Land grabs take food away

February 25, 2009
A. Gaffar Peang-Meth
Pacific Daily News (Guam)

Migration is perennial. People migrate. Their reasons may differ. In ancient times, people migrated to uninhabited land, settled and farmed.

At the height of their power, the Romans conquered and colonized lands and peoples. In 1492, Columbus stumbled into the Americas, his arrival followed by early European settlements and the expulsion of indigenous inhabitants. In 1500-1800, the more successful Europeans from France, Spain, the British empire, the Netherlands and Portugal grabbed lands in faraway places inhabited by native populations, planted their national flags and enriched themselves with local resources, during the extensive period of Western colonization.

Land grabbing is an old habit. When land is acquired by others fraudulently or forcefully, or when land is taken and compensated at a price below its actual value, it is generally called a "land grab."

These days, climate change, soil destruction, depleted supplies of clean water, the need for biofuels to power vehicles, heat homes and supply cook stoves have contributed to an exploding world food crisis, which has contributed to the world's financial meltdown.

The need for food and fuel led many governments to look for answers in the land.

"SEIZED! The 2008 land grab for food and financial security" by the Spain-based agricultural rights group GRAIN, is an excellent article that provides a comprehensive review of the land grab problem.

"Food-insecure" governments that worry about how to feed their populations in the future have been busily making deals with governments of less-developed countries to lease or buy millions of hectares of farmland to grow crops -- not for local communities but for exportation to their countries. Following behind them to take control of the new land are the profit-making private corporations.

People need to eat, food needs to be produced, biofuels are lacking, the financial crisis hits everywhere, cheap land exists for lease or purchase, governments in poorer countries are ready and willing to sell.

In Asia, China leads India, Japan, Malaysia, South Korea in the act of grabbing land anywhere; in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia leads the Gulf states of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates. Libya and Egypt also look for land abroad.

GRAIN says, China, with 40 percent of the world's farmers and nine percent of the world's farmland (and dwindling), has bought huge areas of land in the world in "hush-hush" deals; set up large farms; flown in Chinese farmers, scientists, extension workers and technologies, "displacing native biodiversity and bypassing local trade unions," to produce crops "the Chinese way."

As such, local resentment is unavoidable and questions have been raised. As crops go to China, what do locals have to eat?

The Gulf states, with desert and sand, scarce soil and water, but with enormous amounts of oil and money, are striking deals with foreign governments with "capital and oil contracts in exchange for guarantees that their corporations will have access to farmland and be able to export the products back home," says GRAIN.

If foreign "diplomats and investors hop around from country to country searching for new farmland," writes GRAIN, "African and Asian governments being approached for their lands are readily accepting the proposals."

But, "These operations won't necessarily dent the food crisis. ... Nor ... bring 'development' to local communities," says GRAIN, which reminded that through farm projects, the Gulf states are supporting the authoritarian Khartoum regime, just as India is supporting Burma's military dictatorship, and "what happens over the long term when you grant control of your country's farmland to foreign nations and investors?"

GRAIN warned, "behind the rhetoric of win-win deals, the real aim of these contracts is not agricultural development, much less rural development, but simply agribusiness development."

So, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization chief, Jacques Diouf, worries: "Foreign direct investment in agriculture is the only way we are going to eradicate global poverty. I have no problems in Arabs doing the investment. Where I start getting worried is (a situation in which investors) rush and buy land all over the place. ... Land is a political hot potato. ... My job is to avoid ... provoking a negative response in the developing world."

GRAIN pointed out that "the real problem with the current land grab ... is the restructuring" of the lands into "large industrial estates connected to large, far-off markets. Farmers will never be real farmers again, job or no job." It says, "workers, farmers and local communities will inevitably lose access to land for food production."

Burma and Cambodia are listed by GRAIN as among the "most heavily targeted states." In Cambodia, 100,000 families, or half a million Cambodians, "currently lack food," says GRAIN, and the World Food Programme has had to ship $35 million "worth of food aid to relieve the hunger plaguing Cambodia's countryside," while Premier Hun Sen leased "Khmer paddy fields to Qatar and Kuwait, so they can produce their own rice" in exchange for nearly $600 million in loans.

As the Jan. 3 Agence France Presse quoted Walden Bello of the Bangkok-based advocacy group Focus on the Global South, many land deals were struck in dysfunctional and corruption-ridden nations, and Bello rejected claims that foreign farm projects will bring jobs and improve infrastructure. "What we're talking about is private parties using state contracts to enrich themselves. It's an intersection of corrupt governments and land-hungry nations."

A. Gaffar Peang-Meth, Ph.D., is retired from the University of Guam, where he taught political science for 13 years. Write him at peangmeth@yahoo.com.