By Javier Blas, Financial Times
The race by food-importing countries to secure farmland overseas to improve their food security risks creating a “neo-colonial” system, the United Nations’ top agriculture official has cautioned.
The warning by Jacques Diouf, director-general of the Food and Agriculture Organisation, comes as countries from Saudi Arabia to China plan to lease vast tracts of land in Africa and Asia to grow crops and ship them back to their markets.
“The risk is of creating a neo-colonial pact for the provision of non-value-added raw materials in the producing countries and unacceptable work conditions for agricultural workers,” Mr Diouf said.
Financial investors and food companies were also looking to invest in overseas farmland, raising some concerns, officials said.
The pursuit of foreign farm investments is the latest sign of how the global food crisis, which has seen record prices for commodities such as wheat and rice, is reshaping the politics of agriculture.
This year big providers of agriculture commodities – including India, Russia, Argentina and Vietnam – have restricted exports to keep local markets supplied.
Joachim von Braun, director of the International Food Policy Research Institute, said importing nations realised that dependence on the international market made them vulnerable – not only to surging prices but, crucially, also to an interruption in supplies. “They want to secure the supply lines of food,” he said.
The recent drop in agricultural commodity prices had not altered this view, as food prices remained well above historical levels, analysts said.
Middle Eastern and North African countries, which import most of their food, are leading the race to invest overseas. Countries such as Sudan, Ethiopia and Ukraine are opening their doors. Meles Zenawi, prime minister of Ethiopia, said recently its government was “very eager” to provide hundreds of thousands of hectares of agricultural land for investment.
Referring to recent investment, Mr Diouf said: “Some negotiations have led to unequal international relations and short-term mercantilist agriculture.” His warning is important as he has been a strong supporter of joint ventures between countries with money to invest and those with land and water resources. It reflects unease among diplomats about the race to lock in land and food supplies overseas.
The upward trend in leasing such farmland has also caused alarm among western agriculture officials, who worry about countries such as Sudan and Zimbabwe gaining more geopolitical leverage following investment in their agriculture.
The FAO has launched a task force to analyse potential problems connected to this, including land rights and the question of how much food would be left for the host country. Behind closed doors, UN officials are discussing whether a scheme similar to the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative – the programme that helped the oil and minerals industry to tackle corruption and improve governance – could be useful.
4 thoughts on “UN warns of food ‘neo-colonialism’”
Menelik II of Ethiopia fought hard against the Italian invaders and drove them away without giving them even an inch of land; however, the Ethiopian dictator, Meles Seitanawi, has declared openly to allow some foreign countries to use “hundreds of thousands of hectares of agricultural land” without the will of the Ethiopian people. The representatives of the Ethiopian people have never expressed their thoughts about such land deals; even if they do, the final word rests on one man only, and that man is Meles Seitanawi. As most of us well know, Meles Seitanawi never plans or does anything good that benefits the Ethiopian people, and the people of Ethiopia are numbed by their everyday sufferings they receive from this evil man, so they cannot say any word that displeases him. After he is done with the land investment, he will then sell millions of poor Ethiopians to the Arabs as domestic workers and field laborers.
Is this part of the Agriculture-led industrialization strategy of Zenawi & co? If so, how is this supposed to create wealth in the rural area when the investor, the producer and the beneficiary is another country? This is rather similar to a rent-seeking schema, a schema vociferously condemned by Zenawi (who by the way is completely immune to the concept of integrity).
And of course not doubt these investors will get the best lands. It must be paradoxical to see, after a drought, the investor country shipping out food while the host country experience another famine.
This is yet another misguided policy and I don’t think it will be the last one. No wonder when the best expert on economy the regime can afford is …Zenawi!
Even Mr Diof of the UN calls Meles’ offer to the Saudis – sell them farm land so that they become self sufficient in food rather than we farming and selling it to them – neo colonial.
I wonder which country’s interest Meles?
I suggest he should demand oilfields in return from the Saudis so that we too can become self sufficient in energy. We may then call others, with the capability to drill – such as the French,the Dutch or the South African brothers to go get the oil from our fields in Saudi for a share of the product.
That would be somewhat fair.
ooofff, besenteu enekatel!!! bezer, behaimanot, ahun degmo be meretachen.
The man with the gun is always right!!!! is what they say, let it be. It is my believe that God has arranged something good for us. What else, the gov’t will kill us if we say no to the Arab invaders.