Mozambique, a country wracked by hunger, has
signed away land concessions three times larger than Greater London
to outside investors in the past decade, displacing thousands of
farmers in the process, said a report released on Thursday. Since
2006, the country has signed at least 35 long-term land leases,
covering more than 535,000 hectares, Mozambique's National Peasants
Union (UNAC), a farmers' group, reported after surveying public
records and interviewing displaced farmers.
New large plantations,
often joint ventures between foreign investors and
politically-connected local officials, are producing food for export
rather than feeding hungry local people, advocates said. An
"alarmingly high" number of Mozambican children under five
- more than 42 percent - are malnourished, according to the World
Food Programme. "The small farmers who feed this country,
producing over 90 percent of the food are now losing their land to
make way for these large investments," Vicente Adriano, a UNAC
spokesperson told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "The focus of
these investments is on the production of soybeans and corn for
export ... to emerging markets in Asia and Europe."
About 70
percent of Mozambicans live in rural areas and depend on subsistence
farming for survival, according to the United Nations. Thousands of
these farmers have been forced from their land to make way for
foreign-backed plantations, particularly in the fertile Nacala
Corridor in northern Mozambique, the report said.
While the country
has experienced rapid economic growth in recent years, one third of
the population of 24.5 million still face food shortages. Campaigners
say such high levels of hunger mean land should be used to grow food
for local people, rather than leased to large firms to produce cash
crops for export. Foreigners cannot directly buy land in Mozambique,
but they can make long-term leases for several decades or invest in
joint ventures with local businessmen, Adriano said. In one case
cited by the report, Mozambique Agricultural Corporation (MOZACO), a
joint venture between local and foreign investors, acquired 2,389
hectares of land in Nampula province to grow soybeans and cotton in
June 2013.
The new plantation evicted 1,500 people who had been
farming the land, without compensation, according to local residents
cited in the report. They said plantation officials destroyed the
local church of Santa Lucia. The firm wants to expand its plantations
to 20,000 hectares and activists say this will displace thousands
more, depriving others of crucial water resources from the Malema and
Nataleia rivers.
MOZACO does not publicly list its address or phone
number and could not be reached for comment. JFS Holding, owned by a
prominent family in Portugal, is one of the investors in MOZACO, the
report said. The company did not respond to interview requests. Often
foreign land deals are organised by obscure holding companies
registered in offshore locations, making the true backers of projects
difficult to track, the report said.
Many farming families in
Mozambique do not have individual title to the fields they farm,
relying instead on customary land rights. Families who have been
farming a parcel of land for ten years or more are supposed to be
legally protected from eviction without compensation, the report
said, although these land laws often are not enforced.
Phone numbers
for Mozambique's ministry of agriculture were not in service or rang
unanswered.
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