Chido Makunike asks how foreign investors will get along exporting food from famine-stricken countries …
I dunno, some people! They seem to think that their being able to eat is more important than company profits!
Showing posts with label global land grab. Show all posts
Showing posts with label global land grab. Show all posts
Thursday, 11 August 2011
Friday, 5 August 2011
Ethiopian People Starve as Government Flogs off Land to Foreign Interests Aided by British Taxpayer
Having felt forced to renounce overt imperial control, the West's ruling powers went on to develop a sorry history of supporting 3rd World dictators who appear to serve our regime's interests as well as their own megalomania. To a long list, some of whose more recent luminaries include the likes of Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gadaffi, have we to add Meles Zenawi Asres, distinguished founder of the Marxist-Leninist League of Tigray, and a man who combines his job as Prime Minister of Ethiopia with being Chairman of the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), and head of the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF)?
In an article appearing today in Abugida, the Ethiopian American Information Centre, entitled “Meles Zenawi`s land lease and famine in Ethiopia” Seifu Tsegaye Demmissie denounces the rule of Meles Zenawi as an “ethno-fascist regime” in which “political expediency is the main reason behind Meles Zenawi`s policy of preventing private ownership of cultivable land because he knows that it would mean losing control of farmers and triggering the end of his political power in Ethiopia.”
“The unfavorable domestic land ownership policy of the ethno fascist regime of Meles Zenawi has a pivotal role in making the country vulnerable to the devastating famines. It is to be recalled that the west had blamed the ravaging famine of the 80s on the policies of the military regime of Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam. In fact, the current pro-western regime of Meles Zenawi has inherited and pursues the same land ownership policy which hampers productivity. It is to be recalled that the west had blamed the ravaging famine of the 80s on the policies of the military regime of Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam. Despite this glaring fact, the west are blaming the famine in Ethiopia on drought and this shows an apparent effort on their part to deny or cover up the failure of their close partnership with the regime of Meles Zenawi. This is a partnership which has been instrumental in the formulation and implementation of economic policies which are impoverishing the ordinary citizens and aggravating famine and poverty. As opposed to the current ethno-fascist regime of Meles Zenawi, the military government had never embarked upon leases or sales or transfers of ownership of fertile and virgin lands to foreigners.”
Under the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front regime the economy is dominated by “endowment” corporations controlled by the Party. The largest of these is EFFORT, the Endowment Fund for the Rehabilitation of Tigray. It comes as no surprise to find that the deputy chief executive of EFFORT is one Azeb Mesfin - none other than Zenawi’s wife.
In 2010, after a 6 month investigation Human Rights Watch researcher Ben Rawlence described Ethiopia as “one of the most repressive societies in the world.”
"We found systematic discrimination from one end of the country to another against people who were members of the opposition party or people who disagreed with the regime."
Latest Report: “Ethiopia 'using aid as weapon of oppression'".
When will the Powers That Be take action to prevent our aid - which we can ill afford anyway - from being abused in this way? Don’t hold your breath. But a wink to Mr Zenawi here - you might like to ensure your back is well covered, as Western governments have a nasty habit of turning on their friends and you wouldn't want to end up like Muammar ... or Saddam now would you?
Hat-tip to the Land Grab blog.
In an article appearing today in Abugida, the Ethiopian American Information Centre, entitled “Meles Zenawi`s land lease and famine in Ethiopia” Seifu Tsegaye Demmissie denounces the rule of Meles Zenawi as an “ethno-fascist regime” in which “political expediency is the main reason behind Meles Zenawi`s policy of preventing private ownership of cultivable land because he knows that it would mean losing control of farmers and triggering the end of his political power in Ethiopia.”
“The unfavorable domestic land ownership policy of the ethno fascist regime of Meles Zenawi has a pivotal role in making the country vulnerable to the devastating famines. It is to be recalled that the west had blamed the ravaging famine of the 80s on the policies of the military regime of Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam. In fact, the current pro-western regime of Meles Zenawi has inherited and pursues the same land ownership policy which hampers productivity. It is to be recalled that the west had blamed the ravaging famine of the 80s on the policies of the military regime of Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam. Despite this glaring fact, the west are blaming the famine in Ethiopia on drought and this shows an apparent effort on their part to deny or cover up the failure of their close partnership with the regime of Meles Zenawi. This is a partnership which has been instrumental in the formulation and implementation of economic policies which are impoverishing the ordinary citizens and aggravating famine and poverty. As opposed to the current ethno-fascist regime of Meles Zenawi, the military government had never embarked upon leases or sales or transfers of ownership of fertile and virgin lands to foreigners.”
Under the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front regime the economy is dominated by “endowment” corporations controlled by the Party. The largest of these is EFFORT, the Endowment Fund for the Rehabilitation of Tigray. It comes as no surprise to find that the deputy chief executive of EFFORT is one Azeb Mesfin - none other than Zenawi’s wife.
In 2010, after a 6 month investigation Human Rights Watch researcher Ben Rawlence described Ethiopia as “one of the most repressive societies in the world.”
"We found systematic discrimination from one end of the country to another against people who were members of the opposition party or people who disagreed with the regime."
Latest Report: “Ethiopia 'using aid as weapon of oppression'".
When will the Powers That Be take action to prevent our aid - which we can ill afford anyway - from being abused in this way? Don’t hold your breath. But a wink to Mr Zenawi here - you might like to ensure your back is well covered, as Western governments have a nasty habit of turning on their friends and you wouldn't want to end up like Muammar ... or Saddam now would you?
Hat-tip to the Land Grab blog.
Saturday, 16 April 2011
Planet for Sale
Alexis Marant (interview here) has directed a new film called "Planete a Vendre" which will be on French TV April 19th 2011.
The Global Land Grab blog posts with more details, explaining the dangerous logic behind what's going on:
“To feed the 9.2 billion people expected by 2050 will require doubling agricultural production. A boon to investors who pushed up from 5 to 175 billion in speculative capital invested in agricultural commodities between 2000 and 2007.”
There's also a trailer here showing the factors that are now driving most wealthy Middle Eastern countries, for example, to get a-hold of poorer people's land overseas and make sure that their populations, which are also still increasing, will continue to be able to import most of the food they demand.
Don't ask where the poor will be able to grow their food in the future ...
The Global Land Grab blog posts with more details, explaining the dangerous logic behind what's going on:
“To feed the 9.2 billion people expected by 2050 will require doubling agricultural production. A boon to investors who pushed up from 5 to 175 billion in speculative capital invested in agricultural commodities between 2000 and 2007.”
There's also a trailer here showing the factors that are now driving most wealthy Middle Eastern countries, for example, to get a-hold of poorer people's land overseas and make sure that their populations, which are also still increasing, will continue to be able to import most of the food they demand.
Don't ask where the poor will be able to grow their food in the future ...
Tuesday, 5 April 2011
It's All a-Happening!
Starting tomorrow there's a three-day conference on land-grabbing in Brighton. Speakers include Tania Murray Li, who:
"... critiques land deal mainstream thinking and brings labour consequences to the centre of her analysis. She highlights how land deal dispossession leaves some without shelter, food or the means of (re)production. Like Olivier de Schutter, she is not convinced by arguments in favour of a 'code of conduct' to make land investments 'pro-poor'. Rather, she argues that, where safeguards have been effectively put in place for the rural poor, they have been the result of political organisation and social mobilisation: "Without such struggles, and such settlements, even the most assiduous regulatory regime has no purchase"..."
And, for those over Sussex way next weekend, there's a celebratory walk in St Leonard's Forest on Saturday the 9th, organised by Action for Access. "You will see that the Forestry Commission is in the middle of a huge programme of restoration work to bring back the heathy rides and the old broad-leaved forest, to make glades and restore worn pathways. This is brave work, and comes not a moment too soon, for the early decades of their ownership, after their purchase in circa 1951, did great and harsh damage to what was left of the old forest ecosystem." And more events planned for May as well ...
April 17th and 18th sees Free Our Seeds, an invitation "to participate in two days of action during which we will make clear our opposition to EU policies and our intention to resist against them."
"We are not prepared to accept that the basis of our livelihood is handed over to multinationals. In the future we intend to maintain and pass on the heritage of our plant varieties. The main event will take place on 17 April, the day of international peasant resistance declared by Via Campesina, followed by a demonstration on the 18th. If you cannot come to Brussels, organise similar events in your countries, cities and villages!"
Not too much sign of peasant resistance 'ere in North Devon ...
Uz, um, peasants, up here be just a little bit more sedate, with the Orchards Live 20th anniversary Tea Party taking place in Kings Nympton village hall on the 1st of May.
"... critiques land deal mainstream thinking and brings labour consequences to the centre of her analysis. She highlights how land deal dispossession leaves some without shelter, food or the means of (re)production. Like Olivier de Schutter, she is not convinced by arguments in favour of a 'code of conduct' to make land investments 'pro-poor'. Rather, she argues that, where safeguards have been effectively put in place for the rural poor, they have been the result of political organisation and social mobilisation: "Without such struggles, and such settlements, even the most assiduous regulatory regime has no purchase"..."
And, for those over Sussex way next weekend, there's a celebratory walk in St Leonard's Forest on Saturday the 9th, organised by Action for Access. "You will see that the Forestry Commission is in the middle of a huge programme of restoration work to bring back the heathy rides and the old broad-leaved forest, to make glades and restore worn pathways. This is brave work, and comes not a moment too soon, for the early decades of their ownership, after their purchase in circa 1951, did great and harsh damage to what was left of the old forest ecosystem." And more events planned for May as well ...
April 17th and 18th sees Free Our Seeds, an invitation "to participate in two days of action during which we will make clear our opposition to EU policies and our intention to resist against them."
"We are not prepared to accept that the basis of our livelihood is handed over to multinationals. In the future we intend to maintain and pass on the heritage of our plant varieties. The main event will take place on 17 April, the day of international peasant resistance declared by Via Campesina, followed by a demonstration on the 18th. If you cannot come to Brussels, organise similar events in your countries, cities and villages!"
Not too much sign of peasant resistance 'ere in North Devon ...
Uz, um, peasants, up here be just a little bit more sedate, with the Orchards Live 20th anniversary Tea Party taking place in Kings Nympton village hall on the 1st of May.
Thursday, 13 January 2011
Getting Rid of All Those Poor People
When evictions become routine
There's far too much funny money sloshing around the crazy world of finance, greedily seeking high returns and excessive profits now. Are we in the last phases of a centuries-long, ever intensifying global exploitation binge?
Whatever, it's quite clear who are the real misanthropists: the transnational land grabbers taking advantage of poverty, war, corruption, failing governance and inadequate land rights, turning the poor off their land and taking it to grow agribusiness monocultures, often for export.
The BBC radio have at last started to catch up with the trend with their feature today on ‘Crossing Continents’ about stomach-turning events in Cambodia, where “an estimated 15% of the country is now leased to private developers and stories are filtering in from the country's most impoverished farmers who tell of fear, violence and intimidation as private companies team up with armed police to force them from their land.”
They talk with Loun Sovath, a monk from Siem Reap province where peasants have been "victims of a high-profile land grab by rich and powerful people earlier this year [2009] which saw them lose 100 hectares. Some villagers were shot and wounded during a protest at the disputed site. The monk said the police arrested and handcuffed villagers just as the Khmer Rouge had done, then jailed them" according to the Ki-Media blog which reported on villagers' attempts at petitioning the government.
Already between 2006 and 2007 Adhoc, a Cambodian rights watchdog reported that "about 50,000 people throughout the country were evicted for development projects" and the problem just seems to be getting worse, with land in the capital being seized from the poor by a government working hand in glove with private companies to build luxury apartments and shopping malls.
There's far too much funny money sloshing around the crazy world of finance, greedily seeking high returns and excessive profits now. Are we in the last phases of a centuries-long, ever intensifying global exploitation binge?
Whatever, it's quite clear who are the real misanthropists: the transnational land grabbers taking advantage of poverty, war, corruption, failing governance and inadequate land rights, turning the poor off their land and taking it to grow agribusiness monocultures, often for export.
The BBC radio have at last started to catch up with the trend with their feature today on ‘Crossing Continents’ about stomach-turning events in Cambodia, where “an estimated 15% of the country is now leased to private developers and stories are filtering in from the country's most impoverished farmers who tell of fear, violence and intimidation as private companies team up with armed police to force them from their land.”
They talk with Loun Sovath, a monk from Siem Reap province where peasants have been "victims of a high-profile land grab by rich and powerful people earlier this year [2009] which saw them lose 100 hectares. Some villagers were shot and wounded during a protest at the disputed site. The monk said the police arrested and handcuffed villagers just as the Khmer Rouge had done, then jailed them" according to the Ki-Media blog which reported on villagers' attempts at petitioning the government.
Already between 2006 and 2007 Adhoc, a Cambodian rights watchdog reported that "about 50,000 people throughout the country were evicted for development projects" and the problem just seems to be getting worse, with land in the capital being seized from the poor by a government working hand in glove with private companies to build luxury apartments and shopping malls.
Sunday, 2 January 2011
That Trillion Dollar Food Bill
"With the pressure on world prices of most commodities not abating, the international community must remain vigilant against further supply shocks in 2011" FAO (pdf).
According to the Washington Post: “In the 10 years before the 2007-08 food crisis, the global bill for food imports averaged less than $500 billion a year.” But now, since that initial Shock, the crisis, if too little remediating action is taken, seems likely to escalate further causing more major global repercussions in the form of gnawing hunger and destabilisation.
The FAO food price index tells the story in stark terms. From a baseline of 90 in 2000 it rose to 115 in 2005, soaring through 154 in 2007 and up to 191 in 2008. It then dropped back a little in 2009, but by October 2010 it had leapt up again to 198, reaching a peak of 205 in November 2010, the last month so far recorded.
We Have to Admit that Western “Development” Models Have Failed
These higher than ever food prices in a deliberately globalised, commoditised world, mean that the burgeoning numbers of impoverished peoples - who let’s not forget, have been effectively encouraged to become dependent on imports of their very basic sustenance - will be pushed closer to starvation ever more frequently and over wider areas. "The import dependance has become quite devastating, the expenditure for Less Developed Countries on food imports rose from 9 billion dollars in 2002 to 23 billion in 2008" reported Supachai Panitchpakdi, The Secretary General of the UN Conference on Trade and Development.
And as if all that wasn't bad enough, you'd hardly believe it, but even now rulers of poor nations, with the connivance of the wealthy transnational community, are pursuing wilful asset-stripping and sell-off of vital farmland, which will exacerbate hunger and dependence even further, entrenching it ineradicably into future decades if no-one acts to stop it.
As delegates told ENInews at a recent conference in Nairobi covering the global land-grab: "... corporations are using land for intensive farming, leaving it badly degraded for use by local communities when contracts end ... Global food market price volatility affecting countries depending on imports is a key factor driving the rush ... A surging demand for bio-fuels by oil companies," and perhaps most shockingly "the expectation of subsidies for carbon seizure through plantations and the avoidance of deforestation are the other factors."
IFPRI Report, 'Reflections on the Global food Crisis: How Did It Happen? How Has It Hurt? And How Can We Prevent the Next One?'
Ht: STWR
According to the Washington Post: “In the 10 years before the 2007-08 food crisis, the global bill for food imports averaged less than $500 billion a year.” But now, since that initial Shock, the crisis, if too little remediating action is taken, seems likely to escalate further causing more major global repercussions in the form of gnawing hunger and destabilisation.
The FAO food price index tells the story in stark terms. From a baseline of 90 in 2000 it rose to 115 in 2005, soaring through 154 in 2007 and up to 191 in 2008. It then dropped back a little in 2009, but by October 2010 it had leapt up again to 198, reaching a peak of 205 in November 2010, the last month so far recorded.
We Have to Admit that Western “Development” Models Have Failed
These higher than ever food prices in a deliberately globalised, commoditised world, mean that the burgeoning numbers of impoverished peoples - who let’s not forget, have been effectively encouraged to become dependent on imports of their very basic sustenance - will be pushed closer to starvation ever more frequently and over wider areas. "The import dependance has become quite devastating, the expenditure for Less Developed Countries on food imports rose from 9 billion dollars in 2002 to 23 billion in 2008" reported Supachai Panitchpakdi, The Secretary General of the UN Conference on Trade and Development.
And as if all that wasn't bad enough, you'd hardly believe it, but even now rulers of poor nations, with the connivance of the wealthy transnational community, are pursuing wilful asset-stripping and sell-off of vital farmland, which will exacerbate hunger and dependence even further, entrenching it ineradicably into future decades if no-one acts to stop it.
As delegates told ENInews at a recent conference in Nairobi covering the global land-grab: "... corporations are using land for intensive farming, leaving it badly degraded for use by local communities when contracts end ... Global food market price volatility affecting countries depending on imports is a key factor driving the rush ... A surging demand for bio-fuels by oil companies," and perhaps most shockingly "the expectation of subsidies for carbon seizure through plantations and the avoidance of deforestation are the other factors."
IFPRI Report, 'Reflections on the Global food Crisis: How Did It Happen? How Has It Hurt? And How Can We Prevent the Next One?'
Ht: STWR
Tuesday, 19 October 2010
Agribusiness: Environmental Destruction and Slavery
"It is no accident that globalisation has seen the reemergence of slavery …" writes Felicity Lawrence:
"In Brazil, investigating the explosion in soya production in the Amazon region for my book 'Eat Your Heart Out', I heard of the slaves found on farms being cleared in the rainforest. A Dominican priest, Xavier Plassat, who campaigns to free them told me how he had just returned with government swat squads from a farm 60km off the road where 200 workers were being kept in slavery, labouring without pay, deprived of freedom of movement and controlled by debt bondage. They had no clean water and little food and were living 30 to a room. Plassat believed slavery and agribusiness were inextricably linked. Monoculture for export, the large-scale intensive farming dominated by transnational corporations (TNC), and favoured by trade rules and international financial institutions, had created the conditions for slavery by eliminating the traditional small scale farming that provided food for 60% of the Brazilian population. He is not alone. Kevin Bales, the great expert on modern slavery, has shown how driving peasant farmers off the land has created a new supply of dispossessed workers who can be pressed into this condition."
And although people were already being driven off the land before, NGOs like GRAIN are now showing that this process has been even further intensified since the Banker-induced Crisis. The ramifications of the appropriation of poor peoples' land by rich nations are huge. In Madagascar a plan by South Korea to buy up around a third of the country's arable land caused the fall of President Ravalomanana. Thankfully that deal was cancelled, but many other people's land is still under the hammer. Even the World Bank has been reluctantly forced to admit there is a problem, despite shamefully being implicated in it themselves:
"[T]here is an enormous farmland grab going on around the world ever since the 2008 food and financial crises and it shows no signs of abating. The Bank says that the 463 projects it tallied from Farmlandgrab.org between October 2008 and June 2009 cover at least 46.6 million hectares of land …"
"… investors are taking advantage of "weak governance" and the "absence of legal protection" for local communities to push people off their lands. Additionally, it finds that the investments are giving almost zero back to affected communities in terms of jobs or compensation, to say nothing of food security. The message we get is that virtually nowhere, among the countries and cases the Bank examined, is there much to celebrate."
"Many investments (...) failed to live up to expectations and, instead of generating sustainable benefits, contributed to asset loss and left local people worse off than they would have been without the investment."
The reality of modern industrialised agriculture is plain, and again succinctly expressed by Felicity Lawrence:
"Expansionist agriculture and empires have always depended on slave labour, as Latin authors of the Roman empire complained centuries ago. Today, we live in an era when the dominant powers don't officially "do" empire, so economic control takes a new privatised form in the TNC. Modern slavery has evolved to match. The straightforward ownership of chattel slavery is gone, replaced instead by an outsourced, subcontracted kind of control over people, which can be terminated when they have served their purpose. The transnationals universally abhor any idea of slavery or forced labour and yet it is found in their supply chains. Slaves and exploited migrants, often driven into migration by the squeeze on family agriculture, are what make the economics of today's agribusiness work."
There is currently a Sustainable Livestock Bill (PDF) going through Parliament, which should go a little way to addressing some of the iniquities of globalised agriculture, by ensuring that subsidies are re-oriented towards more local and small-scale farming, for example. It is due to receive its second reading on Friday 12th November. Has your MP signed the EDM? It is important to get as many MPs to be in the House and vote for the Bill as possible. More information here and here (dumbed down version).
More on the Global Land Grab
"In Brazil, investigating the explosion in soya production in the Amazon region for my book 'Eat Your Heart Out', I heard of the slaves found on farms being cleared in the rainforest. A Dominican priest, Xavier Plassat, who campaigns to free them told me how he had just returned with government swat squads from a farm 60km off the road where 200 workers were being kept in slavery, labouring without pay, deprived of freedom of movement and controlled by debt bondage. They had no clean water and little food and were living 30 to a room. Plassat believed slavery and agribusiness were inextricably linked. Monoculture for export, the large-scale intensive farming dominated by transnational corporations (TNC), and favoured by trade rules and international financial institutions, had created the conditions for slavery by eliminating the traditional small scale farming that provided food for 60% of the Brazilian population. He is not alone. Kevin Bales, the great expert on modern slavery, has shown how driving peasant farmers off the land has created a new supply of dispossessed workers who can be pressed into this condition."
And although people were already being driven off the land before, NGOs like GRAIN are now showing that this process has been even further intensified since the Banker-induced Crisis. The ramifications of the appropriation of poor peoples' land by rich nations are huge. In Madagascar a plan by South Korea to buy up around a third of the country's arable land caused the fall of President Ravalomanana. Thankfully that deal was cancelled, but many other people's land is still under the hammer. Even the World Bank has been reluctantly forced to admit there is a problem, despite shamefully being implicated in it themselves:
"[T]here is an enormous farmland grab going on around the world ever since the 2008 food and financial crises and it shows no signs of abating. The Bank says that the 463 projects it tallied from Farmlandgrab.org between October 2008 and June 2009 cover at least 46.6 million hectares of land …"
"… investors are taking advantage of "weak governance" and the "absence of legal protection" for local communities to push people off their lands. Additionally, it finds that the investments are giving almost zero back to affected communities in terms of jobs or compensation, to say nothing of food security. The message we get is that virtually nowhere, among the countries and cases the Bank examined, is there much to celebrate."
"Many investments (...) failed to live up to expectations and, instead of generating sustainable benefits, contributed to asset loss and left local people worse off than they would have been without the investment."
The reality of modern industrialised agriculture is plain, and again succinctly expressed by Felicity Lawrence:
"Expansionist agriculture and empires have always depended on slave labour, as Latin authors of the Roman empire complained centuries ago. Today, we live in an era when the dominant powers don't officially "do" empire, so economic control takes a new privatised form in the TNC. Modern slavery has evolved to match. The straightforward ownership of chattel slavery is gone, replaced instead by an outsourced, subcontracted kind of control over people, which can be terminated when they have served their purpose. The transnationals universally abhor any idea of slavery or forced labour and yet it is found in their supply chains. Slaves and exploited migrants, often driven into migration by the squeeze on family agriculture, are what make the economics of today's agribusiness work."
There is currently a Sustainable Livestock Bill (PDF) going through Parliament, which should go a little way to addressing some of the iniquities of globalised agriculture, by ensuring that subsidies are re-oriented towards more local and small-scale farming, for example. It is due to receive its second reading on Friday 12th November. Has your MP signed the EDM? It is important to get as many MPs to be in the House and vote for the Bill as possible. More information here and here (dumbed down version).
More on the Global Land Grab
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