By Stephen Leahy

Today it emerged that world leaders are to discuss what is being described as “land grabbing” or “neo-colonialism” at the G8 meeting next week. A spokesman for Japan’s ministry of foreign affairs confirmed that it would raise the issue: “We feel there should be a code of conduct for investment in farmland that will be a win-win situation for both producing and consuming countries,” he said.

Olivier De Schutter, special envoy for food at the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, said: “[The trend] is accelerating quickly. All countries observe each other and when one sees others buying land it does the same.”

Some of the largest deals include South Korea’s acquisition of 700,000ha in Sudan, and Saudi Arabia’s purchase of 500,000ha in Tanzania. The Democratic Republic of the Congo expects to shortly conclude an 8m-hectare deal with a group of South African businesses to grow maize and soya beans as well as poultry and dairy farming.

Other countries that have acquired land in the last year include the Gulf states, Sweden, China and Libya. Those targeted include not only fertile countries such as Brazil, Russia and Ukraine, but also poor countries like Cameroon, Ethiopia, Madagascar, and Zambia.

De Schutter said that after the food crisis of 2008, many countries found food imports hit their balance of payments, “so now they want to insure themselves”.

Continue Reading Fears For The World’s Poor Countries as The Rich Grab Land to Grow Food

39 Comments

  1. re: Street Farmer.

    “In 2005, he received a $100,000 Ford Foundation leadership grant. In 2008, the MacArthur Foundation honored Allen with a $500,000 “genius” award. And in May, the Kellogg Foundation gave Allen $400,000 to create jobs in urban agriculture.”

    They didn’t CREATE him, but this is how you would co-opt something like local farming. It’s through the teat of funding.

  2. Read the “The U.N. Plan for Your “Sustainable” Community,” thanks for sharing it. Seems to me that this perspective is fed by the feeling of lack of control by people who feel marginalized. People who have a certain value system – i.e. middle class Christian & I’m assuming white – that they feel is being forcefully taken away by an agenda run by liberals(feminists, welfare advocates, environmentalists).

    What is interesting here is that the groups mentioned that form the “special interest groups that guide this Agenda” – i.e. “Sierra Club, Earthlinks, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, Greener Alternatives, Pacific Bell, Peace Child, United Nations Association-USA, Environmental Ecological Services, Change Management System, Countywide Joint Task Force on Sexual Harassment, Prevention and Education, and the Human Care Alliance (about 80 service providers and community groups), and the Welfare and Low-Income Support Network”, besides the Sierra Club, Pacific Bell and the UN association of USA are mostly community organizations run by social workers. If you visit any of their websites, you can see what kind of budget they have to work with, and most of them look like they are just getting by. Most of these community organizations also depend on funding from the federal, state, local governments and private donations for their budgets.

    The REALITY of the matter is this – the good intentions that these people have who run these community organizations is SUBSUMED by what they can and cannot do because they suckle at the teat of government and private donations. Once they get into an alliance with a larger group – I.E. the Federal government or corporate sponsors – their agenda becomes subsumed under the stipulations that these organizations carry for funding. All of a sudden for example, the “poor and low income” working groups who are on the ground in the communities and may have a good idea of what SHOULD be done because they are involved with the people are constrained by what the federal government says is appropriate or what the corporate sponsor says, etc. In reality, the corporation, the federal government, etc. thrive in a system which does not ALLOW for real solutions to poverty because doing so would be questioning their whole basis for existence and power/control within the society at large.

    Look at the UN – in its founding documents it has some good language. BUT – it was setup after WWII as an instrument for a new world system with the US and its corporate interests and its allies having overwhelming dominance and control over its agenda. This system had a role in facilitating the centralization of wealth and control within certain sectors who now, because of their bargaining position have the ground floor opportunities to dictate and guide crisis management scenarios. It means the same folks who caused the mess are in charge of cleaning it up. The system is trying to adapt to new scenarios, some self created and some dictated by the climate meanwhile maintain the same people at the helm. THAT is the problem. With all the talk about justice, peace and equality it is the same institutions who are controlling the discourse and ALLOWING others to speak. For example the Pope talking about justice and equality in the face of its 2000 year reign of genocide, murder and oppression. Or the US saying its a new day because they have a black president yet the finance/military/industrial complex has an even greater stranglehold over the society and culture. Power is NOT given up freely and any crisis is going to be used and framed under the rubric of protecting certain interests.

    Local farming is GOOD, consuming less is good(that’s what our elders taught us – remember? don’t live beyond your means?), being conscious about purchasing decisions is good, building community is good. This is where we need to go. Now, the issue is co-optation. How is goldman sachs or this new world body with private interests trying to maintain control going to try to co-opt it. Is it by controlling the market on carbon credits? Is it through a world currency or local currencies subsumed under a currency controlled by private bankers? THAT is what we have to figure out and INSULATE and CREATE communities that CANNOT be controlled this way – I think that is what the Solari model is about(correct me if I’m wrong). This is about sovereignty and REAL justice and respect for our communities and our planet, something which these power players CANNOT and WILL not grant no matter how much their language changes.

  3. Guy,

    I completely agree that they are not all powerful. But to diffuse the power that they do perpetrate it is crucial to properly understand their techniques and goals. To get an understanding of these goals, I suggest beginning with an introduction to Agenda 21. A possible starting point is the following …

    Agenda 21, The U.N. Plan for Your “Sustainable” Community
    http://www.crossroad.to/text/articles/la21_198.html

    “…current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class – involving high meat intake use of fossil fuels, appliances, home and work-place air-conditioning, and suburban housing – are not sustainable. A shift is necessary. which will require a vast strengthening of the multilateral system, including the United Nations…” Maurice Strong , opening speech at the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development

    Freedom Advocates
    http://www.freedomadvocates.org/

    Michael Shaw has done some wonderful work.

    Agenda 21 — The Blueprint to Advance Sustainable Development
    http://www.freedomadvocates.org/articles/sustainable_development/agenda_21_–_the_blueprint_to_advance_sustainable_development_20040615100/

    In this straightforward expose of Agenda 21 — the blueprint to advance Sustainable Development — Beckett examines the notion of “sustainability”. His conclusion: The American people need to be better informed so they understand that Sustainable Development is a pseudonym for centralized control over human life.

  4. Bert:

    Global capitalism/empire is running into the reality that it cannot expand infinitely on the same trajectory. On some fronts, reality is catching up to the players. Unfortunately many are not ready to get rid of their paternalistic meglomania and are not willing to give up the ego which tells them that they must be at the helm(elitism). This is why I don’t think the correct use of energy is poo-pooing the issues that have been brought up as to the limits of our planet’s ecosystem versus the way that the dominant economic paradigm operates(infinite growth/unbridled expansion). The issue as I see it is that because of the unprecedented power centralized in certain sectors, brought about by said economic paradigm – there is a major danger of these issues being co-opted and setup in ways where these power players are in on the ground floor(like Goldman Sachs on the ground floor of cap and trade). Since they have the networks, power and resources at their disposal and the “rest of us” do not have such power in our community’s hands, it is obvious that we are ill prepared for a self-determined and sovereign position within all of this. The fact that we are seeing more articles about local farming, etc. is not necessarily a top down propaganda campaign to push an agenda – it is more so the powers that be trying to perhaps “co-opt” something that could be good as the “next big thing.” They can and WILL find a way to co-opt it and bring it under their watchful eye – and that is why this time is crucial. If we understood the way these things work, we could work to insulate these community efforts from being co-opted. “THEY” are not all powerful and I have found that the more we buy into that, the more powerless we become and the more power – real and imagined we give to “them.”

    It is up to all of us now to be trying to organize with our fellow community citizens so that we are more self-reliant and self-determined. We can NEVER expect the “powers that be” to hand us freedom.

  5. They bee pushing neo-feudalism on the public, that’s why you’re seeing so much propaganda on local farming. Gotta bee reducing our global footprint… and when THEY say “footprint” they are not speaking in figurative terms. They mean to reduce the number of our feet walking on this planet because they simply don’t need so many of us anymore and because they want to increase their leverage of control over us.

    Sorry to burst bubbles, but time to see reality as it is.

  6. Guy, nice find. Thanks for posting that. Uplifting reading among all the gloomy economic reading I do 🙂

Comments are closed.