Overseas Land Grabs for Food Crops Bring Crisis to Local Ecology and Livelihoods
Photography/ Rosino
Rising bread prices and rising cooking oil prices always provoke public outcry; however, food price increases not only affect the wallets of the general public, but because the public anger is so great, they have also caused concern among the governments of many countries, and over the past two years in particular they have prompted frequent action by the governments of many developing countries. With such a large population (and one that is still growing extremely fast), everyone needs food to eat, and if too many people go hungry, government officials will not keep their seats; but if domestic production is insufficient, where can food be found?
Those places long regarded as "wild lands" or "uninhabited lands" immediately became the top choice for various countries, such as Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. Land prices are low, and with governments quickly smoothing the way, groups of entrepreneurs and "pioneers" poured in rapidly, sometimes with goals not limited to growing food to ship back to their own countries, but also including growing biomass energy crops, or joining in land speculation to make a big profit; their interests may fail to align, and this has even triggered wrestling matches and contests for dominance between countries.
Does the battlefield of competition sound very distant? Actually, it is not. According to research findings by GRAIN, an NGO that has long monitored overseas land grabs for food crops, Taiwan, China's neighbor -- the Philippines -- is currently the best choice for countries seizing farmland, even though the Philippine constitution restricts foreigners from owning land in the country. Other countries include Sudan, Pakistan, Ethiopia, Tanzania, and others. Last year the World Bank also calculated that from October 2008 to June 2009, a total of 46.6 million hectares of land were seized for this reason; however, the figure is very likely larger than this, and is still increasing.
Which countries opened this theater of war? Among them, the most closely watched are China and Middle Eastern countries; their domestic food security faces a crisis, and they must find land overseas. Others include India, Malaysia, Japan, and South Korea. China alone has stated that it will control more than 2 million hectares of overseas land, spread across the Philippines, Brazil, Kazakhstan, Laos, and other countries.
Although land grabs for growing food are meant to safeguard a country's food security, on the other hand they have indeed caused many problems, such as the large numbers of farmers and herders originally living in places regarded as "wild lands" or "uninhabited lands" becoming displaced and losing their sources of livelihood. The example of Africa is especially tragic; for instance, sugarcane cultivation carried out in Mozambique by foreign enterprises claimed it could provide 2,650 job opportunities, but in the end only 35 to 40 local residents worked full-time on the sugarcane plantation, while another 30 local workers were able to work on the plantation only during each harvest season. The vast majority of residents lost their former sources of firewood from the forest, as well as their sources of meat and fish, and received no compensation at all. Investors used large amounts of pesticides, endangering residents' drinking water safety.
What is worse, using food security as a pretext to carry out land speculation and earn large profits has already become the mainstream of this wave of land grabbing. The same World Bank report last year pointed out: "The amount investors need to pay is very low..." (which also makes speculative hype the main reason for buying land), and "often not a cent needs to be spent, ... the taxes large investors must pay are often lower than those of small farmers." "Investment in land, even when it exists, is rarely related to a country's broader development strategy."
The rise in food prices has made countries feel the crisis, yet it has instead become a great opportunity for speculators to profit, while at the same time making life hard for the general public; not only consumers, but also many innocent residents who depend on the land for their living have suffered greatly.