Hunger and food security:
Is Africa selling the farm?
Foreign investors see Africa as a breadbasket. Done well,
investment could help with African hunger but create food
security for the rest of the world.
07 Feb. 2011 | By Scott Baldauf, / (The Christian Science Monitor)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The anger was about food. Mr. Ravalomanana reportedly had
leased 3.2 million acres – nearly half the island nation's arable land –
to a South Korean conglomerate, Daewoo, for 99 years. In theory,
it should have been a win-win deal: Daewoo would pay
Madagascar $6 billion to grow corn and oil palm, helping South
Korea meet both its food-security and bio-fuels needs, while
providing Madagascar with revenues and desperately needed jobs.
Download PDF of map: The 21st-century African land rush
But the protests, ultimately backed by the military, showed that the
Madagascan people – 70 percent of whom live in rural areas and
nearly 50 percent of whom suffer chronic malnutrition – saw the
deal as a "land grab" and a threat to their country's survival.
Ravalomanana fled the country within days, and a military-backed
junta led by the young DJ, Andry Rajoelina, took control. The
Daewoo deal was promptly scuttled.
"There was no process," says Hajo Andrianainarivelo,
Madagascar's new minister for land management. "The head
government official of the region just received an order from the
president of the country to help the Korean people to find the most
fertile land. That was it. You can't do that in Madagascar."
Perhaps not. But the attraction of Africa's last great resource – its
fertile land – is drawing dozens of foreign corporations and even
national governments to the African mainland, developing the same
kind of agricultural plots contemplated by Daewoo in Madagascar.
Africa is drawing dozens of corporate giants like Daewoo and even
governments of such nations as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab
Emirates, Brazil, Japan, and even India (which is food self-sufficient)
to grow the food and biofuel crops they need back home. The coup
in Madagascar and food riots in Mozambique last August – which
followed news of a similar food and biofuels deal with the European
Union and Brazil – are a warning sign of the volatility of the global
balance of wealth and poverty that foreign investors and African
leaders face.
By all rights, Africa could be a breadbasket for the world. Its fertile
land, lengthy rivers, and farm labor tempt investors from around the
globe.
But the continent continues to import the bulk of its staple food
items, including corn, wheat, and rice from richer countries. On
paper, foreign investment in African agriculture should correct that
trade imbalance and help Africa become food self-sufficient. With
global food prices skyrocketing (see story, page 8), the demand for
biofuels increasing, and the amount of arable land static, Africa is
well situated to capitalize on global demand. And with its vast rural
populations living on less than $1 a day, it would seem hungry for
such deals.
So the continent's discontent with these deals takes many
development experts by surprise. Almost any investment in a poor
country generates jobs, tax revenues, and better skills for the future.
But in today's Africa, investment in agriculture – even a $6 billion
long-term deal like Daewoo's – is increasingly portrayed by the
media and rights groups as "land-grabbing," neocolonialism, and
even a threat to a country's ability to feed itself. And when many
African countries are still unable to feed themselves, foreign
investment can become the spark for revolution.
Madagascar looks quite unlike the lush tropical paradise portrayed
in the Disney movie of the same name. In the dry season, viewed
from a plane at 36,000 feet, the island off the southeast coast of the
African mainland looks like a giant plate of potatoes au gratin. Every
square inch of the island – an area roughly the size of Texas – is
chopped up into small, overlapping, often parched, dust-colored
terraced plots.
Farmed for centuries by traditional slash-and-burn techniques,
Madagascar's soil is depleted, and the pressure of a growing
population – now 19 million – means that farmers must struggle to
feed more people with less fertile land.
How large well-funded corporate commercial farms can make a go
of land that small subsistence farmers have given up on is a story of
20th-century farming technology and 21st-century venture capital
funds. Like the green revolution, which favored those with access to
modern tractors and irrigation, chemical fertilizers and pesticides,
and specialized seeds, today's corporate farming groups like
Daewoo have the technology and financial backing to make unused
land bloom.
Without much of that kind of investment, Madagascar is a net food
importer, with 40 to 50 percent of the population, by UNICEF
estimates, suffering chronic malnutrition, even during good harvests.
"In some areas, people go without their main food staple, rice, for
four to six months," says Patrice Charpentier, project manager for
food security at Land O'Lakes, an aid group. "Production is erratic.
People don't want to overproduce if they're not sure they can sell it
on the market. So they produce just enough to survive."
In an average year, people are able to make do with the rice they
have saved up and fruit they find in the wild. But the boom-and-bust
period of 2007-08 was no average year. Driven by the pell-mell
growth of China and India, which demanded increasing fuel and raw
materials, crude oil prices surged upward.
The price spike was a temptation for large agricultural companies to
divert corn intended for food staples like cornmeal into more
profitable biofuels like ethanol instead. It was classic supply-and-
demand economics, and it sparked a land rush to buy up farmland
across Africa.
But for the ordinary African consumer, it was a disaster. Corn
prices jumped 119 percent from June 2007 to June 2008.
The economic collapse in the United States and much of Europe
helped to cool things off, but the sleepy world of African
subsistence farming had changed forever: The 21st-century African
land rush had begun.
The World Bank estimates that worldwide, 115 million acres of
land are leased to foreign investors, and the bulk of that is in Africa.
A small sampling of countries targeted by foreign agricultural
investors documented in the past five years by the International
Food Policy Research Institute includes:
Democratic Republic of Congo: 7 million acres secured by the
Chinese firm ZTE to grow oil palm for biofuels; and 24.7 million
acres offered to the South African farmers' union, AgriSA.
Mozambique: Nearly 250,000 acres secured by the Swedish firm
Skebab to produce biofuels.
Tanzania: Nearly 1.25 million acres requested by the Saudi
Arabian government for food production; more than 110,000 acres
purchased by the British firm CAMS Group for biofuels made from
sweet sorghum.
Sudan: 1.7 million acres secured by the South Korean government
to grow wheat; nearly 1 million acres secured by US-based Jarch
Capital; nearly 75,000 acres secured by the Abu Dhabi Fund for
Development to grow corn and alfalfa.
Ethiopia: More than 32,000 acres secured by the German firm
Flora EcoPower to produce biofuels.
Not all deals are made alike, to be sure. Deals on leased farmland
to produce food do manage to create jobs and can also help to
transfer state-of-the-art farming skills, such as erosion control, to
the local farm-labor force. Deals to grow crops for biofuels
sometimes also involve simple refining, which also creates jobs. But
many land deals are decidedly one-sided, with all food produced
sent away for export
"Setting aside the 'you're selling our land' histrionics," says a
Western diplomat who has closely studied Madagascar's agriculture
sector, "I think that countries of Africa would benefit from foreign
investment by creating low-end jobs, some of it on larger
commercial plantations and even some on the small-holder farms."
The key, this diplomat says, is to negotiate a deal that benefits the
host country as much as it does the foreign investor. In the Daewoo
deal – as with numerous similar deals involving companies from
China, Saudi Arabia, Dubai, and elsewhere – all the food produced
in Madagascar was intended for export.
"The landlord country needs to be really thoughtful about the
conditions of the investment contract," says the diplomat. "They
have to be saying, 'We want this to be environmentally sustainable,
so the commercial farmers are using best practices for soil
conservation and water use. They should be carbon-neutral. They
should bring in good technology and show local small-holder
farmers how to use it, so the general productivity of the region
increases.' "
Often, such long-term development goals are the furthest thing from
the minds of the people who sign such deals. And in a region where
government transparency is nearly nonexistent, the question of who
benefits from a deal depends most upon who negotiated and signed
it. In many poor countries of Africa, power is heavily centralized,
often in the hands of a political elite that has ruled more or less
nonstop since independence in the early 1960s.
Legal systems little changed since colonial times don't offer
individual farmers much protection in terms of land rights, and they
offer little in terms of government assistance such as agricultural
extension agencies. National leaders – sometimes more impressed
by gleaming developments like glass-and-steel skyscrapers than by
less-glamorous development like tractors and training – have often
ignored farmers' needs. Even enlightened African leaders who see
the benefit of improving the rural farm economy are often hampered
by stodgy old laws and meet with resistance from a rural population
that distrusts their motives.
"As much as 90 percent of Africa is under customary tenure, which
means it's held by the state on behalf of the community, who are
then given the customary right to the land," says Ruth Meinzen-
Dick, a land-rights specialist at the Consultative Group on
International Agriculture Research, the one responsible for India's
green revolution in the 1960s.
Many African small-holder farmers know they can be moved off
their land at any time, and the growing number of farming deals
confirms their worst fears. As a result, many African farmers are
reluctant to invest in their land or to improve their techniques,
knowing the benefit may be taken away in the future.
"The question is, do people have an expectation that they will have
their land in 10 years?" says Ms. Meinzen-Dick. "If they don't,
they're not going to plant a tree that will give fruit later.... [T]hey're
not going to make long-term decisions that increase their
productivity."
Legal reforms in each of Africa's 53 nations may slowly start to
improve the ability of small-holder farmers to lift themselves out of
subsistence farming into more profitable and productive commercial
agriculture. Many development agencies say Africa's best bet seems
to be a bit of outside investment.
For a country like Madagascar – poor, rural, and increasingly young
and unemployed – the attraction of foreign investment is easy to
understand. The population doubles about every 25 years, but the
amount of arable land doesn't. Madagascar's economy has grown
little, if at all, since the French colonial era, but like many developing
countries it needs to grow at a robust 8 to 10 percent just to absorb
its growing population.
When Daewoo – the world's third-largest corporate importer of
corn – came knocking, asking for access to some of Madagascar's
relatively inexpensive agricultural land, Ravalomanana,
Madagascar's president at the time, could hardly sign the deal fast
enough.
For Daewoo, the 99-year deal to lease 3.2 million acres was sweet.
The Madagascar government was prepared to lease a long stretch
of coastline to grow corn and oil palm, all of it for export. Much of
the land had fallen into disuse because it was in a part of the island
that receives little rainfall. But deep underground, there is fossil
water locked up in limestone formations, estimated to be enough to
irrigate dryland crops for a century or more.
Daewoo's investment in drawing out the water would have revived
the region's job prospects as well as its fallowed land.
"It was a lot of land that was not utilized, and it could have been
utilized if you brought in modern technology, such as deep well
irrigation systems," says a longtime foreign businessman based in
Antananarivo who has access to the country's political elite. But
local people still viewed that land as belonging to their ancestors, he
adds, and were bound to oppose any deal with a foreign investor,
unless the government took a leading role in helping to persuade
them.
"But it was badly thought out, badly implemented, and it went south
from there," says the businessman. "The farmers here have an
unusual emotional attitude. It's not their land: It's their ancestors'
land. If your mom is not from here, then you're not from here."
That sentiment becomes more apparent beyond the city limits of
Antananarivo, where the tightly clustered homes give way to gentle
rolling hills planted with vegetables, and where rice fields are often
flooded knee-deep.
Farmers here close to the capital have advantages over their more
remote brethren, such as the ability to sell cash crops like tomatoes
and cucumbers for big-city prices.
It is beyond these areas, in the deep backcountry, where the
farming economy doesn't work as well. There, explains UNICEF
spokeswoman Sarah Johansson, rates of chronic malnutrition rival
those of war-ravaged Afghanistan. She says UNICEF treated
11,000 Madagascan children in 2010 for severe malnutrition
because they either did not have enough food or not enough variety
in their diet. Many of the worst cases are in areas where most of the
country's food is grown, adds Ms. Johansson, because subsistence
farmers in Madagascar are quite conservative about trying out
different crops and diversifying their diets with vegetables, choosing
instead more reliable stomach-fillers like rice.
But farmers nearer the city face a host of perils, such as the greedy
eyes of those with power. On the road from the capital airport
toward downtown, a bare patch of ground that used to be a farm
now sits idle, a spontaneous soccer field for village boys and a
parking lot for trucks, surrounded by green rice paddies.
The land was confiscated from local farmers and sold off by the
Ravalomanana government to a hotel developer. When the new
government came in, the hotel project was canceled, but while
courts work out appropriate punishments and compensation, the
original owners must wait and are unable to start farming again.
The lives of elites who seal multimillion-dollar import deals in the
restaurants of colonial-era hotels and a farmer like Rajaonary could
hardly be more different.
Rajaonary says his political leaders simply don't understand how
important land is to an ordinary Madagascan. It is one's cradle,
table, home, workplace, and grave, he says.
"Land is holy," Rajaonary says, leaning on his hoe in the late-
afternoon sun. "Land that I inherited from my ancestors – I couldn't
sell it, because even now, after they died, it still belongs to them.
They are watching what I am doing with the land. So I will do what
they have done for me. I will pass my land along to my family, too."
This attitude – indeed, this gap in understanding within the culture
here – helps to explain the extraordinary revolt of March 2009,
which brought down the government. But it also makes any future
foreign investment in Madagascar's agriculture sector very difficult.
"Nobody, no foreign investor, is going to come back here to go into
farming," says the foreign businessman. "Emotionally, it would not
be possible."
But while Madagascar has closed the door for now on big foreign
investors, there is little sign in other parts of Africa that there's much
holding back the great African land rush.
Whether motivated by altruism or by personal enrichment, African
leaders increasingly see agriculture as an engine for growth and a
ticket to prosperity.• In March 2009, civilian protesters led by a
baby-faced former disc jockey swarmed through the streets of this
hilly capital city. They were calling for the ouster of then-President
Marc Ravalomanana for what they saw as literally giving away the
farm, selling out his impoverished nation.
The anger was about food. Mr. Ravalomanana reportedly had
leased 3.2 million acres – nearly half the island nation's arable land –
to a South Korean conglomerate, Daewoo, for 99 years. In theory,
it should have been a win-win deal: Daewoo would pay
Madagascar $6 billion to grow corn and oil palm, helping South
Korea meet both its food-security and bio-fuels needs, while
providing Madagascar with revenues and desperately needed jobs.
But the protests, ultimately backed by the military, showed that the
Madagascan people – 70 percent of whom live in rural areas and
nearly 50 percent of whom suffer chronic malnutrition – saw the
deal as a "land grab" and a threat to their country's survival.
Ravalomanana fled the country within days, and a military-backed
junta led by the young DJ, Andry Rajoelina, took control. The
Daewoo deal was promptly scuttled.
"There was no process," says Hajo Andrianainarivelo,
Madagascar's new minister for land management. "The head
government official of the region just received an order from the
president of the country to help the Korean people to find the most
fertile land. That was it. You can't do that in Madagascar."
So the continent's discontent with these deals takes many
development experts by surprise. Almost any investment in a poor
country generates jobs, tax revenues, and better skills for the future.
But in today's Africa, investment in agriculture – even a $6 billion
long-term deal like Daewoo's – is increasingly portrayed by the
media and rights groups as "land-grabbing," neocolonialism, and
even a threat to a country's ability to feed itself. And when many
African countries are still unable to feed themselves, foreign
investment can become the spark for revolution.
. Courtesy
Is Africa selling the farm?
Foreign investors see Africa as a breadbasket. Done well,
investment could help with African hunger but create food
security for the rest of the world.
07 Feb. 2011 | By Scott Baldauf, / (The Christian Science Monitor)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- In March 2009, civilian
protesters led by a baby-
faced former disc jockey
swarmed through the streets
of this hilly capital city. They
were calling for the ouster
of then-President Marc
Ravalomanana for what
they saw as literally giving
away the farm, selling out
his impoverished nation.
The anger was about food. Mr. Ravalomanana reportedly had
leased 3.2 million acres – nearly half the island nation's arable land –
to a South Korean conglomerate, Daewoo, for 99 years. In theory,
it should have been a win-win deal: Daewoo would pay
Madagascar $6 billion to grow corn and oil palm, helping South
Korea meet both its food-security and bio-fuels needs, while
providing Madagascar with revenues and desperately needed jobs.
Download PDF of map: The 21st-century African land rush
But the protests, ultimately backed by the military, showed that the
Madagascan people – 70 percent of whom live in rural areas and
nearly 50 percent of whom suffer chronic malnutrition – saw the
deal as a "land grab" and a threat to their country's survival.
Ravalomanana fled the country within days, and a military-backed
junta led by the young DJ, Andry Rajoelina, took control. The
Daewoo deal was promptly scuttled.
"There was no process," says Hajo Andrianainarivelo,
Madagascar's new minister for land management. "The head
government official of the region just received an order from the
president of the country to help the Korean people to find the most
fertile land. That was it. You can't do that in Madagascar."
Perhaps not. But the attraction of Africa's last great resource – its
fertile land – is drawing dozens of foreign corporations and even
national governments to the African mainland, developing the same
kind of agricultural plots contemplated by Daewoo in Madagascar.
Africa is drawing dozens of corporate giants like Daewoo and even
governments of such nations as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab
Emirates, Brazil, Japan, and even India (which is food self-sufficient)
to grow the food and biofuel crops they need back home. The coup
in Madagascar and food riots in Mozambique last August – which
followed news of a similar food and biofuels deal with the European
Union and Brazil – are a warning sign of the volatility of the global
balance of wealth and poverty that foreign investors and African
leaders face.
By all rights, Africa could be a breadbasket for the world. Its fertile
land, lengthy rivers, and farm labor tempt investors from around the
globe.
But the continent continues to import the bulk of its staple food
items, including corn, wheat, and rice from richer countries. On
paper, foreign investment in African agriculture should correct that
trade imbalance and help Africa become food self-sufficient. With
global food prices skyrocketing (see story, page 8), the demand for
biofuels increasing, and the amount of arable land static, Africa is
well situated to capitalize on global demand. And with its vast rural
populations living on less than $1 a day, it would seem hungry for
such deals.
So the continent's discontent with these deals takes many
development experts by surprise. Almost any investment in a poor
country generates jobs, tax revenues, and better skills for the future.
But in today's Africa, investment in agriculture – even a $6 billion
long-term deal like Daewoo's – is increasingly portrayed by the
media and rights groups as "land-grabbing," neocolonialism, and
even a threat to a country's ability to feed itself. And when many
African countries are still unable to feed themselves, foreign
investment can become the spark for revolution.
Madagascar looks quite unlike the lush tropical paradise portrayed
in the Disney movie of the same name. In the dry season, viewed
from a plane at 36,000 feet, the island off the southeast coast of the
African mainland looks like a giant plate of potatoes au gratin. Every
square inch of the island – an area roughly the size of Texas – is
chopped up into small, overlapping, often parched, dust-colored
terraced plots.
Farmed for centuries by traditional slash-and-burn techniques,
Madagascar's soil is depleted, and the pressure of a growing
population – now 19 million – means that farmers must struggle to
feed more people with less fertile land.
How large well-funded corporate commercial farms can make a go
of land that small subsistence farmers have given up on is a story of
20th-century farming technology and 21st-century venture capital
funds. Like the green revolution, which favored those with access to
modern tractors and irrigation, chemical fertilizers and pesticides,
and specialized seeds, today's corporate farming groups like
Daewoo have the technology and financial backing to make unused
land bloom.
Without much of that kind of investment, Madagascar is a net food
importer, with 40 to 50 percent of the population, by UNICEF
estimates, suffering chronic malnutrition, even during good harvests.
"In some areas, people go without their main food staple, rice, for
four to six months," says Patrice Charpentier, project manager for
food security at Land O'Lakes, an aid group. "Production is erratic.
People don't want to overproduce if they're not sure they can sell it
on the market. So they produce just enough to survive."
In an average year, people are able to make do with the rice they
have saved up and fruit they find in the wild. But the boom-and-bust
period of 2007-08 was no average year. Driven by the pell-mell
growth of China and India, which demanded increasing fuel and raw
materials, crude oil prices surged upward.
The price spike was a temptation for large agricultural companies to
divert corn intended for food staples like cornmeal into more
profitable biofuels like ethanol instead. It was classic supply-and-
demand economics, and it sparked a land rush to buy up farmland
across Africa.
But for the ordinary African consumer, it was a disaster. Corn
prices jumped 119 percent from June 2007 to June 2008.
The economic collapse in the United States and much of Europe
helped to cool things off, but the sleepy world of African
subsistence farming had changed forever: The 21st-century African
land rush had begun.
The World Bank estimates that worldwide, 115 million acres of
land are leased to foreign investors, and the bulk of that is in Africa.
A small sampling of countries targeted by foreign agricultural
investors documented in the past five years by the International
Food Policy Research Institute includes:
Democratic Republic of Congo: 7 million acres secured by the
Chinese firm ZTE to grow oil palm for biofuels; and 24.7 million
acres offered to the South African farmers' union, AgriSA.
Mozambique: Nearly 250,000 acres secured by the Swedish firm
Skebab to produce biofuels.
Tanzania: Nearly 1.25 million acres requested by the Saudi
Arabian government for food production; more than 110,000 acres
purchased by the British firm CAMS Group for biofuels made from
sweet sorghum.
Sudan: 1.7 million acres secured by the South Korean government
to grow wheat; nearly 1 million acres secured by US-based Jarch
Capital; nearly 75,000 acres secured by the Abu Dhabi Fund for
Development to grow corn and alfalfa.
Ethiopia: More than 32,000 acres secured by the German firm
Flora EcoPower to produce biofuels.
Not all deals are made alike, to be sure. Deals on leased farmland
to produce food do manage to create jobs and can also help to
transfer state-of-the-art farming skills, such as erosion control, to
the local farm-labor force. Deals to grow crops for biofuels
sometimes also involve simple refining, which also creates jobs. But
many land deals are decidedly one-sided, with all food produced
sent away for export
"Setting aside the 'you're selling our land' histrionics," says a
Western diplomat who has closely studied Madagascar's agriculture
sector, "I think that countries of Africa would benefit from foreign
investment by creating low-end jobs, some of it on larger
commercial plantations and even some on the small-holder farms."
The key, this diplomat says, is to negotiate a deal that benefits the
host country as much as it does the foreign investor. In the Daewoo
deal – as with numerous similar deals involving companies from
China, Saudi Arabia, Dubai, and elsewhere – all the food produced
in Madagascar was intended for export.
"The landlord country needs to be really thoughtful about the
conditions of the investment contract," says the diplomat. "They
have to be saying, 'We want this to be environmentally sustainable,
so the commercial farmers are using best practices for soil
conservation and water use. They should be carbon-neutral. They
should bring in good technology and show local small-holder
farmers how to use it, so the general productivity of the region
increases.' "
Often, such long-term development goals are the furthest thing from
the minds of the people who sign such deals. And in a region where
government transparency is nearly nonexistent, the question of who
benefits from a deal depends most upon who negotiated and signed
it. In many poor countries of Africa, power is heavily centralized,
often in the hands of a political elite that has ruled more or less
nonstop since independence in the early 1960s.
Legal systems little changed since colonial times don't offer
individual farmers much protection in terms of land rights, and they
offer little in terms of government assistance such as agricultural
extension agencies. National leaders – sometimes more impressed
by gleaming developments like glass-and-steel skyscrapers than by
less-glamorous development like tractors and training – have often
ignored farmers' needs. Even enlightened African leaders who see
the benefit of improving the rural farm economy are often hampered
by stodgy old laws and meet with resistance from a rural population
that distrusts their motives.
"As much as 90 percent of Africa is under customary tenure, which
means it's held by the state on behalf of the community, who are
then given the customary right to the land," says Ruth Meinzen-
Dick, a land-rights specialist at the Consultative Group on
International Agriculture Research, the one responsible for India's
green revolution in the 1960s.
Many African small-holder farmers know they can be moved off
their land at any time, and the growing number of farming deals
confirms their worst fears. As a result, many African farmers are
reluctant to invest in their land or to improve their techniques,
knowing the benefit may be taken away in the future.
"The question is, do people have an expectation that they will have
their land in 10 years?" says Ms. Meinzen-Dick. "If they don't,
they're not going to plant a tree that will give fruit later.... [T]hey're
not going to make long-term decisions that increase their
productivity."
Legal reforms in each of Africa's 53 nations may slowly start to
improve the ability of small-holder farmers to lift themselves out of
subsistence farming into more profitable and productive commercial
agriculture. Many development agencies say Africa's best bet seems
to be a bit of outside investment.
For a country like Madagascar – poor, rural, and increasingly young
and unemployed – the attraction of foreign investment is easy to
understand. The population doubles about every 25 years, but the
amount of arable land doesn't. Madagascar's economy has grown
little, if at all, since the French colonial era, but like many developing
countries it needs to grow at a robust 8 to 10 percent just to absorb
its growing population.
When Daewoo – the world's third-largest corporate importer of
corn – came knocking, asking for access to some of Madagascar's
relatively inexpensive agricultural land, Ravalomanana,
Madagascar's president at the time, could hardly sign the deal fast
enough.
For Daewoo, the 99-year deal to lease 3.2 million acres was sweet.
The Madagascar government was prepared to lease a long stretch
of coastline to grow corn and oil palm, all of it for export. Much of
the land had fallen into disuse because it was in a part of the island
that receives little rainfall. But deep underground, there is fossil
water locked up in limestone formations, estimated to be enough to
irrigate dryland crops for a century or more.
Daewoo's investment in drawing out the water would have revived
the region's job prospects as well as its fallowed land.
"It was a lot of land that was not utilized, and it could have been
utilized if you brought in modern technology, such as deep well
irrigation systems," says a longtime foreign businessman based in
Antananarivo who has access to the country's political elite. But
local people still viewed that land as belonging to their ancestors, he
adds, and were bound to oppose any deal with a foreign investor,
unless the government took a leading role in helping to persuade
them.
"But it was badly thought out, badly implemented, and it went south
from there," says the businessman. "The farmers here have an
unusual emotional attitude. It's not their land: It's their ancestors'
land. If your mom is not from here, then you're not from here."
That sentiment becomes more apparent beyond the city limits of
Antananarivo, where the tightly clustered homes give way to gentle
rolling hills planted with vegetables, and where rice fields are often
flooded knee-deep.
Farmers here close to the capital have advantages over their more
remote brethren, such as the ability to sell cash crops like tomatoes
and cucumbers for big-city prices.
It is beyond these areas, in the deep backcountry, where the
farming economy doesn't work as well. There, explains UNICEF
spokeswoman Sarah Johansson, rates of chronic malnutrition rival
those of war-ravaged Afghanistan. She says UNICEF treated
11,000 Madagascan children in 2010 for severe malnutrition
because they either did not have enough food or not enough variety
in their diet. Many of the worst cases are in areas where most of the
country's food is grown, adds Ms. Johansson, because subsistence
farmers in Madagascar are quite conservative about trying out
different crops and diversifying their diets with vegetables, choosing
instead more reliable stomach-fillers like rice.
But farmers nearer the city face a host of perils, such as the greedy
eyes of those with power. On the road from the capital airport
toward downtown, a bare patch of ground that used to be a farm
now sits idle, a spontaneous soccer field for village boys and a
parking lot for trucks, surrounded by green rice paddies.
The land was confiscated from local farmers and sold off by the
Ravalomanana government to a hotel developer. When the new
government came in, the hotel project was canceled, but while
courts work out appropriate punishments and compensation, the
original owners must wait and are unable to start farming again.
The lives of elites who seal multimillion-dollar import deals in the
restaurants of colonial-era hotels and a farmer like Rajaonary could
hardly be more different.
Rajaonary says his political leaders simply don't understand how
important land is to an ordinary Madagascan. It is one's cradle,
table, home, workplace, and grave, he says.
"Land is holy," Rajaonary says, leaning on his hoe in the late-
afternoon sun. "Land that I inherited from my ancestors – I couldn't
sell it, because even now, after they died, it still belongs to them.
They are watching what I am doing with the land. So I will do what
they have done for me. I will pass my land along to my family, too."
This attitude – indeed, this gap in understanding within the culture
here – helps to explain the extraordinary revolt of March 2009,
which brought down the government. But it also makes any future
foreign investment in Madagascar's agriculture sector very difficult.
"Nobody, no foreign investor, is going to come back here to go into
farming," says the foreign businessman. "Emotionally, it would not
be possible."
But while Madagascar has closed the door for now on big foreign
investors, there is little sign in other parts of Africa that there's much
holding back the great African land rush.
Whether motivated by altruism or by personal enrichment, African
leaders increasingly see agriculture as an engine for growth and a
ticket to prosperity.• In March 2009, civilian protesters led by a
baby-faced former disc jockey swarmed through the streets of this
hilly capital city. They were calling for the ouster of then-President
Marc Ravalomanana for what they saw as literally giving away the
farm, selling out his impoverished nation.
The anger was about food. Mr. Ravalomanana reportedly had
leased 3.2 million acres – nearly half the island nation's arable land –
to a South Korean conglomerate, Daewoo, for 99 years. In theory,
it should have been a win-win deal: Daewoo would pay
Madagascar $6 billion to grow corn and oil palm, helping South
Korea meet both its food-security and bio-fuels needs, while
providing Madagascar with revenues and desperately needed jobs.
But the protests, ultimately backed by the military, showed that the
Madagascan people – 70 percent of whom live in rural areas and
nearly 50 percent of whom suffer chronic malnutrition – saw the
deal as a "land grab" and a threat to their country's survival.
Ravalomanana fled the country within days, and a military-backed
junta led by the young DJ, Andry Rajoelina, took control. The
Daewoo deal was promptly scuttled.
"There was no process," says Hajo Andrianainarivelo,
Madagascar's new minister for land management. "The head
government official of the region just received an order from the
president of the country to help the Korean people to find the most
fertile land. That was it. You can't do that in Madagascar."
So the continent's discontent with these deals takes many
development experts by surprise. Almost any investment in a poor
country generates jobs, tax revenues, and better skills for the future.
But in today's Africa, investment in agriculture – even a $6 billion
long-term deal like Daewoo's – is increasingly portrayed by the
media and rights groups as "land-grabbing," neocolonialism, and
even a threat to a country's ability to feed itself. And when many
African countries are still unable to feed themselves, foreign
investment can become the spark for revolution.
. Courtesy
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