The explosive convergence of food and financial crisis of 2008 triggered a new race for the appropriation of African land, which remains to this day. Food corporations and private investors seeking to start their cut
Again, the increase in hunger in the world is in the headlines of the media. Faced with soaring food prices in 2008, many countries concerned to ensure feed their populations and to the inability to achieve their own crops due to lack of soil and water resource availability, decided to buy land in other states, mainly in Africa. It is a practice that increases today.
Among the nations cited by buying more media reports are Persian Gulf nations of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which do not have enough fertile land to provide food to all citizens, and those who find it much cheaper to produce wheat in any place beyond its borders, to keep systems irrigation.
Most of its products imported from Europe, and currencies, except Kuwait, are pegged to the U.S. dollar, so when prices soar on the world market simultaneously with the collapse of the dollar, this meant that inflate to more than double their expenditures on food imports.
At that, many of these states are mapped out a joint strategy for food production abroad. Agreements offered oil in return for contracts that allow their corporations access to moist, fertile soil, and then take the harvest to their countries.
The need to feed its population has not escaped China, gripped by the urgency of providing food to over 1 300 million. Despite having 40 percent of the world's farmers, just eight percent of the arable land of the globe. However, it has been charged with finding different mechanisms of access to land. To this end, Beijing has taken shape dozens of agricultural cooperation agreements, through which it provides consulting, technology and funds in exchange for access to fertile lands of other nations.
South Korea and Japan are also among the initiators of the offensive States purchase and lease of land abroad. Although both nations are very rich, have not developed self-sufficiency in the food sector, and therefore rely heavily on imported agricultural products.
ground in the race for very long strides being taken by white South African racists. To the forces of democratic government to end apartheid, the Afrikaner agribusiness seeks to establish itself in other neighboring countries like Zambia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Malawi, Uganda and Mozambique, with full support from multilateral lending agencies. So far as these landowners have secured tens of millions of hectares in the Republic of Congo, one third of the land surface.
Most concern is that the private sector is the main actor. And we know that corporations, engrossed in getting more and more profits, have been responsible for food hoarding and speculating with their apparent scarcity, to shoot prices on the world market. Furthermore, the consortium does not move precisely the noble idea to ensure enough product to offset the deficits, but reap really, really hungry ... the least they care. Tuileries
WB
The fertile land purchase overseas is becoming very dangerous, because it is not only a practice adopted by states that want to wean a despotic market: many TNCs have charged in recent years of hoarding huge tracts of fertile soil.
also involved in this process agroimperialistas monopoly power to speculate precisely many of which have been subject to the current situation. These consortia, octopus, such as Goldman Sachs and German Deutschbank.
Not a few are now circling like vultures to Africa thanks to the boost they have given in recent years the World Bank (WB) and International Monetary Fund, which have forced African nations to open up to foreign capital very unfavorable conditions. Now, besides oil and minerals, that seeks to promote foreign investment in farmland.
As expected, the Bank is behind all these transactions, which defends by arguing that these countries on the continent will come technology, infrastructure and revenue.
There are hands that are not seen in the background of these negotiations, as the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the commercial arm of BM, very important for different private companies are buying rights to farmland. Benefactor also disguises the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA, for short English), which provides political risk insurance for projects of land grabbing.
According to GRAIN, an international non-profit organization that supports farmers and social movements, in 2010, MIGA has provided about $ 50 million to cover investments of 300 million dollars from the firm Chayton Capital, to develop projects in Zambia and Botswana.
The worst thing is that the food they produce is not intended to communities in developing countries, many of them heavily dependent on international agencies to feed its population, as is the case of Sudan, but will go directly to nations whose companies control and exploit the soil. Exporting the same model prevents a true development, while still curtailing the poor countries to import much needed products such as rice and wheat, even if their fields and warehouses full of such property.
For other corporations, as the British Silverstreet Capital, has been crucial role in protecting the investment in agricultural land provided by MIGA. Example
the support provided by the WB through these two agencies for profit was investing $ 75 million made by IFC in Altima One World Agriculture Fund, a Cayman Islands registered fund, which in the words of one its executives seeks to create the "first Exxon Mobile in the agricultural sector", and it plans to enter into farmland Saharan Africa, South America and Central and Eastern Europe.
Chayton Atlas Britain's Agriculture Company, another private equity firm that hypocritically says it aims "to feed Africa 'and invests in the south of the continent, also enjoyed the benefits of BM.
More losses than benefits
are additional dangers: many poor people on earth who find a livelihood, may now be in danger of being barred from access to this or that are deprived of their property, water and other resources. With the emergence of transnational corporations also get use of fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides that degrade soils, and land use for biofuels, one of the causes that have led to the gradual privatization of land and influenced high food prices, in addition to payments they can receive contracts corrupt governments lacking in transparency.
A report by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED, for its acronym in English) at the request of the FAO and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) said that although these operations can create many opportunities (Outlets, employment, investment in infrastructure and increasing agricultural productivity) can also be very harmful if you exclude local people from decision making on the allocation of land and not protecting your right about them, what which has been happening. Another
alerts made by most analysts as to the conduct of the phenomenon in Africa, is in the low culture of legality that owners may have to face negotiations manipulated, the terms are often incomprehensible to them. Sometimes not even have title to their land because the hereditary transfer of property is made orally, without reasonable legal document, and therefore no longer be entitled to a land they have left a lifetime.
The granting of arable land to other countries or private investors to produce food to be sent to other people, is certainly a blow to the movement of peasants fighting for many years for land reform. An example of this was the hard fight waged by a few years ago in Egypt, small farmers in the district of Qena, to recover 1 600 hectares were granted to Kobebussan, a Japanese agribusiness conglomerate, to produce food for a country of Japan.
The list of negative effects is much longer than the benefits. And on the horizon find no way out for those in Africa and around the world, they face hunger and starvation. Once again, solutions for some ... "And for others?
* Photo: GRAIN
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