concern is mounting in Kenya
that the government has leased a big slice of agricultural land to
Qatari foreign investors to produce food for export.

Land
rights activists are questioning the rationale of such a move,
claiming the land could be used for domestic food production. The
activists say that they are privy to information that the government
has leased 40,000 hectares of land to the Qatari administration for
cultivation of fruits and vegetables for export.

The area in question is fertile land, with abundant fresh water in the Tana River delta, about 150 kilometres north of Mombasa.

In exchange, the activists allege the Qatar government will construct a 2.5 billion dollar port in Lamu, which will become the country’s second
largest after Mombasa.

Investment… but at what price?

Some may interpret the move as one to attract vital foreign investment in line with part of Kenya’s development strategy, known as Vision 2030. The port deal would be a valuable stimulus to development in a part of the country that has lagged behind.

But activists are arguing that the land has potential to boost the country’s declining food reserves.

“We have no problem if the food was being produced for Kenya. Isn’t it the height of recklessness in leadership for the government to give out
land to Qatar when Kenya is food insecure and we are literally being fed? Where is the logic?” asked Odenda Lumumba, coordinator of the Kenya Land Alliance (KLA), an umbrella body of civil society groups advocating for land rights policies.

A third of Kenya’s population of 34 million is facing starvation. Earlier this year, President Mwai Kibaki declared the situation a national disaster, appealing for food relief from well wishers including international donors.

Proponents of the proposed land leasing move, some in government, have defended it, saying it will create jobs and spur development, but there are fears that the local population might be displaced from the area they have lived on for years. Up to 150,000 families in farming and pastoralist communities there depend on the land which is held in trust for the people of Tana River delta by the government, according to the KLA.

Resistance

“The land has always been used by the pastoralists for grazing. They have been resisting the move because they fear they might be denied a place to graze their animals and to farm,” Lumumba added.

The local community, led by the Tana River County Council, has threatened to take the matter to court, claiming the people were not consulted.

“This is land held in trust of the people of that region by the government. In giving out the land, have you consulted them? By leasing out the land
which they use to feed their animals, you are making them vulnerable
to drought,” says Nixon Otieno, the head of policy and governance for ActionAid.

Similar concerns have been expressed by analysts who state that the local population may not have power to bargain to their advantage.

“Smallholders who are being displaced from their land cannot effectively negotiate terms favourable to them when dealing with such powerful national and international actors, nor can they enforce agreements if the foreign investor fails to provide promised jobs or local facilities,”
write Joachim von Braun and Ruth Meinzen-Dick in a study released in
April, “‘Land grabbing’ by Foreign Investors in Developing Countries”. The two researchers from the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute assert that unequal power relations in land acquisition deals places the livelihoods of the poor at risk.

Meinzen-Dick told IPS that concerns over people being displaced were justified, especially “in Africa, where much of the land is held under customary tenure. That means that, officially, the government is the “owner” of the land, and they may not always consult with or get the consent of people who will be affected.”

Not a done deal

Allegations of the Kenyan authorities leasing land to Qatari emerged following President Mwai Kibaki’s visit to Doha in November 2008, where he attended a development conference.

But Isaiah Kabira, head of the Presidential Press Service has dismissed
the allegations of a land-leasing deal. “This was just a proposal, nothing has been signed yet,” he told IPS, adding, “This plan is in the initial stage, and it is the first time the matter was being discussed by the two leaders.”

According to Kabira, the matter is still under discussion, and details have not been finalised.

In an interview with IPS, Dorothy Angote, permanent secretary in the Ministry of Lands revealed that communication about leasing the land had not been passed on to her.
“To date I have not received any official request or communication to process any lease of land to the Qatari government.
I have not seen any document of any nature on any request for any land for the Qatari government. I will be happy to share such information,” she stated.

Previous problems

It is not only the proposed deal to lease land in the Tana River Delta
that has raised eyebrows. In 2004, Dominion Farms Limited, a subsidiary of Dominion Group of Companies, based in the US, was leased about 2,300 hectares of land which is part of the Yala Swamp, which covers an area approximately 21,800 hectares.

Despite a Memorandum of Understanding signed between the firm, the local council and the ministry of lands stipulating that the company would confine itself to the 2,300 hectares, the firm has since expanded its activities and is reportedly using 65 percent of the swamp’s total
area to conduct agricultural activities.

The deal, which granted the company a 25-year lease has seen community land submerged by water due to the hydro electric generation plant constructed by the company on the River Yala, according to community representatives. This has resulted into people’s homes and farms being flooded, and the loss livestock. The representatives allege that over 500 families are facing forced eviction by the company which seeks to expand its activities.

But the government has dismissed such allegations saying it is not aware of any complaints from communities in the Yala River area. Besides,
Angote claims that the issue is a private matter where the firm entered into deals with private land owners and therefore the question of the government being involved does not arise.

Guidelines needed

Such scenarios, analysts contend, call for an investment code that would clearly state the procedures that a foreign investor should follow and penalties to be taken in case investments affect local populations. The current investment code that came into force in 2005 has been criticised for failing to adhere to these specifications.

“Most investors have found that as a loophole and as they come in, they
just engage very powerful politicians in the negotiations and very
soon you find activities on the ground without considering the impact
on the locals,” noted Otieno.

These concerns come at a time when a National Land Policy, the first in the country, is in the pipeline. The document was approved by the cabinet June 25, after which it is expected to be discussed and finally adopted by Parliament. The instrument, among other things, gives guidance on how foreigners can access land, and ensures that land use by foreign investors complies with environmental standards. In addition, it ensures that land use benefits first and foremost local citizens.

Transparency issues will also be addressed. “The policy will remove powers of land allocation from the Executive and its cronies, making the process more transparent because another agency – the National Land Commission – will now perform that duty,” Lumumba stated.

With these deals, Kenya joins the growing  number of developing countries that are granting their land to rich nations seeking to boost their food security following the enduring effects of the 2007-2008 food price crises.

Similar deals have been reached elsewhere in Madagascar, Ethiopia, Sudan, Ghana and Mali, where land ranging from 800,000 to 160,000 hectares in these countries has been allocated to foreign companies, according to a 2009 study jointly by the International Fund for Agricultural Development, Food and Agriculture Organisation, and the International Institute for Environment and Development.

http://www.stwr.org/food-security-agriculture/land-grabbing-the-end-of-sustainable-agriculture.html

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Land Grabbing: the End of Sustainable Agriculture?

The contentious issue of ‘land grabbing’ has become the subject of numerous media reports since the global food crisis worsened in 2008 – but what are the likely consequences of the increasing trend to secure farmland abroad? 6th May 09 ~ STWR Questions of food security and land tenure are preoccupying non-governmental organisations (NGOs) as stakeholders from food agencies, civil society and the agriculture sector met at the Wilson Centre in Washington on 5 May to discuss the ‘The Race for the World’s Farmland’. Whilst some analysts remain unsure whether overseas land purchases can be viewed positively or negatively, others are expressing concern over the sovereignty of land and food supplies, as well as the impact on local communities. At least five separate studies into the new development are due over the next few months as more NGOs wake up to the potentially grave implications of ‘outsourcing food production’. The latest wave of land grabbing began towards the end of 2008 when the global food crisis generated concern over supplies in countries that consume more food than they produce. In a desperate attempt to bolster their food security, import-dependent countries including China, Saudi Arabia and South Korea have acquired acres of farmland from poorer, resource rich nations such as Brazil, Cambodia and Sudan – and especially Africa where the trend is being dubbed the “new colonialism” or a modern day version of the 19th-century scramble for Africa. Whilst an overreliance on imports may be the primary reason for acquiring land abroad by governments, the phenomenon also has a less obvious motivation: financial return. Land is not a conventionally lucrative asset for investors, but the combined food and financial crises have turned land into a strategic investment for multinational corporations with ties to hedge funds. The first major exposé on land grabbing was detailed in a 2008 publication by the non-governmental organisation GRAIN. In their report Seized! The 2008 Landgrab for Food and Financial Security , agribusiness development was shown to be the prime objective behind land grabbing deals, despite the ‘win–win’ rhetoric of governments and investors that promote the agreements as development opportunities for the nations which sell their land. Promises that the deals would bring employment and a fair share of the agricultural produce to host countries has swayed a number of African and Asian governments, which have readily sold acres of arable land – and with it, the potential livelihoods of their people. As GRAIN have argued, the deals would inevitably lead to a redistribution of land ownership from smallholder farmers to large industrial estates, whilst creating comparatively few new job opportunities in the process. The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), a US government-backed think tank, released a report in April 2009 which made an initial estimate at how much land has been sold in land deals since 2006 – estimated at 20 million hectares, or twice the size of Germany’s croplands. Although the paper acknowledges the impact of land deals on poor communities that risk losing ownership of the land on which they depend, it also embraces the ‘win-win’ interpretation of land sales between food deficient and cash-strapped countries, by suggesting that foreign investment can bring development infrastructure and jobs for local people. For food policy analyst Devinder Sharma, however, the rewriting of the political economy of food has far more losers than winners. The losers will be those who remain hungry as the land their community has cultivated for centuries becomes a source of food security for a distant nation. Rather than jobs and a share of the produce, they will be left with the environmental tab of intensive farming – devastated soils, dry aquifers, and an ecological system damaged by chemical infestation. This is a sentiment echoed in an article by Sue Branford which points out that in displacing local farmers, governments and investors may in fact be destroying the very solution to the interlinked climate and food crises – local farming knowledge and small-scale sustainable agriculture. Land Grab: the Race for the World’s Farmland – Independent (UK) Outsourcing Food Production – Devinder Sharma, India Together Food Crisis Leading to Unsustainable Land Grab – Sue Barnford, Guardian (UK) Link to Report: Seized! The 2008 Landgrab for Food and Financial Security – GRAIN Link to Report: “Land Grabbing” by Foreign Investors in Developing Countries – IFPRI Land Grab: the Race for the World’s Farmland 3rd May 09 – Independent (UK) In Africa they are calling it the land grab, or the new colonialism. Countries hungry to secure their food supplies – including Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, South Korea (the world’s third biggest importer of corn) China, India, Libya and Egypt – are at the forefront of a frantic rush to gobble up farmland all around the world, but mainly cash-starved Africa. Over the past few months, Saudi Arabian investors have paid $100m for an Ethiopian farm where they hope to grow wheat and barley, adding to the millions of acres they already own in the war-ravaged country, as well as in neighbouring Sudan. The Saudis also have land in Indonesia and Thailand for growing rice. China owns vast tracts of overseas land, mainly in Algeria and Zimbabwe, and one estimate suggests that more than a million ethnic Chinese farm workers will be living on the continent this year. Kenya and Tanzania have leased land while the Ugandans have been big sellers, allocating two million acres of land to Egypt for wheat and corn. Further afield, the Saudi government and other Gulf States are negotiating with Pakistan to buy another million acres. The deal includes the services of a 100,000-man private army to protect the food being exported. Buyers or lease-holders have have also been promised legal cover in case a future government in Islamabad is less welcoming. Soaring wheat and rice prices over the past two years – which have caused riots in more than 30 countries from India to Haiti – were the catalyst for the latest dash for land. But the rush really took off at the end of last year when many big food-exporting nations introduced export controls. Food scares hit Saudi, Kuwait, Bahrain and other Arab states  the hardest, because they felt particulary vulnerable as their own efforts to grow crops in the desert have proved costly and inefficient. By far the most aggressive buyer is Saudi Arabia, where the government is now actively encouraging private investors and companies to buy farmland abroad after abandoning its attempt to be self-sufficient because of worries over water scarcity. It cut its wheat production by 12.5 per cent last year, prompting the search for new land. Not every country is opening its arms to these new landlords with as much enthusiasm as Pakistan. In Madagascar, public anger over a plan to sell more than a million hectares to South Korea’s Daewoo on a 99-year lease forced the government to drop the deal and was one of the reasons for the recent change in president. But the issue is not a clear-cut case of neo-imperialism. At the African Union (AU), the agriculture commissioner, Rhoda Peace Tumusiime, is worried that many land buyers are ignoring the interests of local farmers and communities. But the AU also recognises that bringing new capital into Africa could be positive if it is directed in the right way. Instead of purchasing land, she says, buyers or lease-holders should invest through production and trade agreements with the host country. Deals which increased overall food production should be encouraged, a move which would bring more food to the international markets, as well as to the poorest African households, Tumusiime said. Some of the AU’s new guidelines on land sales, due to be ratified in July, include recommendations that new investors should promise to help with infrastructure, such as health facilities, agree to pay local taxation and look at ways to get more involved on the food-processing side which would create more local jobs. David Hallam, the deputy director of the trade and markets division at the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), part of the UN, also cautions about making over-hasty judgements on such a sensitive issue. “This could be a win-win situation or it could be a sort of neo-colonialism with disastrous consequences for some of the countries involved. I really do have an open mind to whether this new development is positive or not.” On Tuesday, Hallam will be opening a conference at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington provocatively called “Land Grab: The Race for the World’s Farmlands”, at which some of the world’s leading food experts will try to get a better grip of what is happening. Sovereignty over the land and food supplies is the biggest concern, says Hallam. “There is a danger that host countries, particularly the more politically sensitive and food-insecure, will lose control over their own food supplies when they need it most.” Imagine, he says, empty trucks being driven into, say, Ethiopia, at a time of food shortages caused by war or drought, and being driven out again full of grain to feed people overseas. “Can you imagine the political consequences? That’s why proper legal structures need to be put into place to protect land rights, and why we should look at some form of international code of conduct.” Hallam is carrying out his own detailed research with FAO people on the ground because so few figures exist. The first stab at gathering numbers was made by the International Food Policy Research Institute, which reported last week. It estimated that 20 million hectares of land – twice the size of Germany’s croplands – have been sold since 2006 in more than four dozen land deals, mainly in Africa. So far, most of the buyers are a mix of private investors, US private equity houses such as Sanlam Private Equity, the Saudi Kingdom Zephyr fund, the UK’s CDC and sovereign wealth funds. The institute’s report will not be the last: at least five separate studies into the phenomenon are due over the next few months as international bodies and NGOs wake up to the danger. The International Institute for Environment and Development, for example, is particularly worried about the impact on local communities and the threat to local output. It will publish its latest research in the next few weeks. Subsistence farmers and nomadic tribesmen are of particular concern, since many of them do not have titles to their land and could be easily exploited by their own governments, which are desperate to sell to boost their foreign reserves. Ruth Meinzen-Dick, a senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute, who is due to speak at the Washington conference, warned: “The majority of agricultural land in Africa is not titled. If these rights are not respected in these transactions, the livelihoods of millions of people will be put at risk.” If the latest invasion of overseas money can be handled well, it could bring huge advantages to Africa after a generation of declining investment. “For more than two decades, we have been trying to persuade governments and investors around the world to invest in agriculture to halt the downturn in food production,” Hallam says. “So it is difficult for us to turn around and argue against it now.” Much of the new money is going into capital intensive farming – and speculative bio-fuel crops – which do not bring great benefits to local farmers. Hallam’s report, prepared with the UN’s development agency, UNCTAD and the World Bank, will also be published later this summer. Food security and encouraging more of the right sort of investment in agriculture was top of the agenda at the G8 agricultural summit in Italy last month. For the first time, the G8 ministers conceded that efforts to tackle hunger were failing, and that the UN’s attempts to halve the number of malnourished by 2015 were way off target. Wheat and grain prices have fallen since last year’s spike, but they are still high; so high that the FAO predicts the number of chronically hungry will shoot up by 100 million this year – on top of the 1.4 billion people already living on the poverty line. Link to original source Outsourcing Food Production 24th November 2008 – Devinder Sharma, India Together 24 November 2008 – At the 150th commemoration of the Irish Famine held at Cork, Ireland, I vividly recall the mayor of the city telling the audience: “How barbarian was the society then that at a time when people were dying of hunger and starvation, corn was being loaded in ships for export to neighbouring Britain.” Nearly 160 years after that great tragedy, the world is preparing a fertile ground for yet another, more sinister and barbaric act. This time, the world is witnessing a race to invest in overseas farmlands and turn them into food estates. In the name of food security, what is worrisome is that the global food production and distribution channel is actually getting into the hands of a few international agribusiness companies with ties to hedge funds. With large populations being displaced world over from such land takeovers, and with World Bank aggressively promoting it, control over the food chain is increasingly being passed into the hands of private investment. Many of the food and financial companies investing in farmlands around the world are also bringing in their own farm workers, production technology and equipment. It is happening around the world. In India, Karnataka is preparing to lift restrictions on purchase of farm land in what appears to be a misguided attempt to attract investments. Meanwhile, about 15 companies, led by the public-sector State Trading Corporation (STC), and including Gujarat Ambuja, Ruchi Soya industries and Jhunjhunwala Vanaspati Ltd., are in the process of leasing 10,000 hectares of productive farmlands in Paraguay, Uruguay and Brazil in Latin America, mainly to cultivate soybean and oilseeds. Indian companies are also moving into Burma to undertake production of pulses, and buying palm oil plantations in Indonesia. Australia and Canada are next on the land shopping list. National laws are being suitably amended. The Indian Ministry of Food and Agriculture is backing the outsourcing initiative. The Reserve Bank of India through the Exim Bank is contemplating a change in the existing laws to provide loans to these companies to purchase land abroad. Not only in India, national laws are also being rewritten elsewhere – in Argentina, Mongolia, Australia, Russia, and many other nations – to facilitate the purchase of land overseas or allow foreign companies to buy land within their own borders. In Pakistan, now in the throes of a food crisis, Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani showed exuberance after his return from a state-visit to Saudi Arabia in mid-June. After all, in exchange for the desperately needed foreign investment, he had reportedly offered to sell thousands of hectares of productive farmlands. Meanwhile, Qatar is preparing to outsource its food production to Pakistan’s Punjab, where nearly 25,000 villages are faced with displacement. Saudi Arabia is also planning to acquire a 1.6 million hectares food estate in Merauke in Indonesia to produce rice for export back home. Saudi Arabia is not the only Gulf country looking for land elsewhere. A Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) has been constituted – with membership from Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates – scouting for overseas land in return for investments. Land deals have already been struck with Laos, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, Pakistan, Thailand and Burma in Asia; Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Russia and Turkey in central Asia/Europe; and Sudan and Uganda in Africa. Realising that oil revenue alone cannot feed their populations, as seen in the recent global food crisis when food disappeared from the supermarket shelf, Gulf countries are investing for future food security needs. China is emerging as a major player in this land grab. After having increasingly divested its farm population from agriculture and moving them into the cities, China is now on a land buying spree. With some 30 land deals already known to have been signed, mostly in Africa, Central Asia, Australia and the Philippines, China has also prepared an agricultural policy on outsourcing food production. Most of these deals are being executed in a hush-hush manner. Interestingly, while China is looking for land outside its territory, agribusiness companies from Japan, South Korea and America are taking control over its own agribusiness activities. The population shift in China – pushing farmers out of agriculture and moving them into the cities – has taken a heavy toll of the social fabric, marred by social unrest, often bloody. China Daily, the official organ of the Chinese government, had reported a massive increase in rural protests – from 10,000 a year some 11 years back to over 75,000 in 2005-06, which means roughly 250 protests a day. Rapid industrialisation in the countryside had played havoc with a sustainable farming system, thereby necessitating the search for farmland outside the country. India too, in a blind race to catch up with China, is following the same faulty prescription. Egypt, which recently was faced with food riots, stirred a hornet’s nest, when it was divulged that a deal was underway to lease 840,000 hectares – amounting to 2.2 per cent of Uganda’s farm land – for wheat and maize production to be shipped back. Ironically, at the same time, Egyptian farmers in Qena district were fighting a long-drawn battle to recover 1600 hectares of land owned by a Japanese agribusiness giant, Kobebussan. Many other countries face the same dilemma – while they are looking for land elsewhere, their own farmlands are being taken away by foreign companies. According to a report, Seized: The 2008 Land Grab for Food and Financial Security prepared by the Barcelona-based GRAIN, food corporates from Japan – including Asahi, Itochu, Sumitomo and Mitsubishi – have between 2006-08 leased and purchased land in China, Brazil, Africa, and central Asia for organic food production. No wonder, with Japan not allowing corporates to own farmland, these companies are looking for greener pastures everywhere. South Korea, where the government is supporting outsourcing, is buying land in pristine Mongolia, thereby threatening one of the world’s naturally endowed ecosystems. Financial companies and others have even been using bailout packages from various governments to move into this land grab. Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank are eyeing a takeover of China’s livestock industry. Morgan Stanley has purchased 40,000 hectares in the Ukraine, where Landkom, the British investment group has also bought 100,000 hectares. The two Swedish investing firms, Black Earth Farming and Alpcot-Agro, have purchased 331,000 hectares and 128,000 hectares of farm land in Russia, respectively. South Korean giant Daewoo has brought in the mother of all land-grabbing deals; this month it unveiled a plan to farm some 1.3 million acres in Madagascar – half the size of Belgium – to produce corn and palm oil. The political economy of food is certainly being rewritten, with grave implications in store. The global financial meltdown had privatised the profits, and socialised the losses. Outsourcing food production will ensure food security for the investing country, and leave behind a trail of hunger, starvation and food scarcities for the native populations. Only the environmental tab of the highly intensive farming – devastated soils, dry aquifers, and an ecological system runied by chemical infestation – will be left for the host country to pick up. Link to original source Food Crisis Leading to Unsustainable Land Grab 22nd November 08 – Sue Branford, Guardian (UK) The world map is being redrawn. Over the past six months, China, South Korea, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other nations have been buying and leasing huge quantities of foreign land for the production of food or biofuels for domestic consumption. It’s a modern day version of the 19th-century scramble for Africa. This year’s bubble in food prices – driven by financial speculators, biofuels and compounded when some countries halted food exports to ensure their own supplies – led to pain for nations dependent on imports. Alarm bells rang, with many governments alerted to what might lie ahead as climate change and soil destruction reduce the supply of food on the world market. The result, a huge international land grab, raises many troublesome issues. Although governments are encouraging the trend, the acquisitions are generally made by the private sector. Along with agribusiness, corporations and food traders, investment banks and private equity funds have been jumping on board, seeing land as a safe haven from the financial storm. Indeed, with the supply of the world’s food under long-term threat, investment in land may prove a more solid bet than earlier speculation in dotcoms and derivatives. Yet from a global perspective, it is difficult to see how such investments can deliver long-term food security. The investors will want a quick return. They will practise an industrial model of agriculture that in many parts of the world has already produced poverty and environmental destruction, as well as farm-chemical pollution. Furthermore, many local communities will be evicted to make way for the foreign takeover. The governments and investors will argue that jobs will be created and some of the food produced will be made available for local communities, but this does not disguise what is essentially a process of dispossession. Lands will be taken away from smallholders or forest dwellers and converted into large industrial estates connected to distant markets. Ironically, these very small communities may have a key role to play in helping the world confront the interlinked climate and food crises. Many such communities have a profound knowledge of local biodiversity and often cultivate little-known varieties of crops that can survive drought and other weather extremes. Scientific studies have shown that farming methods that are not based on fossil-fuel inputs and are under the control of local farmers can be more productive than industrial farming and are almost always more sustainable. The reason why this year’s food crisis had such a harsh impact, particularly in Asia and Africa, was that many countries had been pushed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other institutions to produce food crops for external markets. They would have been far less vulnerable if they had concentrated first and foremost on feeding their populations through local production. Many of the countries that are rushing to outsource their food supplies should perhaps be looking first to see if they can produce more of their food locally, even if it means carrying out difficult measures like land reform. By seeking a quick fix to their food shortage, they may well end up without a long-term sustainable solution. And even if they succeed in generating a steady stream of food imports, they may simply be exporting their food insecurity to other nations. Link to original source

AFRICA: Tractored out by “land grabs”?

11 May 2009 11:42:55 GMT

Source: IRIN

Reuters and AlertNet are not responsible for the content of this article or for any external internet sites. The views expressed are the author’s alone.

JOHANNESBURG,
11 May 2009 (IRIN)
– Rich countries and firms are leasing or buying massive tracts of land in developing nations for the production of food or biofuel.

An area equivalent to Germany’s farmed land is at stake, and tens of billions of dollars on offer.

On the plus side, agro-industrial production could develop underused land, and broaden the world’s food production base while providing much needed resources for poor countries.

But is the land really idle and currently unused? Are small-scale farmers
going to be “tractored out” in a murky neo-colonial “land grab”?

Farmers and experts in several African countries know all too well the need
for higher food production, but the scale and structure of the deals gives rise to concern on many fronts, according to multiple interviews.

The food and fuel prices hikes of 2007 and 2008 and a steadily growing world population raised the immediate and strategic value of food production.

Food-importing countries that lack land and water but are rich in capital, such as the Gulf States, are initiating deals to produce food in developing
countries, where land and water are more abundant and production costs much lower.

Vast tracts of land and huge amounts of money are involved: 15 million to
20 million hectares, almost equivalent to the total area under cultivation in Germany, according to analysts at the US-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). Investment so far adds up to $20 billion to $30 billion, dwarfing foreign aid budgets for agriculture.

Murky?

Joachim von Braun and Ruth Meinzen-Dick of IFPRI point out in a new policy
brief  that developing countries with large populations, like China, South Korea and India, are seeking similar deals, including growing biofuel crops.

The institute warned that there was a “lack of transparency” in many deals, with the amounts involved “often still murky”.

Land is an “emotional issue”, said Theo de Jager, deputy president of Agri SA, the South African farmers’ association. Some of the deals have already begun to ruffle feathers in developing countries, most of which are highly food insecure, and at least one has led to the overthrow of a government.

An April 2009 policy paper from the German NGO Welt Hunger Hilfe says:
“States that are dependent on food imports, in particular, are surrendering more and more land to foreign investors while failing to ensure that conditions improve income and food security for their own population. Agricultural investments are rarely made in such a way that they offer the local population a genuine share of the benefits.” The paper also points out the risks of high-level corruption.

The president of the International Federation of Agricultural Producers
(IFAP), Ajay Vashee, told IRIN “Faced with a growing population, if we do not increase our global food production I can foresee another crisis, maybe in another two years.” IFAP, formed in 1946, claims to represent 600 million mostly small-scale farmers, a third of the world’s food-growers.

“We are not against the deals, as they will bring in huge amounts of money for agricultural infrastructure development, besides boosting food production globally, but we must also realise that in most developing countries, such as those in Africa, most small-scale farmers have customary rights and face the threat of being forced off their land,” said Vashee, who farms in Zambia.

IFPRI has called for a code of conduct to be drawn up, modelled on international business laws to prevent corrupt practices in the context of foreign direct investment.

So what’s the deal?

According to von Braun, the arrangements usually involve governments, either directly or through state-owned entities and public-private
partnerships, and the land was usually leased or made available through concessions, but was sometimes bought.

“The size and terms of the contract differ widely – some deals do not involve direct land acquisition, but seek to secure food supplies through contract farming [[and investing in]] rural and agricultural infrastructure, including irrigation systems and roads – these are the better deals.”

The concept is not new. Von Braun pointed out that China started leasing
land for food production in Cuba and Mexico 10 years ago.

However, in its 2008 report on “land grabbing”, GRAIN, a Spain-based NGO that promotes the sustainable management and use of agricultural biodiversity, warned that the “very basis on which to build food sovereignty is simply being bartered away” in the deals.

“These lands will be transformed from smallholdings or forests, or whatever
they may be, into large industrial estates connected to far-off markets. Farmers will never be real farmers again, job or no job,” GRAIN cautioned.

Various Gulf States have struck most of the deals in East Africa, which is
facing some of the biggest food shortages globally. IFPRI’s von Braun and David Hallam of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) told IRIN it was “too early” to assess the impact of the deals on food security and farmers in the lessor countries.

Unease, resistance and protests

Farming and pastoralist communities in the delta of Kenya’s Tana River have reacted strongly to reports of government’s intention to lease a chunk of this rich coastal land to Qatar. Kenya is facing huge food shortages and high prices after a third consecutive year of drought.

Mohammed Mbwana, who farms in the area and is an official of the  Shungwaya Welfare Association, a local NGO, said if the agreement would
displace thousands of locals. At least 150,000 families in farming and pastoralist communities depend on the land in question, said to be part of Kenya’s biggest wetland.

Tana River County councillors have threatened to go to court and block
government’s plans to lease the land. The council’s vice-chairman, Gure Golo, told IRIN they were opposed to the project because local communities used the delta for produce and livestock farming.

During drought periods, pastoralists from as far as Garissa, the capital of
neighbouring North-Eastern Province, and other arid regions, came to
the delta in search of pasture and water, he said.

According to media reports, Mozambicans have resisted the settlement of
thousands of Chinese agricultural workers on leased land.

In Madagascar, negotiations with the South Korean Daewoo Logistics Corporation to lease 1.3 million hectares to grow maize and oil palms played a role in the political conflict that led to the overthrow of the government earlier this year, the IFPRI brief said.

In Malawi, Chinese investors were allocated land, used by locals for agriculture in the southern town of Balaka, to construct a cotton processing plant. When protests followed, local traditional leaders were taken to neighbouring Zambia to see what the Chinese might deliver in terms of development. When they came back they relented and opted to move to another area “because the Chinese would create jobs for their subjects”, a government official told IRIN.

Victor Mhone of the Civil Society Agriculture Network (CISANET), a grouping of individuals and NGOS in Malawi, said: “What we need as a country is to improve on food production, and that can be done if we empower local farmers by giving them the best land for cultivation. Foreign companies are here to make profits and there is little that we can benefit from, whatever they will be growing here.”

Sudan, which has received some of the biggest foreign investments in agriculture in Africa, dismissed notions of the emergence of a new form of colonialism.

Abdeldafi Fadlalla Ali, the Federal Agriculture Commissioner at the Sudanese Ministry of Investment, told IRIN that they always ensured local
interests were taken care of in the deals – the produce was sold locally and local people “become the highest beneficiaries”.

Sudan, Ali said, has 84 million hectares of arable land, of which only 20
percent is under cultivation, and had registered 75 deals worth $3.5 billion in eight years. Almost $930 million of this was already invested. Eight countries, including Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Egypt, Jordan, China and India are involved.

Ali reasoned that in the face of limited domestic capital, foreign investment seemed to be a “better strategy” to achieve agricultural targets, and expected that produce from the deals would be exported in future.

Millions of Sudanese require food aid, according to the UN. However, Ali
claimed food insecurity was more related to transport and marketing than absolute production shortfalls.

Safeguards

IFPRI recommends transparency, respect for existing land rights, sharing of
benefits, environmental sustainability and adherence to national trade policies as key elements to be incorporated in a proposed code of conduct. This could include foreign investors being denied the right to export during an acute national food crisis.

Farmers and think-tanks talk about turning this “opportunity” into a “win-win” situation. While the agriculture sector in most poor countries grapples with the impact of the economic slowdown, deals for arable land continue to prove attractive.

Rwanda recently announced a new programme to identify “unexploited”
arable land for foreign investors. On the other hand, the Republic of Congo announced it would lease 10 million hectares of farmland to individual foreign farmers to boost its food security.

“This is a better option – leasing out land to farmers who will transfer skills to local farmers, boost the country’s production, and care about the land,” said Agri SA’s de Jager. South African farmers have helped improve production in Zambia, Botswana, Mozambique and Nigeria, among other countries he said.

But IFAP’s Vashee pointed out that farmers cannot bring in the huge investment needed to build or rebuild infrastructure.

IFPRI is working with the African Union to develop guidelines on how to
negotiate with foreign investors, which will be presented to African leaders for ratification at a summit in July.

ha/at/jk/jk/jk/he/bp

The Majority World Blog

The really ugly face of capitalism

Posted by Sokari Ekine on Wednesday, January 21, 2009 Comment on this post

I remember reading a number of reports towards the end of last year of rich countries buying land for food and water in the Global South. The land purchases were seen as both short- and long-term investments for the future needs of buyer countries. The Guardian reported that countries like South Korea, Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi were buying land in Madagascar, Indonesia and the Sudan, while at the same time sellers were eagerly ready to lease or sell their country’s future for short-term development projects and oil leases.

A report from Grain spells out the problem of addressing the present and future needs of local farmers and communities in more detail, with 100 examples of land-grabbing for agriculture:

‘The food-hungry land-grabbers include China, India, Japan, Malaysia, Korea, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Those giving up their land in exchange for the oil deals or investments include the Philippines, Mozambique, Thailand, Cambodia, Burma, Laos, Indonesia, Pakistan, Sudan, Uganda, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan and Zimbabwe.’

It is not just countries that are grabbing land; a host of corporations are in on the act too. Many of them are familiar names from the recent financial crisis in the US and UK, including Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. The deal in Madagascar is with the South Korean motor and electronics company, Daewoo Logistics, who intend to buy a million hectares on a 99 year lease. Their aim is ‘to grow five million tonnes of corn by 2023’. One recent case is particularly disturbing. A US business man, Philippe Heilberg, recently ‘gained rights’ to 400,000 hectares of
land in Sudan from the son of a Sudanese warlord, Paulino Matip. The
report states the man is backed by the CIA and the US State Department. The language used by Heilberg is extremely offensive. He seems to be
investing on the back of people’s suffering, claiming he is particularly interested in countries which may soon ‘break up’:

‘You have to go to the guns, this is Africa… If you bet right on the shifting of sovereignty then you are on the ground floor. I am constantly looking at the map and looking if there is any value.’

Given that many African countries, such as Ethiopia and Sudan, are unable to provide enough food for their own people, it is positively obscene to sell off land to feed others. The encroachment by foreign governments and multinationals onto the agricultural land and water supplies of African communities could spell serious problems in the future. What will people do when they are hungry but are faced with a barbed wire fence protecting the food of the rich Western and Middle Eastern countries? Africa has enough wars related to the exploitation of its natural mineral and oil resources. Now the possibility of further conflict arises with this new scramble for Africa.

Uganda:
Is Egypt Land Deal a Blessing or Curse for Country?

Lydia Namubiru

3 July 2009

---

analysis

Kampala — EGYPT is planning to acquire 200 hectares of land in Gulu district to introduce a variety of wheat that can thrive in Uganda.

Egyptian and Ugandan agricultural experts analysed soil samples from five districts and concluded that Gulu had the best soil and climate for the purpose.

Okassai Opolot, the commissioner for food production and marketing in the agriculture ministry, says the experts collected soil samples from Masindi, Hoima, Gulu, Amuru and Kapchorwa districts. “Preliminary results show that Gulu is the most suitable. It is one of the most suitable places for wheat production in East Africa.”

Although Kapchorwa is currently the main wheat producing district in Uganda, the Egyptians said the climate there was too humid. In Gulu, the Egyptians, who domestically produce less than half of the 14 million tonnes of wheat they need, have struck gold and they are moving fast to get it. They want to establish a joint wheat production project with Uganda, where the oil-rich country provides capital and machinery while Uganda provides land and labour. Output from the project would be shared between the two countries.

To secure this deal, the Egyptians are moving even faster than the situation on ground. According to Opolot, talks about land allocation for a joint wheat production project are yet to begin. The tentative plan is to give Egypt a few hectares for a training farm.

“They want 200 hectares but the ministry does not have all that. We may offer about 20-30 hectares for a nuclear farm to be used for training,” Opolot says.

He says the plan is to mobilise as many out-grower farmers as it takes to raise the acreage needed.

However, three weeks ago, an Egyptian agricultural official told the international press that within weeks, his country would be signing a deal to grow wheat on 200 hectares of land in Uganda. Abdelaziz el-Deeb said this would be part of Egypt’s plan to establish 14 farms in the Nile Basin countries, in order to protect its water supply and boost self-sufficiency in wheat, the staple food of the oil rich nation.

Deeb’s pronouncement about the deal is causing a stir amongst Ugandans, especially land policy analysts in the private sector. “What we are worried about is the level of openness in this deal.” Bashir Twesigye, a land expert with Advocates Coalition for Development and Environment (ACODE) declares.
“It is a quiet deal.”

Margaret Rugadya, a private land policy consultant, has similar concerns. “We do not know what the Government is signing.”

Top officials at the lands ministry are unaware of the deal. “There has been no deal or even canvassing for Uganda to give land to Egypt,” says Mayanja Nkangi, the chairperson of the Uganda Land Commision. Omara Atubo, the lands minister, also knows nothing about the deal.

The agriculture ministry explains that it was not necessary to announce the planned deal before establishing that the land is suitable for wheat production.

Land rights activists argue that the Government has to negotiate a deal that benefits the local people. “Much of that land that is being talked about is not unencumbered. There are people living and farming it. What are the measures towards compensating these people?” Twesigye asks.

He adds that even if the people were to be compensated fairly, they still will have problems relating to livelihoods. “The fact that this land is being given away on a long term lease has livelihood implications on the local people because for all that time, they will not be able to access it,”
he argues.

There is another fear. What if Uganda is falling into the trap of a much bigger and more threatening international trend? “It is increasingly becoming a trend at the international level for rich countries to come to the developed world and acquire land for agriculture.

First, it was companies that represented the interests of these states. Now, the governments themselves are coming and quite easily getting the land,” Twesigye points out. These are often rich countries that have little arable land. They traditionally import a lot of food but have lately
grown wary of buying it, following food price fluctuations and unreliable supply in the past few years. They have now decided to simply acquire land in the poorer world, grow their food and then ship it back home.

South Korea and the United Arab Emirates have been granted 690,000 and 400,000 hectares, respectively, in Sudan alone.

In Congo, China has 2.8 million hectares. In Madagascar, a South Korean firm, Daewoo Logistics, got a deal to use 1.3 million hectares for 99 years, without paying a penny. In Kenya, Qatar is seeking to lease 40,000 hectares for vegetable growing in the fertile River Tana delta. In exchange, Qatar would construct a port for Kenya, but the vegetable produce would be shipped back to Qatar.

In Mozambique, China has leased extensive farmland and is reportedly shipping Chinese farmers to work on the leased land. Egypt intends to establish 14 wheat farms in the Nile Basin countries.

According the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), a think-tank in Washington, DC, between 15 million and 20 million hectares of farmland in poor countries have been subject to transactions or talks involving foreigners since 2006. Critics are calling these deals the new scramble for Africa. Others are referring to the trend as a kind of neo-colonialist land grabbing.

The head of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, Jacques Diouf, has warned that the deals could lead to a kind of neo-colonialism where poor states produce food for the rich ones while their own people go hungry.

In many places, these deals are very controversial. The 1.3m hectare deal between Madagascar and Daewoo, raised so much hostility from the Malagasies that it contributed to the recent civilian coup, that saw the president overthrown. The hostile side said that the deal would make Madagascar a “South Korean colony.” The 1.3m hectares is reportedly nearly half of all the arable land on the island.

In Kenya, the 40,000 hectares deal with Qatar appears to have fallen through, following fervent protests from both the civil society and the public. Other critics say the governments of the poor countries are grabbing land from their citizens to sell it.

“Host governments usually claim that the land they are offering for sale or lease is vacant or owned by the state. That is not always true. “Empty” land often supports herders who graze animals on it. Land may be formally owned by the state but contain people who have farmed it for generations. Their customary rights are recognised locally, but often not accepted in law,” explains an article in last month’s issue of the UK magazine, the Economist.

In Gulu, where Egypt wants the 200 hectares, land is primarily owned under the customary tenure system. The price at which the land is given is also a worrisome issue among the critics.

In Madagascar, Daewoo officials were reported to have said they expected to pay nothing for the 1.3m hectares they were leasing for 99 years. Daewoo is expected to make the deal fair by providing jobs and constructing relevant road and railway infrastructure.

Here, what the Egyptians will pay and how Uganda will benefit is yet to be negotiated, according to the agriculture ministry. Opolot says he is aware of the global trend but that the Uganda deal will be different because the out-grower farmers will retain their land. Land for the nuclear farm will come off government owned acreage. The ministry will also negotiate for a deal that ensures the project meets Uganda’s needs before exporting any wheat.

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Even skeptics agree the deal is not a bad thing for Uganda as it could go a long way in improving the chronically under-invested agricultural sector.

“Foreign direct investment has never been a bad thing,” Rugadya concedes. She says there are policy models that can be used to create a win-win situation. The land policy consultant cites the out-growers model as one such win-win strategy. Serious consideration, she argues, should be given to issues like how customary owners’ rights are going to be managed and how Uganda and Egypt will share the benefits from the planned farms.

Twesigye argues for the consultative path. “Let the process be conducted in a consultative manner.
Parliament and the local communities should all be involved,” he says. Otherwise, he warns, the process allows for a lot of corruption. Whether this will be a good or bad deal for Uganda depends on how it is negotiated.