Kililka 5aad For sale.

[Mukulaalow]

Land grabbing: the new global power play

 

A visit to the local farmers' market has become a weekly event for many Australians. Meeting a real live farmer, coffee in hand, is part of the experience. Do it while you can.

 

Small-scale producers are a dying breed around the world as the security of rural communities is undermined by 'land-grabbing' - large-scale land acquisition by foreign investors.

 

Today the international farmers' movement La Via Campesina calls on governments to stop the global-land grab that deprives rural communities of their livelihoods and threatens to spark civil war in countries already crippled by poverty and hunger.

 

Prompted by the 2008 food crisis, wealthy food-importing nations such as China, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and South Korea are securing their future food supplies in poorer, resource-rich nations.

 

The World Bank reports that foreign investors acquired 111 million acres of farmland in 2009. Nearly 75 per cent of this land is in sub-Saharan Africa. Controversial land acquisitions have contributed to conflicts in Sudan, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

 

Chinese multinationals Sino-Cam and Chongqing Seed Corp have leased land from the governments of Cameroon and Tanzania for future rice production. Bahrain has secured agro-fishery reserves in the Philippines. Indian interests are buying palm oil plantations in Indonesia.

 

The backlash is fierce. China's attempt to secure 2.5 million acres of land in the Philippines was thwarted by a public outcry, and Madagascans sacked their government over the proposed sale of 3 million acres to Daewoo Logistics of South Korea in 2009.

 

However land deals are often made without consultation with local people. In Ethiopia, 150,000 people have been relocated from eastern Somali to make way for Saudi and Indian investment projects. The impacts of these ventures, including displacement, food insecurity and water shortages, are rarely considered.

 

A 2010 survey of private investment in agriculture in the Sudan, Pakistan, Tanzania and Mali by the New York Center for Human Rights and Global Justice identified an absence of transparency and regulatory frameworks within the host countries.

 

Supporters of the investment initiatives describe opportunities for technological development and increased yields that will feed local populations. They describe the leased land as 'undeveloped' – a highly contested notion in regions where peasant farmers have no formal tenure. What governments consider empty or marginal land is often all that local people have to sustain their livelihoods.

 

In reality local people are unlikely to benefit from food production on land leased to foreign investors. World Bank analysis suggests only 37 per cent of foreign investment projects will be for food crops.

 

The food that is not exported to the home countries of investors will be converted to bioethanol produced from soya, palm, rapeseed and other oil-rich plants - the staple food of some of the poorest people in the world.

 

In 2009 an estimated 100 million tons of grain were diverted for lucrative biofuel production. This volume will escalate as developing countries set ambitious targets to replace fossil fuels.

 

In March the UN Committee on World Food Security adopted draft guidelines against land grabbing to better protect rural communities. Though non-binding, these guidelines are the latest step in the long campaign to reassert the importance of local agriculture.

 

The Food and Agriculture Organisation says "local production by small-scale farmers" is the most efficient way to ensure food security at the household level in developing countries as it increases food availability, income and employment.

 

La Via Campesina, a social movement of 150 rural organisations across 70 countries, calls this food sovereignty.

 

Food sovereignty grants nations control over their food security policies, including the right to impose tariffs against the dumping of cheap exports, and the support of local markets.

 

It also puts the onus on governments to respect, protect and fulfil the rights of citizens to food and the productive resources to produce it, including land.

 

April 17 is the anniversary of the 1996 massacre of 19 members of the Landless Workers' Movement in Brazil. Two per cent of Brazilian landowners own 56 per cent of available land. On large estates, the latifundos, nearly 100 million hectares of fertile agricultural land lie fallow while 22 million go hungry.

 

For Brazilian farmers land-grabbing is just their latest challenge.

 

 

Alana Mann is a lecturer in the Media and Communications Department at the University of Sydney. View her full profile here.

 

 

link: http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/3955006.html

[Somalia]

It's a sad story.

[rudy-Diiriye]

Yeah!! Thats why i wanna put following rule in effect in somalia (thats means all five somaliweeyn lands...i dont believe in the so called shytelands)

 

Every somali, regardless of gender, should do a 1 year military service after graduating from high school and fight in the somali occupied lands for at least that one year mandatory period. Then, only one is eligible for somali citizenship.

 

Otherwise, if u dont wanna do this, u will only get an yellow card!! which is given to half-breed somalis and clan loyal somalis.

 

Very nice!!

[Che -Guevara]

This is happening to every region of Ethiopia and recipe for this disaster considering the mass displacement.

[Mukulaalow]

Che -Guevara;820088 wrote:

This is happening to every region of Ethiopia and recipe for this disaster considering the mass displacement.

I wouldn't mind if crops from those lands were feeding the starving people in these regions, but the lands belong to those nations who purchased for their strategic food security and every single crop will be shipped to the owners. The Ethiopian federal junta got the money, and the the purchasers got the crop, the sole losers are the indigenous inhabitants.