Biofuels and Land Grabbing in Africa

African Affairs Network

7th March

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XurxqSFpK3s

• http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/video/2011/nov/09/biofuel-tanzania-video

Dr Elisa Greco

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Land grabsGeneral overview

Referring to the talk organised by theAfrican Affairs Network - Sheffield

7.3.2013Dr Elisa Greco

Researcher, School of Environment and Development, University of Manchester

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What is a land grab?

Rapid and large surge of international investment and speculation

in land mostly in poor, non industrial countries

Investment: creation of large farms, plantations, monocultures

Speculation: absentee landlords kicking out people and waiting to resell the land, or the

stocks attached to it, to third parties

Whose land? And why bother?1. Expropriation and eviction of local people2. Deforestation: forest lands converted to

monocultures3. Intensification: marginal or extensively used

lands converted to monocultures

Most concerning cases: 4. From food production to fuel production5. From production consumed locally –

nationally to production for export

The «war on data»• more than 60 countries targeted • hundreds of investment groups and a

few governments involvedWorld Bank (2011) : 56 million hectares leased or sold 2008-9ILC (2011) : 80 m hectares since 2001Land Matrix (2012) : 227 million hectares

Clear trend

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Why – and why now?Triple crisis : feed – food – fuel

1. biofuels2. the 2007/8 food price hike3. financial crisis: speculation on food – land - agricultureInvestments in land aim at securing: - Food- Biofuel- Land in itself - Speculation

Change in use for food and feed versus use for biofuel, grains (2005-2012)

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What is new? 1. capital goes into previously disregarded

places• risky countries : political instability, corruption • poorly serviced regions : no infrastructures, no easy

access to markets• environmentally marginal areas

2. capital does not come from ex-colonial powers only

BRICS -Brazil, Russia, India,China, South Africa + Middle Eastern governments

3. financial capital and speculation

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What is old? Enclosures

Earliest historical example: British enclosures (1500 - 1700). Colonialism: continued enclosure - land alienation. Natives are dispossessed. Get the land and you’ll control the people = workersDispossessing people of land is an act of class power.

Land dispossession as primitive accumulation

What happens to the dispossessed?

They are forced to work for somebody else.

But:disconnect between dispossession and

proletarianisationIn many poor areas, wage labour is not immediately available:• people become destitute• they work for increasingly lower wages

floating population + reserve army of labour

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«Land acquisitions»…

1. there is plenty of idle land there!

“vacant land” argument

2. capital injection = developmenti) infrastructuresii) employmentiii) more market access

3. poor countries do not have the necessary capital to develop rural areas: therefore Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) is a solution

…or land grabbing1. No land is vacant: eviction and dispossession.

Easier when people haven’t formal land titles2. This is business and speculation: i) No investment : speculation and financialisationii) No employment : highly mechanized / importing

labouriii) No infrastructural developmentiv) Endangering local food systems : non food crops

/ food export3. National investors : lose out to international

capital or become «partners»

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Why Africa ?• It’s cheap : labor and land are cheap• It’s easy Law: citizens are «tenants» of the State ; ¾ of land in Africa is not titled «weak governance»Global Land Project (2010) : 62 m hectares,27 countriesOakland Institute (2011) says 50 m ha in 20 countries.

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Just a problem of governance?

1. trasparency2. participation: Free, Prior and

Informed Consent (FPIC)

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Is land titling a possible solution?

Formal land titling often works to the advantage of stronger social groups

• class bias : middle classes• gender bias : male owners• agrarian bias: less evident land uses

rural > agrarian - pastoral uses - multiple uses - seasonal uses

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Option 1- International governance 1. Responsible Agricultural Investments Principles(RAI)

Code of Conduct- World Bank- UNCTAD- IFAD and FAO

For whom? Private investors

Option 2 - International law2. Voluntary Guidelines on the

Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the

Context of National Food Security - transnational agrarian movements and NGOs - Committee on Food Security (CFS) – inside FAO

For whom? Governments

especially of target countries

Both RAI and the Guidelines are : non- binding

voluntary = no sanctions against offenders

UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to

Food : - “trying to discipline the land deals” - “providing policymakers with a

checklist to destroy the global peasantry responsibly”

Option 3 – simply the economy, stupid!

Private companies abandon projects of plantations and large estates: shift to outgrower schemes

and contract farming

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contract farming

- vertical integration of small farmers into the global food regime

- Less risk of failure, less politics

Corporate Social Responsibility:Unilever, Nestlé, Kraft – large agribusiness which are

vertically integrated

Not so appealing for the big five of agribusiness: ADM, Cargill, Bunge

Biofuel companies

Chose what, and with whom!• Rights and Resources Initiative: convince private

investors that land grabbing is risky. Contract farming as positive solution for all.

• Oxfam: convince the WB to freeze land deals. Call to freeze International Financial Corporation’s (IFC)support to «bad investors».

• La Via Campesina : fight against investors on the ground, get them to go away and give up, and refuse to become contract farmers by building concrete alternatives to the corporate food sytem : short chain,low input farming

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Activism can help existing resistance!Or: thinking outside the three options box

• Land grab : threat of dispossession of small rural producers.

• Pushing people out of the land : dispossession, involuntary resettlement

• Dispossession and proletarianisation : disappearance of small rural producers

( «death of the peasantry»)• Many different people are fighting back • 2012: increasing repression against land activists

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Global food sovereigntyIn poor countries: regain local control over resources and production. 1) agribusiness power 2) Green Revolutions 3) cheap food imports (including food aid and dumping) In rich countries:1) agrarian reform and repopulation of the countryside 2) reconstruction of shorter commodity chains and local food systems

Market supply and demand do not meet real food needs: they meet corporate needs.

Agriculture must stop: - working for the rich and producing stuffed and starved

: obesity epidemics and chronic hunger both caused by the same global food system

- consuming more energy than it produces

Less obvious actions 1. Support and solidarity to local land activists- 2012 has been the year of increasing violence against land activists- Cambodia, Laos • ILC has set up an emergency fund for them2. Close monitoring of post- investment plansWhat happens when a land grab is stopped? Sometime the land is effectively returned to previous occupiers, but stays in the hands of state agencies

reflections on the land grabs in Tanzania

1. Land dispossession and environmental enclosures

2. A land grab ante litteram3. Land grabs- 1/ongoing- 2/unclear- 3/ gone..but! 4. Land dispossession, class and the role of the State

Environmental enclosures in Tanzania

Source: Tanzania GIS Community

environmental enclosures Roderick Neumann 1998; Dan Brockington 2005

forced evictions from protected areas• Restricted or prohibited: agriculture, hunting,

charcoal making, wood collection, cattle-keeping

13.787 km2 - totally inaccessible37.428 km2 – partially restricted

out of total 94.509 km2

about 39% of the country

Privatisation of state farms:

Kapungaa land grab

ante litteram

evidence of land concentration and class formation

2005 elections : collective land claims and politicslocal large farmers + urban professionals investing in

agriculture Vs.

precarious alliance: middle producers allied with small rural producers, wage labourers, landless and too poor

to farm• All lose out : privatised estates sold to large investors. • International capital involved: IFC – Carlyle Group• Land grabs build on this pre-existing class hegemony

Land grabs in Tanzania

FELISA4,250 hectaresOil palm

AGRISOLDownsized: 320,000 hectaresnow 35,000

KITOMONDO ex Sekab2,000 hectaresAim: 200,000

Ex - KoreaEx – SekabNow government RUBADARufiji District

• Long-term leasehold contracts : legal transfer (= expropriation) from Village Land to Public Land/General Land

• Once the land is put under lease, redistribution to local people is unlikely to happen

• One investor may leave; the lease is under control of the Ministry of Lands

• The Tanzania Investment Centre signals it as available to new investors

• Speculation• Role of the state • Clear trend of dispossession

Opposition parties and the land grab

• Since general elections 2005: opposition parties increasingly vocal on the land grab

• Ministry of Land and ex- UN Habitat Executive Anna Tibaijuka announces land ceiling to be imposed to foreign land acquistion

• Ceiling: 3,000 hectares

Basic resources - check these out!• Transnational Institute group on Agrarian Justice: http://www.tni.org/work-area/agrarian-justiceAnalysis and campaigns on land deals• Genetic Resources Action International - GRAINhttp://farmlandgrab.org/ Daily and weekly news on land deals• International Land Coalition ILC http://

landportal.info/landmatrix Large database on land deals

Professor Lionel Cliffe

LAND GRABBING FOR BIOFUEL &OTHER PRODUCTS

What is behind it?What is ahead for Africa?

WHAT BIOFUELS?

• Food crops: sugar, maize and other grain –– But high cost production in money and energy

• Jatropha, supposed to be OK on marginal land – but production may often use water

• Palm oil, by afr the highest yields but may be at expense of forest or farmland

BIOFUELS: the Scale

• 50 million hectares worldwide acquired for biofuels in recent years

• EU’s Renewable Energy Directive target of 25% requires another 40 m. ha.

• In Tanzania two allocations of 200,000+ ha., several in range of 20 – 80,000

Range of other Land Grabs

• Long history: land grabs central to colonialism • Land grabs by local elites e.g. Kenya• Wide variety of Contemporary grabs:

- Vast plantations- Irrigation schemes- Blocs of farms and gated villages- Displaced S African and Zimbabwe white farmers

- Food and industrial crops, for export and local

SYSTEMIC DRIVERS OF GRABS

Exponential growth since 2005

Not simply response to new levels of food and fuel demands

Global shifts in AGRICULTURAL COMMODITY MARKETS

Dynamic and crisis of FINANCIAL SYSTEMS

THE NEW LOGIC:Control of the Planet’s Land

• Speculative motives for commodity and land investment require CONTROL of the ultimate resource.

• Is a compromise possible based on instituting Secure PROPERTY Rights - for investors and locals?

• Or is dispossession via an African ENCLOSURE PORCESS INEVITABLE?