{"id":402,"date":"2008-11-25T23:25:39","date_gmt":"2008-11-25T23:25:39","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2008-11-25T23:25:39","modified_gmt":"2008-11-25T23:25:39","slug":"food-securityand-land-rights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/centernet.pcusa.org\/food-faith\/food-securityand-land-rights\/","title":{"rendered":"Food Security…and Land Rights"},"content":{"rendered":"

An article sent to me by a friend working on the Food Crisis Task Force at the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). <\/p>\n

The article points out that private companies and agribusiness are taking land away from small farmholders, displacing people and centralizing food systems instead of focusing on local production. <\/p>\n

\n
\n

Food crisis leading to an unsustainable land grab<\/h1>\n

Private
\ncompanies across the world are buying huge quantities of foreign land
\nfor the mass production of food. Sue Branford wonders if this quick-fix
\nsolution risks creating an even bigger environmental crisis<\/h2>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSue Branford, guardian.co.uk<\/a>, Saturday November 22 2008 00.01 GMT <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

The world map is being redrawn.
\nOver the past six months, China, South Korea, Japan, Saudi Arabia,
\nKuwait and other nations have been buying and leasing huge quantities
\nof foreign land for the production of food or biofuels for domestic
\nconsumption. It's a modern day version of the 19th-century scramble for
\nAfrica.<\/p>\n

This year's bubble in food prices \u2013 driven by financial
\nspeculators, biofuels and compounded when some countries halted food
\nexports to ensure their own supplies \u2013 led to pain for nations
\ndependent on imports. <\/p>\n

Alarm bells rang, with many governments
\nalerted to what might lie ahead as climate change and soil destruction
\nreduce the supply of food on the world market. The result, a huge
\ninternational land grab, raises many troublesome issues.<\/p>\n

Although
\ngovernments are encouraging the trend, the acquisitions are generally
\nmade by the private sector. Along with agribusiness, corporations and
\nfood traders, investment banks and private equity funds have been
\njumping on board, seeing land as a safe haven from the financial storm.\n<\/p>\n

Indeed, with the supply of the world's food under long-term
\nthreat, investment in land may prove a more solid bet than earlier
\nspeculation in dotcoms and derivatives.<\/p>\n

Yet from a global
\nperspective, it is difficult to see how such investments can deliver
\nlong-term food security. The investors will want a quick return. They
\nwill practise an industrial model of agriculture that in many parts of
\nthe world has already produced poverty and environmental destruction,
\nas well as farm-chemical pollution.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, many local
\ncommunities will be evicted to make way for the foreign takeover. The
\ngovernments and investors will argue that jobs will be created and some
\nof the food produced will be made available for local communities, but
\nthis does not disguise what is essentially a process of dispossession.
\nLands will be taken away from smallholders or forest dwellers and
\nconverted into large industrial estates connected to distant markets.<\/p>\n

Ironically,
\nthese very small communities may have a key role to play in helping the
\nworld confront the interlinked climate and food crises. Many such
\ncommunities have a profound knowledge of local biodiversity and often
\ncultivate little-known varieties of crops that can survive drought and
\nother weather extremes. <\/p>\n

Scientific studies have shown that
\nfarming methods that are not based on fossil-fuel inputs and are under
\nthe control of local farmers can be more productive than industrial
\nfarming and are almost always more sustainable.<\/p>\n

The reason why
\nthis year's food crisis had such a harsh impact, particularly in Asia
\nand Africa, was that many countries had been pushed by the
\nInternational Monetary Fund (IMF) and other institutions to produce
\nfood crops for external markets. They would have been far less
\nvulnerable if they had concentrated first and foremost on feeding their
\npopulations through local production.<\/p>\n

Many of the countries that
\nare rushing to outsource their food supplies should perhaps be looking
\nfirst to see if they can produce more of their food locally, even if it
\nmeans carrying out difficult measures like land reform. <\/p>\n

By
\nseeking a quick fix to their food shortage, they may well end up
\nwithout a long-term sustainable solution. And even if they succeed in
\ngenerating a steady stream of food imports, they may simply be
\nexporting their food insecurity to other nations.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An article sent to me by a friend working on the Food Crisis Task Force at the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). 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