Ethiopia: Are "Land Grab" Deals a Path to Food Security?

Ethiopia: Are “Land Grab” Deals a Path
to Food Security?

19 May, 2011 | By Juhie Bhatia
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The push by multinational corporations and foreign governments in
recent years to obtain fertile land in African countries such as
Ethiopia, Madagascar [4]and Tanzania has spurred debate over
whether the move will lead to development or is simply a “land
grab” that further threatens the continent's food security.

Land rush

There has been growing

interest by foreign investors

to buy or lease large areas

of arable land in sub-

Saharan Africa, either to

grow food for their own

countries or to export it for

profit.

The land rush has

been triggered

[6], says an

article in South Africa's

Mail & Guardian

, by

worldwide food shortages and food security concerns that followed
oil price rises in 2008, water shortages and the European Union’s
insistence that 10 percent of all transport fuel come from plant-
based biofuels by 2015. Others say population growth [7] is also a
factor.

Investors say these acquisitions will fuel development, but
opponents call the move a “land grab” that will threaten Africa's
own food security and livelihood. Stacy Feldman, writing for
SolveClimate News, elaborates on the situation:

Researchers revealed that foreign companies are buying or

leasing vast chunks of land in Africa and elsewhere for their

own use. In fact, up to 50 million acres have been sold off or

soon will be. That's equivalent to about 25 percent of all the

farmland in Europe. Much of that land is being bought by

emerging nations to raise crops for their growing populations.

These countries – China, India, South Korea and oil-rich

Gulf states – have land and water constraints at home. They

got burned by [the 2008] global food crisis and are turning to

Africa as a food security blanket.

In Ethiopia, farmland is being bought or leased on an immense scale.
The country has approved 815 foreign-financed agricultural projects
since 2007 and land is being leased for approximately $1 per year
for 2.5 acres, according to the Mail & Guardian. The country gave
out 600,000 hectares [9] (1.48 million acres) to foreign entities
between 2004 and early 2009, according to a report by the United
Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Meanwhile, Ethiopia remains one of the hungriest countries in the
world. Earlier this year the Ethiopian government said some 2.8
million people [10] are in need of emergency food aid in 2011.
Forty-one percent of the population is undernourished [11]. This
paradox has angered some Ethiopians [12], including the women
behind the blog Mitmita, who compare Ethiopia's prime minister,
Meles Zenawi, to a goat:

Look at Prime Minister trying to convince everyone that he

isn’t a land hording communist—it's a land giveaway! Are

you a foreigner? Do you have cash? Well Melesocracy has a

stimulus plan for you! The Mitmita Girls are quite familiar with

a few project finance deals ourselves; from what we

understand, in these intricate transactions, Third World

governments in collaboration with First World financiers

orchestrate what are tantamount to beads for Manhattan

deals where like the Native Americans, ordinary Ethiopians

are bilked out of inheriting our land because a man with an

uncanny resemblance to a goat has sold it to the Chinese.

Hi-tech stimulus?

But proponents of these land deals, including the Ethiopian
government, say it will bring capital, technology, agricultural
knowledge, infrastructure and lots of jobs to impoverished rural
areas where subsistence farmers use low-tech tools. One
government official, reported Fred de Sam Lazaro in a piece for
PBS Newshour that was supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis
Reporting, says that Ethiopia has an abundance of land and barely
five percent of it [14] is being cultivated by the country's farmers.

Berhanu Kebede, Ethiopia's ambassador to the United Kingdom,
said last month in The Guardian that the country must significantly
develop mechanized agriculture [15] to reach the development goals
unveiled in Ethiopia's latest development plan [16], which aims for
an average economic growth of 14.9 percent over a five-year
period. A doubling of agricultural output, the plan says, will fuel that
growth, and so the government has put aside 3 million hectares (7.4
million acres) of land to be leased. The government says the country
may not even need food aid within five years.

The blog Govindan Online, written by an former Indian diplomat,
calls these land investments a welcome development [17]:

Bringing in large areas of land under cultivation and building

infrastructure will generate large scale employment even if

these sectors are completely mechanized. Since land

utilization in these continents is very low, compared to other

continents, there is not going to be any ecological problems.

It is also to be remembered that some European countries

including Russia have sold/leased out land to foreigners with a

view to increase local food grain production.

Speaking out against “land grabs”

Many farmers, land rights advocates, various reports [18] and non-
governmental organizations disagree. They call the situation a “land
grab” that may lead to environmental destruction, displacement of
small, local landholders, worker and resource exploitation, loss of
livelihoods and food insecurity. Some say it's a new form of
colonialism [19].

Many bloggers have also spoken out against the land grabs.
Devinder Sharma, an Indian food and trade policy analyst blogging
on Ground Reality, calls these foreign investors “food pirates
[20].” Woldegb, commenting on Kebede's piece in The Guardian,
says it is very unrealistic to believe [21] that foreign investors can
improve food security, and Nyikaw Ochalla, posting on Anyuak
Media, refutes many of Kebede's claims [22].

Blog The Africanist says the deals will likely lead to violence [23]
and questions the logic of providing food aid to countries that are
exporting food. Nabeeha Kazi Hutchins, blogging on The Hunger
and Undernutrition Blog, points out that little has been mandated
to protect the land and the interests of local communities [24] and
Ellen Albritton, blogging on CMH 365: Public Health and Social
Justice, questions the ethics [25] of benefiting from food grown in
Ethiopia while Ethiopians starve.

RAH, commenting on a post on the blog Brown Condor, says
there are four questions [26] that should first be answered:

Number One: Will this adversely affect Ethiopian farmers in

any major way?

Number Two: Will these foreign countries/companies abuse

and or harm the land in any way?

Number Three: Will this drastically cut the water supply to

downstream nations that depend on water from the Nile?

Number Four: Will all of this NEW REVENUE truly benefit

the people of Ethiopia or just mainly the government?

The FAO says little is still understood [27] about the impact of
these international land deals. In response, the organization is
drawing up a code of conduct to bring equitable shares for all
parties in these deals. Perhaps such a code will help offset what the
blog Yene Ethiopia believes is the government's shortsightedness in
approving such land deals [28]:

The Ethiopian government makes it seem as if 50 or 100

years from now everything will be as it were before the lease.

After producing under highly mechanized, intensive farming,

the land will no longer be productive. The sizes being given

away are not benign. Is there a plan beyond selling the land

that will ensure a generation from now these farmers’ children

will not be landless laborers?…Why not empower these

people? Help them build cooperatives? Give them favorable

loans? Help them get mechanized? No, that would require

actually governing and would be hard work.

Courtesy