Commentary and analysis to persuade people to become socialist and to act for themselves, organizing democratically and without leaders, to bring about a world of common ownership and free access. We are solely concerned with building a movement of socialists for socialism. We are not reformists with a programme of policies to patch up capitalism.
Showing posts with label multinationals. Show all posts
Showing posts with label multinationals. Show all posts
Thursday, October 02, 2014
African Palm Oil: Peasants Pay The Price
Cultivation of oil palm is expanding rapidly around the world. These new monoculture plantations mean the destruction of rainforests, labour exploitation and brutal land grabbing.
Oil palms can only be cultivated profitably in an equatorial belt occupied by by peasants and indigenous peoples and the tropical forests they depend on. Thus the story of the expansion of oil palm plantations across Asia, Latin America and now Africa is also a story about the often violent displacement of these peoples and the destruction of their forests and farms.
Over the past fifteen years, foreign companies have signed over 60 deals covering nearly 4 million hectares in central and western Africa for the development of oil palm plantations.
Previous attempts at industrial cultivation of oil palm in Africa have largely failed and production has remained in the hands of small-scale producers, the majority of them women. The renewed interest in Africa is a reminder that the aggressive expansion of oil palm is not simply about land. It is about a larger struggle over food systems and models of development.
Will African palm oil be produced by African peasants or multinational corporations? Will palms be grown on mixed farms and semi-wild palm groves – or will peasants be driven out to make way for large scale, industrial plantations?
from here
► Read the report
Monday, May 12, 2014
G8 New Alliance To Re-Colonise Africa
Whenever we talk about the African continent, images of famine, ethnic
cleansing and brutal corrupt dictatorships usually come first to mind.
This clichéd association, which tends to blame Africans for all their
ills is reinforced by a compliant Western mainstream media, which more
than often plays a subservient role to structures of power and
dominance. But it seems that the mood is changing as Africa is booming
economically. We are now being told by politicians and others that
Africa will be helped not by charity but by investment. For instance,
the likes of Tjada Mckenna and Jonathan Shriver, representatives for
Feed the Future, US Government food and hunger initiative are
enthusiastic about the business potential that Africa can offer:
‘Africa is home to seven of the world’s 10 fastest-growing economies
and the rate of return on foreign investment is higher in Africa than in
any other developing region. Doing business in Africa makes good
business sense.’
Attracted by these high economic growth rates and propelled by a lack of new opportunities elsewhere, huge global food and agriculture companies like Monsanto, Syngenta and Unilever are rapidly increasing their presence in sub-Saharan Africa, seeking access to resources and new markets to expand their operations. In the same way that Europeans colonised much of the continent in the nineteenth century, large corporations are now looking for raw materials, land and labour and their attention is turning to Africa, which the World Bank has dubbed ‘the last frontier’ in global food markets.
The New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition is supposedly committed to eradicating hunger in Africa, building on previous initiatives (such as the green revolution) that have failed so far to reach that goal. It is a partnership between the powerful G8, a number of African governments, transnational corporations and some domestic companies. Under its cooperation frameworks, African countries promise to reform their land laws and make other policy changes to facilitate private investment in agriculture. In exchange, they get hundreds of millions of dollars in donor assistance and promises from foreign companies and their local partners to invest considerably.
The G8 funds are supposed to be aligned with the country agriculture plans developed through the African Union's Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) that was carried out through national consultation. But almost all of the G8’s New Alliance policy measures that each African government commits to implement within clearly defined deadlines are exclusively aimed at increasing corporate investment in agricultural lands and input markets. This highlights how such initiatives are not really designed to serve the African people but rather to open up new markets for big corporations that are driven by maximum profits regardless of their devastating impact on local life. Instead of providing a solution to hunger, the pro-corporate approach of initiatives like the New Alliance is likely to exacerbate hunger and poverty through shifting control of the food system away from small-scale farmers and local communities into the hands of big business that will likely invest in lucrative projects such as exporting cash crops like coffee, tobacco and biofuel crops.
In 2012, Mamadou Cissokho, honorary president of the Network of Farmers' and Agricultural Producers' Organisations of West Africa (ROPPA), sent a letter to the president of the African Union on behalf of African civil society networks and farmers' organisations expressing his concerns over how the G8 was dictating agricultural policy in Africa:
‘….on the eve of the G8 meeting at Camp David, I address myself to you, the President of the African Union – and through you to all African Heads of State – to ask what leads you to believe that Africa's food security and food sovereignty could be achieved by international cooperation and outside the policy frameworks formulated in inclusive fashion with the peasants and producers of the continent…The G8 and G20 can in no way be considered appropriate places for such decisions.”
Along similar lines and in a compelling statement, African civil society networks and organisations dubbed the New Alliance as a ‘new wave of colonialism’ and emphasised the necessity of food sovereignty, on individual and household food security first, with trade arising from surpluses beyond this.
It is anticipated that these policy commitments from the African governments will reinforce land grabbing and destroy the livelihood of small farmers who will be robbed of their lands forced into using expensive and damaging agrochemicals and corporate-controlled seeds, and subjected to insecure and poorly paid jobs, increasing their poverty and debt.
As someone coming from the global south, from Africa in particular, the whole thing sounds like some IMF structural adjustment program that mortgaged our sovereignty and wreaked havoc on our countries’ economies in the 90s. For me, it is also another neo-colonial instrument advancing under the cloak of the “altruistic civilising progress”, in order to remove any barrier to greed and to keep us subordinated to a profoundly unjust global order. This is an order that is benefitting a tiny minority over the poor majority and is the cause of the poverty and hunger in Africa in the first place.
The G8’s New Alliance will neither eradicate hunger nor achieve food security for Africans and thus must be fought. Solidarity with African farmers is a duty of any person caring about global justice.
The World Development Movement (WDM) launched a new campaign in early April in order to challenge the corporate control of the African food system through the G8’s New Alliance.
WDM will contest this initiative as part of the global movement for food sovereignty, which demands the right to food to be fulfilled, and that food producers and consumers can determine their own food systems and have control over the skills and resources that form them.
What better way to send a strong message to the UK Department For International Development (DfID), the British establishment and the multinationals involved and to say loudly and clearly what the New Alliance initiative is all about, than the creative and humorous [url=]WDM stunt[/url] that was carried out on Monday 31st March. A bunch of smartly-dressed activists pretending to be representatives of several multinationals involved in the New Alliance paid a visit to DfID in order to thank them for their precious help in enabling them to carve up African markets and resources for their profits. To add to the celebratory mood, they took a big cake in the shape of Africa, a continent that they voraciously want to slice between themselves. King Leopold, responsible for the colonisation and the genocide in the Congo region and a key player in the Berlin conference where European powers formalised the African takeover, would have liked this gesture – for completely different reasons of course – as he once said: "I do not want to miss a good chance of getting us a slice of this magnificent African cake.” Sadly, DfID representatives weren’t so keen to help the ‘executives’ in carving up the cake.
By Hamza Hamouchene from here
Attracted by these high economic growth rates and propelled by a lack of new opportunities elsewhere, huge global food and agriculture companies like Monsanto, Syngenta and Unilever are rapidly increasing their presence in sub-Saharan Africa, seeking access to resources and new markets to expand their operations. In the same way that Europeans colonised much of the continent in the nineteenth century, large corporations are now looking for raw materials, land and labour and their attention is turning to Africa, which the World Bank has dubbed ‘the last frontier’ in global food markets.
The New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition is supposedly committed to eradicating hunger in Africa, building on previous initiatives (such as the green revolution) that have failed so far to reach that goal. It is a partnership between the powerful G8, a number of African governments, transnational corporations and some domestic companies. Under its cooperation frameworks, African countries promise to reform their land laws and make other policy changes to facilitate private investment in agriculture. In exchange, they get hundreds of millions of dollars in donor assistance and promises from foreign companies and their local partners to invest considerably.
The G8 funds are supposed to be aligned with the country agriculture plans developed through the African Union's Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) that was carried out through national consultation. But almost all of the G8’s New Alliance policy measures that each African government commits to implement within clearly defined deadlines are exclusively aimed at increasing corporate investment in agricultural lands and input markets. This highlights how such initiatives are not really designed to serve the African people but rather to open up new markets for big corporations that are driven by maximum profits regardless of their devastating impact on local life. Instead of providing a solution to hunger, the pro-corporate approach of initiatives like the New Alliance is likely to exacerbate hunger and poverty through shifting control of the food system away from small-scale farmers and local communities into the hands of big business that will likely invest in lucrative projects such as exporting cash crops like coffee, tobacco and biofuel crops.
In 2012, Mamadou Cissokho, honorary president of the Network of Farmers' and Agricultural Producers' Organisations of West Africa (ROPPA), sent a letter to the president of the African Union on behalf of African civil society networks and farmers' organisations expressing his concerns over how the G8 was dictating agricultural policy in Africa:
‘….on the eve of the G8 meeting at Camp David, I address myself to you, the President of the African Union – and through you to all African Heads of State – to ask what leads you to believe that Africa's food security and food sovereignty could be achieved by international cooperation and outside the policy frameworks formulated in inclusive fashion with the peasants and producers of the continent…The G8 and G20 can in no way be considered appropriate places for such decisions.”
Along similar lines and in a compelling statement, African civil society networks and organisations dubbed the New Alliance as a ‘new wave of colonialism’ and emphasised the necessity of food sovereignty, on individual and household food security first, with trade arising from surpluses beyond this.
It is anticipated that these policy commitments from the African governments will reinforce land grabbing and destroy the livelihood of small farmers who will be robbed of their lands forced into using expensive and damaging agrochemicals and corporate-controlled seeds, and subjected to insecure and poorly paid jobs, increasing their poverty and debt.
As someone coming from the global south, from Africa in particular, the whole thing sounds like some IMF structural adjustment program that mortgaged our sovereignty and wreaked havoc on our countries’ economies in the 90s. For me, it is also another neo-colonial instrument advancing under the cloak of the “altruistic civilising progress”, in order to remove any barrier to greed and to keep us subordinated to a profoundly unjust global order. This is an order that is benefitting a tiny minority over the poor majority and is the cause of the poverty and hunger in Africa in the first place.
The G8’s New Alliance will neither eradicate hunger nor achieve food security for Africans and thus must be fought. Solidarity with African farmers is a duty of any person caring about global justice.
The World Development Movement (WDM) launched a new campaign in early April in order to challenge the corporate control of the African food system through the G8’s New Alliance.
WDM will contest this initiative as part of the global movement for food sovereignty, which demands the right to food to be fulfilled, and that food producers and consumers can determine their own food systems and have control over the skills and resources that form them.
What better way to send a strong message to the UK Department For International Development (DfID), the British establishment and the multinationals involved and to say loudly and clearly what the New Alliance initiative is all about, than the creative and humorous [url=]WDM stunt[/url] that was carried out on Monday 31st March. A bunch of smartly-dressed activists pretending to be representatives of several multinationals involved in the New Alliance paid a visit to DfID in order to thank them for their precious help in enabling them to carve up African markets and resources for their profits. To add to the celebratory mood, they took a big cake in the shape of Africa, a continent that they voraciously want to slice between themselves. King Leopold, responsible for the colonisation and the genocide in the Congo region and a key player in the Berlin conference where European powers formalised the African takeover, would have liked this gesture – for completely different reasons of course – as he once said: "I do not want to miss a good chance of getting us a slice of this magnificent African cake.” Sadly, DfID representatives weren’t so keen to help the ‘executives’ in carving up the cake.
By Hamza Hamouchene from here
Thursday, April 03, 2014
UK Aid Money Finances 'Corporate Scramble For Africa'
£600 million in UK aid money is going to a scheme to help big businesses increase their profits in Africa, a report by the World Development Movement reveals today. The campaign group has slammed the scheme as fuelling a ‘corporate scramble for Africa’.
The UK government is channelling £600 million in aid to the
G8-sponsored ‘New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition’,
claiming it will lift 50 million people out of poverty by 2022. But
campaigners say the scheme is set to benefit multinational companies
like Monsanto and Unilever at the expense of millions of small-scale
farmers, and is likely to increase poverty and inequality on the
continent.
The New Alliance aims to increase food production in Africa. But the World Development Movement has argued that increased production on its own is not the solution to hunger. Sub-Saharan Africa produced ten per cent more food per person in 2011 than in 1991, but the numbers of undernourished people rose by 40 per cent in the same period.
The campaign group has also accused the New Alliance of targeting African countries where companies can make the most money, instead of the poorest countries.
Nick Dearden, director of the World Development Movement, said:
“It’s scandalous that UK aid money is being used to carve up Africa in the interests of big business. This is the exact opposite of what is needed, which is support to small-scale farmers and fairer distribution of land and resources to give African countries more control over their food systems.
“Africa can produce enough food to feed its people. The problem is that our food system is geared to the luxury tastes of the richest, not the needs of ordinary people. Here the British government is using aid money to make the problem even worse.”
Read the report ‘Carving up a continent’.
from here
In return for
receiving aid money and corporate investment through the New
Alliance, the African countries involved have to change their laws,
making it easier for corporations to acquire large tracts of
farmland, control the supply of seeds, and ship agricultural produce
to other parts of the world. The World Development Movement believes
the scheme will lead to increased land-grabbing, higher costs for
small-scale farmers, and the prioritisation of crops for export
instead of to feed local populations.
The conditions imposed on African countries appear to contravene
UK aid policy, which states, “We will not make our aid
conditional on specific policy decisions by partner governments, or
attempt to impose policy choices on them.”The New Alliance aims to increase food production in Africa. But the World Development Movement has argued that increased production on its own is not the solution to hunger. Sub-Saharan Africa produced ten per cent more food per person in 2011 than in 1991, but the numbers of undernourished people rose by 40 per cent in the same period.
The campaign group has also accused the New Alliance of targeting African countries where companies can make the most money, instead of the poorest countries.
Nick Dearden, director of the World Development Movement, said:
“It’s scandalous that UK aid money is being used to carve up Africa in the interests of big business. This is the exact opposite of what is needed, which is support to small-scale farmers and fairer distribution of land and resources to give African countries more control over their food systems.
“Africa can produce enough food to feed its people. The problem is that our food system is geared to the luxury tastes of the richest, not the needs of ordinary people. Here the British government is using aid money to make the problem even worse.”
Read the report ‘Carving up a continent’.
from here
Friday, March 21, 2014
Total Marginalisation Of Small Farmers By Multinationals
GHANA’S PLANT BREEDERS’ BILL
The workshop discussed the key features of the Bill, noting that the Bill is modeled on the 1991 Convention of the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV). It was noted that few developing countries are members of UPOV and of these most are members of UPOV 1978 and not UPOV 1991. It also emerged that the 1991 Convention is a restrictive and an inflexible regime that does not allow Ghana to develop a legal framework for plant variety protection that suits the agricultural conditions prevailing in Ghana.
The intellectual property agreement in the World Trade Organization (known as the TRIPS Agreement) allows Ghana to develop a ‘sui generis’ (of its own kind) system for plant variety protection. Ghana should use this flexibility to develop a plant variety protection/plant breeders’ regime that suits its national conditions as many developing countries have done. The bill pending in the Parliament fails to do that.
The Bill is unbalanced and inequitable. It strengthens breeders’ rights and does not reflect the interests and needs of the smallholder farmers that are the backbone of Ghana’s agricultural system. Breeders of new, distinct, uniform and stable varieties are given extensive rights under the Bill. On the other hand, the Bill does not accommodate the specific characteristics of farmer varieties and nor does it contain specific provisions that safeguards the interests of smallholder farmers such as their right to freely use, save, sell and exchange farm saved seeds.
The Bill only states that the minister shall in making regulations take into account the need to safeguard the legitimate interests of breeders and to permit farmers to make ‘personal use on their own holdings’ of farm saved seed. This is a very limited provision and it is simply unacceptable that it does not safeguard the interests of millions of smallholder farmers in Ghana.
It is also equally unacceptable that the Bill places the burden of enforcing the private rights of breeder on the state and taxpayer by criminalizing infringement of breeders’ rights.
The Bill also lacks safeguards that are important to protect public interest and to prevent misappropriation of Ghana’s genetic resources as well as to ensure fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from the utilization of local germplasm.
The workshop also noted that the Bill has been developed without consultations with the wider civil society and smallholder farmer community.
The workshop noted that the Bill is inconsistent with Ghana’s obligations under the Convention on Biological Diversity and the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture.
GHANA’S BIOSAFETY ACT
Ghana’s Biosafety Act is often referred to as the worst such law on the continent as it contravenes several provisions of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, an international environmental agreement to which Ghana is Party. This Protocol was negotiated by the international community to regulate genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in recognition that this technology is new and poses risks to the environment, human health and society.
The Ghana Biosafety Act allows the regulatory agency to grant exemptions that undermine the risk assessment and public consultation processes of the Biosafety Protocol. It also ensures that independent oversight of GMOs is near impossible by seriously limiting public access to information and participation in decision-making. The Ghanaian Act represents a permitting system to allow foreign corporations to sell their product rather than a Biosafety System designed to protect the health, environment and socio-economic well-being of Ghanaians. GMOs are designed for large-scale industrial farmers and have no place in Ghana’s agricultural system, which is based on small-holder farmers.
GHANA’S PLANT AND FERTILIZER ACT
Ghana’s Plants and Fertilizer Act, 2010, Act 83 in Part Two deals with seed regulation. It promotes/supports only industrial plant breeding and does not deal with smallholder farmer managed seed systems, the need for the conservation of land races and traditional varieties and ignores farmers’ rights. The entire orientation of the law is towards genetically uniform, commercially bred varieties in terms of seed quality control and variety registration. It creates an exclusive seed market for certified improved, commercial varieties of seed and excludes farmer varieties from this marketing system. The market for registered seed is not for African farmer breeders but for multinational companies. The implementation of this Act will result in the total marginalization of small farmers and their needs and is also setting the stage for thousands of small elite farmers who will be drawn into seed certification systems, which can later also be used for GM seed production in the near future.
From here
The workshop discussed the key features of the Bill, noting that the Bill is modeled on the 1991 Convention of the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV). It was noted that few developing countries are members of UPOV and of these most are members of UPOV 1978 and not UPOV 1991. It also emerged that the 1991 Convention is a restrictive and an inflexible regime that does not allow Ghana to develop a legal framework for plant variety protection that suits the agricultural conditions prevailing in Ghana.
The intellectual property agreement in the World Trade Organization (known as the TRIPS Agreement) allows Ghana to develop a ‘sui generis’ (of its own kind) system for plant variety protection. Ghana should use this flexibility to develop a plant variety protection/plant breeders’ regime that suits its national conditions as many developing countries have done. The bill pending in the Parliament fails to do that.
The Bill is unbalanced and inequitable. It strengthens breeders’ rights and does not reflect the interests and needs of the smallholder farmers that are the backbone of Ghana’s agricultural system. Breeders of new, distinct, uniform and stable varieties are given extensive rights under the Bill. On the other hand, the Bill does not accommodate the specific characteristics of farmer varieties and nor does it contain specific provisions that safeguards the interests of smallholder farmers such as their right to freely use, save, sell and exchange farm saved seeds.
The Bill only states that the minister shall in making regulations take into account the need to safeguard the legitimate interests of breeders and to permit farmers to make ‘personal use on their own holdings’ of farm saved seed. This is a very limited provision and it is simply unacceptable that it does not safeguard the interests of millions of smallholder farmers in Ghana.
It is also equally unacceptable that the Bill places the burden of enforcing the private rights of breeder on the state and taxpayer by criminalizing infringement of breeders’ rights.
The Bill also lacks safeguards that are important to protect public interest and to prevent misappropriation of Ghana’s genetic resources as well as to ensure fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from the utilization of local germplasm.
The workshop also noted that the Bill has been developed without consultations with the wider civil society and smallholder farmer community.
The workshop noted that the Bill is inconsistent with Ghana’s obligations under the Convention on Biological Diversity and the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture.
GHANA’S BIOSAFETY ACT
Ghana’s Biosafety Act is often referred to as the worst such law on the continent as it contravenes several provisions of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, an international environmental agreement to which Ghana is Party. This Protocol was negotiated by the international community to regulate genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in recognition that this technology is new and poses risks to the environment, human health and society.
The Ghana Biosafety Act allows the regulatory agency to grant exemptions that undermine the risk assessment and public consultation processes of the Biosafety Protocol. It also ensures that independent oversight of GMOs is near impossible by seriously limiting public access to information and participation in decision-making. The Ghanaian Act represents a permitting system to allow foreign corporations to sell their product rather than a Biosafety System designed to protect the health, environment and socio-economic well-being of Ghanaians. GMOs are designed for large-scale industrial farmers and have no place in Ghana’s agricultural system, which is based on small-holder farmers.
GHANA’S PLANT AND FERTILIZER ACT
Ghana’s Plants and Fertilizer Act, 2010, Act 83 in Part Two deals with seed regulation. It promotes/supports only industrial plant breeding and does not deal with smallholder farmer managed seed systems, the need for the conservation of land races and traditional varieties and ignores farmers’ rights. The entire orientation of the law is towards genetically uniform, commercially bred varieties in terms of seed quality control and variety registration. It creates an exclusive seed market for certified improved, commercial varieties of seed and excludes farmer varieties from this marketing system. The market for registered seed is not for African farmer breeders but for multinational companies. The implementation of this Act will result in the total marginalization of small farmers and their needs and is also setting the stage for thousands of small elite farmers who will be drawn into seed certification systems, which can later also be used for GM seed production in the near future.
From here
Tuesday, October 01, 2013
Investment For Whose Benefit?
smallholder agri-investments
200,000 hectares of land given to multinational Louis Dreyfus in Côte d’Ivoire for rice export. 70 million pounds of UK taxpayer money to develop genetically modified crops. Privatization of seeds across continents. These are just a few projects in the last years under the banner of ‘investing in agriculture’.
This is why social movements are gearing up for one of the biggest emerging battles over the future of food sovereignty – the corporatization of investment.
The private sector portrays itself as the saviour of farming but as this newsletter shows it is small holders who are really investing in feeding people and building rural livelihoods.
Being taken in by the story of the overriding importance of corporate investment means, for example, that
‘codes of conduct’ to continue land grabbing are being developed instead of regulations to stop it.
A closer look at Africa shows that corporate private investment is a strategy
i) to sell more chemicals and seeds to African farmers, and
ii)to secure low cost access to land and resources for global supply chains that feed the rich
- through controlling small holders.
This will destroy the environment, kill genetic diversity and push thousands more into hunger.
In October the World Committee on Food Security (CFS) will meet to discuss principles for ‘Responsible investments in agriculture’.
We must shout out the message that not all investment is the same.
And ask important questions - Investment in what type of agriculture? By whom? For whose benefit?
Colombian farmers have just succeeded in rolling back seed privatization by asking this. And as the
Voices from the field show, small holders everywhere are rising to the task.
Kirtana Chandrasekaran,
Friends of the Earth International
from Nyeleni
Thursday, November 08, 2012
If Africa was a country
If Walmart were a country, its GDP (US$443.9bn) would be greater than that of South Africa's ($422bn). Visa would be bigger than Zimbabwe, Wells Fargo dwarfs Angola, and eBay, Amazon, Costco, Proctor & Gamble would swamp Madagascar, Kenya, Sudan and Libya respectively.
If Africa were a country its GDP (US$1.184 trillion) would be only around a fifteenth of the United States' ($15.776 trillion). That's a whole continent - the world's second largest - and a continent where around 15 percent of the world's population share 1.5 percent of the planet's total gross domestic product of $78.95 trillion.
Source
If Africa were a country its GDP (US$1.184 trillion) would be only around a fifteenth of the United States' ($15.776 trillion). That's a whole continent - the world's second largest - and a continent where around 15 percent of the world's population share 1.5 percent of the planet's total gross domestic product of $78.95 trillion.
Source
Tuesday, June 05, 2012
power to the farmer
In 1894, fourteen European and other countries including the U.S. (the “G-14” of the era) held a land grab conference in Berlin to "save" the Dark Continent. the real agenda was to carve up Africa between the European powers peacefully and without the need for internecine imperialistic wars. The Scramble for Africa gave Britain a nice slice of Africa stretching from Cape-to-Cairo. France took much of western Africa. King Leopold II of Belgium took personal possession of the Congo. Portugal grabbed Mozambique and Angola. Italy got Somalia and laid claim to parts of Ethiopia. The G-8’s “New Alliance for Food Security ” smacks of the old Scramble for Africa. The G-8 wants to liberate Africa from hunger, famine and starvation by facilitating the handover of millions of hectares of Africa's best land to the worlds' multinationals. They want to use multinational food conglomerates to “save” Africa from starvation by 1) subsidizing these giant agribusinesses to dump their agricultural surpluses in famine-stricken African countries, and 2) by greasing the hands of Africa’s corrupt dictators so that these multinationals could “lease” hundreds of millions of acres of Africa’s most arable land to cultivate export crops that command high prices on the global commodities markets, without contributing much to the domestic African market to alleviate endemic hunger.
With a steady growth in global population, the prospect of transforming Africa into vast commercialized farms is mouthwatering for global agribusinesses. In 2011, Africa imported $50 billion worth of food from the U.S. and Europe. Food prices in Africa are 200-300 percent higher than global prices, which means higher profit margins for multinationals that produce and distribute food. The “New Alliance” will accelerate the “transfer” of hundreds of millions of hectares of arable African land to Cargill, Dupont, Monsanto, Kraft, Unilever and the dozens of other signatory multinationals. Working jointly with Africa’s corrupt dictators, these multinationals will “liberate” the land from Africans just like the 19th Century scramble for Africa; but will they liberate Africa from the scourge of hunger, famine, starvation and poverty?
The standard response by the ruling regime and its international donors is to deny and evade the whole thing in clever euphemisms , calling it “severe malnutrition, “food insecurity”, etc, or they blame droughts and natural forces or use the endlessly supply food handouts of foreign aid as an excuse. Bad governance, dictatorships and corruption are rarely blamed for the predictable and recurrent famines and starvation in Ethiopia. Africans suffer from hunger and thirst because they are victims of ruthless dictatorships! Eight out of every ten Ethiopians live in rural areas with average land holdings of 0.93 hectare. The Zenawi’s regime has transferred at least 3,619,509 ha of land to investors, although the actual number may be higher.”These “lease” transfers (for 99 years) are handed out to companies from India, China, Saudi Arabia and others for cents per hectare. Further reported it has led to displacement from farmland with the vast majority of locals receiving little or no compensation. The UN World Food Programme in Ethiopia recently announced that 3.2 million people are food insecure in Ethiopia and that it needs an additional US$183 million to provide emergency assistance. At the same time, Mitiku Kassa, Zenawi’s official responsible for agriculture, blamed the “food insecurity” on drought and the irregular rains. The international beggary proficiently practiced by Zenawi’s regime has been transformed into a high art form. It is to stretch out cupped palms for handouts of crumbs left over from exports by Karuturi Global, Saudi Star, Cargill, Monsanto. The “New Alliance” is a brilliant strategy that will sustain the decades long vicious cycle of dependence and food aid addiction in Africa while displacing and severely undercutting the productive capacity of the African smallholder farmers to deal with famine on their own.
Rajiv Khan, the USAID Administrator and Zenawi can talk about “public investment” and the “smallholder farmer” until the cows come home, but the fact of the matter is that neither Ethiopia nor the rest of Africa can achieve food sufficiency by tethering predatory multinational corporations with corrupt African dictators in a new “alliance for food security” and and strapping them around the necks of Africa’s smallholder farmers. A joint venture between jackals and hyenas will never benefit the gazelles. Does the smallholder Ethiopian farmer scratching out a living on 0.93 hectare stand a snowball’s chance in hell competing against Cargill and Dupont? Is the future of the smallholder African farmer going to be as a consumer of food produced by global agricultural multinationals instead of being a local producer and harvester of his/her own food? Does it make sense to hand out the country’s most arable land to “foreign investors” to produce food for export and ensure food security in other countries when Ethiopians are dying from starvation? There can be no smallholder farmer when there is no land to have and to hold. When the smallholder farmer is arbitrarily evicted from his land he becomes a landless, hopeless, helpless, restless, hapless, rootless, voiceless and powerless beggar of international food aid.
Hunger is not an inescapable destiny and it can be eliminated. This requires first and foremost the democratic participation by the people.
Adapted from here
With a steady growth in global population, the prospect of transforming Africa into vast commercialized farms is mouthwatering for global agribusinesses. In 2011, Africa imported $50 billion worth of food from the U.S. and Europe. Food prices in Africa are 200-300 percent higher than global prices, which means higher profit margins for multinationals that produce and distribute food. The “New Alliance” will accelerate the “transfer” of hundreds of millions of hectares of arable African land to Cargill, Dupont, Monsanto, Kraft, Unilever and the dozens of other signatory multinationals. Working jointly with Africa’s corrupt dictators, these multinationals will “liberate” the land from Africans just like the 19th Century scramble for Africa; but will they liberate Africa from the scourge of hunger, famine, starvation and poverty?
The standard response by the ruling regime and its international donors is to deny and evade the whole thing in clever euphemisms , calling it “severe malnutrition, “food insecurity”, etc, or they blame droughts and natural forces or use the endlessly supply food handouts of foreign aid as an excuse. Bad governance, dictatorships and corruption are rarely blamed for the predictable and recurrent famines and starvation in Ethiopia. Africans suffer from hunger and thirst because they are victims of ruthless dictatorships! Eight out of every ten Ethiopians live in rural areas with average land holdings of 0.93 hectare. The Zenawi’s regime has transferred at least 3,619,509 ha of land to investors, although the actual number may be higher.”These “lease” transfers (for 99 years) are handed out to companies from India, China, Saudi Arabia and others for cents per hectare. Further reported it has led to displacement from farmland with the vast majority of locals receiving little or no compensation. The UN World Food Programme in Ethiopia recently announced that 3.2 million people are food insecure in Ethiopia and that it needs an additional US$183 million to provide emergency assistance. At the same time, Mitiku Kassa, Zenawi’s official responsible for agriculture, blamed the “food insecurity” on drought and the irregular rains. The international beggary proficiently practiced by Zenawi’s regime has been transformed into a high art form. It is to stretch out cupped palms for handouts of crumbs left over from exports by Karuturi Global, Saudi Star, Cargill, Monsanto. The “New Alliance” is a brilliant strategy that will sustain the decades long vicious cycle of dependence and food aid addiction in Africa while displacing and severely undercutting the productive capacity of the African smallholder farmers to deal with famine on their own.
Rajiv Khan, the USAID Administrator and Zenawi can talk about “public investment” and the “smallholder farmer” until the cows come home, but the fact of the matter is that neither Ethiopia nor the rest of Africa can achieve food sufficiency by tethering predatory multinational corporations with corrupt African dictators in a new “alliance for food security” and and strapping them around the necks of Africa’s smallholder farmers. A joint venture between jackals and hyenas will never benefit the gazelles. Does the smallholder Ethiopian farmer scratching out a living on 0.93 hectare stand a snowball’s chance in hell competing against Cargill and Dupont? Is the future of the smallholder African farmer going to be as a consumer of food produced by global agricultural multinationals instead of being a local producer and harvester of his/her own food? Does it make sense to hand out the country’s most arable land to “foreign investors” to produce food for export and ensure food security in other countries when Ethiopians are dying from starvation? There can be no smallholder farmer when there is no land to have and to hold. When the smallholder farmer is arbitrarily evicted from his land he becomes a landless, hopeless, helpless, restless, hapless, rootless, voiceless and powerless beggar of international food aid.
Hunger is not an inescapable destiny and it can be eliminated. This requires first and foremost the democratic participation by the people.
Adapted from here
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