Ethiopia: The great land-grab debate

ETHIOPIA: The great land-grab debate

25 March, 2011 | IRIN
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GAMBELLA, 25 March 2011 (IRIN) - Ethiopia has little time for
critics of its large-scale land-leasing policy, insisting the millions of
dollars of foreign investment will create jobs, improve domestic
agricultural expertise and reduce both poverty and the country’s
chronic food insecurity.

The policy, part of a five-year Growth and Transformation Plan, has
led to the cheap leasing of thousands of square kilometres of what
the government says is mostly under-used or uncultivated land.
Officially, land in Ethiopia is government-owned but occupants have
customary rights.

Detractors complain

of forcible relocation

of local pastoralist

populations, poorly

paid work on the

new farms,

environmental

degradation and a

failure to deliver on

promises of better

infrastructure.

“I know [this] is a

very controversial

and hot issue at the global level. As far as Ethiopia is concerned, we
don’t see it as a threat because it is smallholder agriculture, which is
the driving engine of the agricultural development in this country,”
Minister of Agriculture Tefera Deribew said at a recent press
conference.

“We want to expand large-scale farming in areas where we have
ample arable land without affecting farmers living in those areas. It
will definitely support the development of smallholder agriculture,”
he said.

The ministry’s head of agricultural investment, Esayas Kebede, told
IRIN: “We hope that big commercial and intensive farms will solve
the shortage of food in Ethiopia,” where 2.8 million people are
expected to require foreign food assistance in 2011.

In at least one of the deals, a 10,000 hectare rice farm in Gambella
leased by Saudi-Ethiopian investor Sheikh Mohamed Al-Amoudi,
40 percent of production will have to be sold on the Ethiopian
market.

But rice, and many of the other crops set to be produced on such
farms, is not widely consumed in Ethiopia.

The government and investors further maintain that the relocation of
thousands of people in rural areas is unconnected but part of an
entirely separate and voluntary “villagization” project designed to
improve access to basic amenities.

“We haven’t evicted pastoralists from their farmland or prevented
them from accessing the river,” Birinder Singh, head of marketing
and logistics of Karuturi Agro Products, told IRIN.

This Indian company has leased some 100,000 hectares of land in
Gambella, a sparsely populated region in the west of Ethiopia where
hundreds of mostly foreign companies are investing in agricultural
projects.

“That [eviction] is not our intention. We would like to hire as many
people as we can on our farms and would like to be competitive in
the global market,” Singh told IRIN.

Information gap

“We were not told that our land will be given to foreign investors,”
said Ujulu, who used to live with his seven children on the banks of
Gambella’s Baro river in an area now being developed by Karuturi,
and who was recently relocated to a new village, several hours’
walk away.

“What I know is government promised us new schools for our
children, health clinics, and clean water if we are to be included in
the villagization programme. That is why I came to this village three
months ago,” he said.

A health centre was under construction when IRIN visited.

The village chairman, a local government official, insisted: “We want
to improve the food security situation of pastoralists. No one came
to this village by force or was displaced because of the investments.”

A farmer in Oromiya state’s Karmi village, which lies near a
Karuturi farm, told IRIN: “Our land was taken illegally. Even though
it is unused land for agricultural purposes, it is grazing land for our
cattle. Now we have very small grazing land for our cattle. We don’
t know what will happen to us in the future.”

Concerns have also been raised about the infringements of
pastoralists’ rights. Article 40/5 of Ethiopia’s constitution states:
“Ethiopian pastoralists have the right to free land for grazing and
cultivation as well as the right not to be displaced from their own
lands.”

One Gambella-based pastoralist expert, who asked not to be
named because of the sensitivity of the issue, explained, “These are
pastoralist communities whose lives depend on grazing land, water
and pasture. They have their own pattern of movement from one
place to the other; hence services like water, health and school must
follow the movement pattern. Otherwise it will lead to land
degradation and resource depletion.”

“We are pastoralists. How can we stay here for more than three or
four months?” asked one villager.

“Karuturi and the government promised us that we will get better
jobs, better living conditions but so far they have done nothing other
than taking our land and driving us to severe poverty,” he added.

“My community doesn’t hate the foreign companies [Karuturi] here.
But we want them to be [responsive] to our problems as they have
taken our land and our promises are not fulfilled,” he said.

“They are paying us very little money 12 birr [US$0.73] a day.
When Karuturi Farms took our land we were promised 25 to
30birr [$1.50-$1.80] per day. They are not paying what they are
supposed to pay. We are deceived either by our government and/or
by Karuturi,” he said.

A Karuturi official said the company’s pay rates were in line with
national norms.

In response to charges of little oversight or regulation of the land
deals, the agricultural ministry’s Esayas said: “We don’t simply give
land for investment. We have conducted appropriate studies and the
company [Karuturi] has also conducted an environment impact
assessment (EIA). So such allegations [about evictions] are far from
the truth.”

Forest burning

When there is a need for good pasture, pastoralists have traditional
techniques to burn the grass and bushes without attacking the forest.
But now they are surprised to see a forest burning and farms
expanding day by day.

“We were told by government that we should preserve the forest
and trees, because they give us rain. Now the Indians are burning
and bulldozing the forest in broad daylight,” a resident of a village
called Ilea told IRIN.

“Only a very small portion of the forest is burnt,” Esayas argued.
“There might be investors who are cutting forests. We will follow
them and take appropriate actions. Previously we have taken some
measures on those investors who have damaged the environment in
some way,” he said.

Courtesy