The International Conference on Global Land Grabbing brought together global experts from NGOs, academia, International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the World Bank, and UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
During the two day event experts presented research findings on the topic of land grab from over 100 papers submitted. Conference proceedings concluded that currently, the lives of local people are rarely enhanced through international agricultural land deals. Private businesses that lease or buy land for agricultural production in foreign countries do little to support local communities in terms of food security, employment, or to enhance environmental sustainability.
The term land grab refers to the practice of governments or private firms purchasing or leasing large plots of international land–the most common use for the land is agricultural production and processing for export. Sudan, Ethiopia, Uganda, and Nigeria are a handful of the countries in Africa which have offered deals to international agricultural interests.
Foreign investors have insisted that international land acquisitions for farming will create infrastructure as well as provide jobs and food. Papers from the conference give contrary evidence, however, that investors have not delivered on these promises.
But simply exercising social responsibility may not be enough in the case of agricultural land acquisition and big agribusiness. The UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier de Schutter who attended the conference at IDS stated that community involvement or not, commercial agriculture of this kind will not provide food security to low income communities. De Schutter stated, “Giving land away to investors will result in a type of industrial farming that will have much less powerful poverty-reducing impacts than if access to land and water were improved for the local farming communities. Accelerating the shift towards large-scale, highly mechanized forms of agriculture will not solve the problem of hunger: it will make it worse.”
Land sold or leased to international entities is currently used to produce agricultural exports. Investors have no obligation to sell to local markets at accessible rates. And as investors, maximizing profits of the businesses or enhancing the food security capacities of their own countries remains the priority. Furthermore, land contracted to international agriculture developers is also land which can no longer be used by local farmers to produce domestically-consumed food.
In State of the World 2011, contributing author Andrew Rice writes that the growing instance of land grabs in Africa is a trend that could result in either crisis or opportunity. For a scenario of opportunity to occur, he notes that persons authorized to sign off on land investment, and funding to provide infrastructure supporting investment must receive more attention and regulation. Through forums such as the IDS International Conference on Global Land Grabbing, the international community must encourage policies such as these—and promote opportunity for investors and local people alike.
Danielle Nierenberg, an expert on livestock and sustainability, currently serves as Project Director of State of World 2011 for the Worldwatch Institute, a Washington, DC-based environmental think tank. Her knowledge of factory farming and its global spread and sustainable agriculture has been cited widely in the New York Times Magazine, the International Herald Tribune, the Washington Post, and
other publications.
Danielle worked for two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Dominican Republic. She is currently traveling across Africa looking at innovations that are working to alleviate hunger and poverty and blogging everyday at Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet. She has a regular column with the Mail & Guardian, the Kansas City Star, and the Huffington Post and her writing was been featured in newspapers across Africa including the Cape Town Argus, the Zambia Daily Mail, Coast Week (Kenya), and other African publications. She holds an M.S. in agriculture, food, and environment from Tufts University and a B.A. in environmental policy from Monmouth College.
