A new report by Oxfam, a leading international relief agency, warns that
climate change will increase the frequency of large spikes in global food
prices, leading to more hungry people around the world. Besides climate
change, rapid population growth, higher per capita incomes, rapid
urbanization, changing diets in developing countries and rising demand for
biofuel feedstocks, are exerting unprecedented pressure on the global food
system.
The worlds poorest, a majority of who live in sub Saharan Africa, are
especially vulnerable to raising food prices because they spend up to 75% of
their income on food. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture
Organization (FAO), the price surges of 2007/2008 resulted in an 8% increase
in the number of malnourished people in African.
According to the OECD-FAO Agricultural Outlook 2012, food production needs
to increase by 60% over the next 40 years to meet the rising global demand
for food. To meet the soaring global demand additional food will need to
come from a combination of increased productivity and expansion of farmland.
Globally, the scope for expanding farmland is limited. But with 60% of the
world's unused arable land, Africa's land is a hot commodity. Foreign
investors are scrambling for Africa's farmland. The pace of purchase or
lease of Africa's is so furious that is now referred to as a "land grab".
Of the 83.2 million hectares of land earmarked for agricultural investment
worldwide, 56.2 million hectares are in Africa. The land grab was in part
fueled by the food and financial crisis of 2008, as corporations and
investment funds began to focus on the profitability of agricultural
commodities.
For Wall Street-based private equity firms, the motive is profits. For
countries scrambling for Africa's farmland - Saudi Arabia, India and China,
the real value is water. Saudi Arabia does not lack land for food
production. What's missing in the Kingdom is water. Indian companies are
doing the same because aquifers across the sub-continent have been depleted
by decades of unsustainable irrigation. Africa's land grabs could be the
biggest virtual water export in history.
The huge land deals in Africa involve large-scale, commercial agriculture,
which will require large quantities of water and mineral fertilizers. Nearly
all of the foreign land deals are located in Africa's major river basins;
the Congo, the Niger, and the Nile Collectively, three of the main countries
in the Nile basin - Ethiopia, Sudan and South Sudan - have already leased
about 8.5 million hectares. Uganda has leased a total of 868,000 hectares to
investors from China, Egypt, Singapore and India.
The Kenya government has granted Tana River Authority (TARDA) tenure rights
to 40,000 hectares of the fragile Tana Delta. TARDA, in a joint venture with
Mumias Sugar Company seeks to establish sugarcane plantations on the fragile
delta. A second company, Mat International is in the process of acquiring
30,000 hectares of land in the Tana Delta. Bedford Biofuels, a Canadian
company could secure a 45-year lease on 65,000 hectares in Tana River
District, which includes access to water resources, to produce biofuels.
In Lake Victoria, Dominion Farms was granted a lease on 7,000 hectares in
the hydrologically vital and ecologically fragile Yala Swamp. These land
grabs could hurt smallholder farmers and could undermine national food
security objectives. In Kenya's Yala swamp, where Dominion Farms have a
25-year lease, local communities have lost access to water and pasture for
their livestock.
According to residents of the Tana Delta allocation of land to TARDA
displaced them to a sub-optimal land, with poor access to water and suitable
land for agriculture. The wave of land grabbing is nothing short of an
ecological and economic disaster in the making. There is simply not enough
water in Africa's rivers and water tables to irrigate all the newly acquired
land.
The ecological and social costs of foreign led commercial agriculture are
socialized while the benefits are privatized by big industry. Africa must
learn from Asia. Pakistan flooded its way into the Green Revolution. The
mighty Indus River irrigates 90% of the country's crops. Today the Indus
River hardly flows all the way into the Arabian Sea. Hundreds of thousands
of hectares of farmland are no longer usable due to waterlogging or
salinization.
Similarly, India drilled and pumped its way into the Green Revolution. Today
India's annual abstraction of ground water for irrigation is 250 cubic
kilometers per year, about 100 kilometers more than can be recharged by
rainfall. Transformation of Africa's agriculture must be predicated on
sustainable use of natural capital, especially water.
Improving productivity and efficiency of hundreds of millions of Africa's
hardworking smallholder farmers must be central to this transformation.
Investments in industrial scale agriculture must balanced by equitable flow
of benefits to smallholder farmers, reducing their alienation and
encouraging their participation through access to technology, credit, inputs
and markets.
Dr. Awiti is an Ecosystems Ecologist based at Aga Khan University, Nairobi;
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Received on Thu Sep 13 2012 - 09:16:09 EDT
