Poorer nations have registered concern over the first world's governments and corporations buying up swathes of their arable land to ensure food security at the expense of the developing world.
A recent Guardian article has claimed the practice is tantamount to “neo-colonialism” as poorer nations produce food for rich countries while their own people go hungry.
Quoting the head of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation, Jacques Diouf, the newspaper article warns the “scramble for Africa” to secure long-term supplies of food in the wake of rising prices, may have alarming consequences.
According to the report, an example of the practice is the South Korean business Daewoo Logistics' decision to launch plans to purchase a 99-year lease on a million hectares of land in Madagascar, employing a mostly South African workforce. The aim is to produce five-million tonnes of corn by 2023 and palm oil from a further 120,000 hectares in the country to help ensure food security for the first world nation.
The produce would be headed for the company's home country of South Korea, which is attempting to reduce its reliance on foreign food imports.
"These deals can be purely commercial ventures on one level, but sitting behind it is often a food security imperative backed by a government," said Carl Atkin, a consultant for Agribusiness, a British firm that helps to negotiate many of the land deals, to the Guardian.
Duncan Green, head of research for environmental group Oxfam, says the main losers in the major land deals would be the small land holders.
"If this was a negotiation between equals, it could be a good thing," he said. "It could bring investment, stable prices and predictability to the market."
"The problem is, [in] this scramble for soil, I don't see any place for the small farmers," he added.
The problem of food prices was tackled at the recent Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit where leaders issued a communique promising strong action to promote food security in developing countries and voiced their collective concern over volatile food prices.
"We support a fully coordinated response and a comprehensive strategy to tackle this issue through the Comprehensive Framework for Action developed by the United Nations (U.N.) Task Force on the Global Food Security Crisis," the declaration said.
The summit, U.S. President George W. Bush's last foreign engagement as president, looked to foster growth in the agricultural sector to alleviate poverty caused by rising food prices.
"We directed APEC to increase technical cooperation and capacity building that will help foster agricultural sector growth... We directed APEC to help member economies develop science-cased regulatory frameworks to benefit from the potential of agricultural biotechnology," the statement said.
Though the result of such a land grab by rich governments and corporations is that less-developed nations are likely to be the food store of richer governments at the expense of their own people, many poorer countries are scrambling to sell their arable land to bring in much-needed foreign currency, especially at a time of global recession.
Revenues raised from foreign investors in this manner would go towards propping up infrastructure and development.
Img: Palm plantation, Ghana. Credit: oneVillage Initiative/flickr
Interested in a more interactive TTH? Join our Facebook Group Want regular updates from The Tech Herald? Follow us on Twitter
Advertising
Comment on this Story