Are international food lots really generational theft?
When is marketing an opportunity a case of generational theft? There are some commentators arguing that just such a thing is going on in Ethiopia at present. The government of this impoverished and food-insecure nation is actively marketing itself as one of the world’s leading destinations for the booming business of land leasing. This is a controversial practice where richer countries and investment firms are securing long-term contracts to farm vast tracts of land in other nations. This has some observers crying foul and land theft.
However, theft is a specific concept with legal requirements. An act of theft requires the intent to permanently deprive an owner of possession of goods deemed rightfully theirs, by another party and without their permission. However, if one reviews the disturbing trend of wealthy nations to acquire sovereign land of poorer and food-insecure countries for the growing of food – an area equivalent to half the size of all arable land in Europe in the last six months alone – an act theft is claimed by some.
Rich countries, such as Saudi Arabia and South Korea, for example, are buying land in poorer countries such as the Tanzania and Sudan to act as food lots. This land acquisition, as much as 700,000 hectares in a single transaction (although an 8 million hectare deal is allegedly under discussion in the Congo), denies the indigenous population the ability to use the land to grow food for their own needs, so adding to the poverty trap for the local inhabitants. Ethiopia has just launched it own marketing program to cash in on this booming new business.
In recent months, the Ethiopian Government began marketing abroad one of the hottest commodities in an increasingly crowded and hungry world: farmland.
‘Why attractive’ ; reads one glossy poster with photos of green fields and a map outlining swathes of the country available at bargain-basement prices. ‘Vast, fertile, irrigable land at low rent. Abundant water resources. Cheap labour. Warmest hospitality’
This impoverished and chronically food-insecure nation is fast becoming one of the world’s leading destinations for the booming business of land leasing, by which relatively rich countries and investment firms are securing 40-to-99-year contracts to farm vast tracts of land.
Governments across South-East Asia, Latin America and especially Africa are trying to attract this new breed of investors, creating land-leasing agencies and land catalogues to display their offerings of earth.
In Africa alone, experts estimate more than 20 million hectares have been leased in the past two years.
The trend is driven in part by last year’s global food crisis. Wealthy countries are shoring up their food supplies by growing staple crops abroad. The desert kingdom of Saudi Arabia, for instance, is shifting wheat production to Africa. The government of India, where land is crowded and overfarmed, is offering incentives to companies to carve out mega-farms across the continent.
Increasingly, though, purely profit-seeking companies are snatching up land, making a simple, grim, calculation. As one Saudi-backed businessman here put it: “The population of the world is increasing dramatically, so land and food supplies will be short, demand will be higher and prices will rise”.
The scale and pace of the land scramble have alarmed policymakers and others concerned about the implications for food security in countries such as Ethiopia, where officials recently appealed for food aid for about 6 million people as drought devastates East Africa.
