Agri business strikes in Africa

[hoodat]

Agribusiness has come up with a new wrinkle. They pay (read bribe) African government officials to confiscate the land from small farmers and lease it to them.

African Farmers Displaced as Investors Move In

Across Africa and the developing world, a new global land rush is gobbling up large expanses of arable land. Despite their ageless traditions, stunned villagers are discovering that African governments typically own their land and have been leasing it, often at bargain prices, to private investors and foreign governments for decades to come.

Organizations like the United Nations and the World Bank say the practice, if done equitably, could help feed the growing global population by introducing large-scale commercial farming to places without it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/22/world/africa/22mali.html

 

[boggybranch]

The ramifications are overwhelming.

 

[hoodat]

Of course the vilagers that depended on those small farmers will now go hungry. In many small villages in Africa people can go a lifetime without ever seeing any actual money. They depend on the barter system and it's unlikely agribusiness will accept payment in chickens or goat hides.

 

[wifezilla]

Yes, drive he natives off the land. That always works so well for the people. NOT!

 

[Hattie the Hen]

I am really not sure if this is the right place to post this article but I will move it if anyone objects.
Please read it as it show up other problems in food production in certain African(etc) countries.

http://www.chewswise.com/chews/2011...ail&utm_campaign=Feed:+ChewsWise+(Chews+Wise)

Hattie

 

[thistlebloom]

Thank you Hattie for passing that on. It's a perspective I had not heard before.

 

[hoodat]

Excellent report. Thank you.
Yes, that's the real problem. Raising more food isn't the answer. There is already a food surplus in the world. If not, why are so many crops subsidized?
The real problem is how do we get the food from where there is too much of it to where people are starving?

 

[Ridgerunner]

I don't think it is just Africa but is worldwide. I'll offer my opinion for what little it is worth. This is taken from Hattie's link.

How come we hardly see op-eds on what paved roads, improved sanitation, more efficient distribution networks, soil conservation and a reduction in food waste might do for world hunger?

In my opinion, it is partly because people are simplistic. They look for quick-hit easy answers to complicated problems so they can go on to something else. This is a complicated problem and will require complex, long term, expensive answers. People are looking for sound bites, not documentaries.

There are several different components in the food chain, growing, harvesting, processing, transporting, storing, and distributing the food. If there is a breakdown in any one of these, you have a problem. Success in one component, like the excess maize harvest mentioned in the article, does not solve all the problems, but without some excess harvest to sell, the rest breaks down pretty quickly. And if you can't store it properly, it all hits the market at the same time, the profit margin all along the chain suffers, consumers can get it real cheap for a little while, then it is gone and expensive. Some of these components are not real sexy. Some require quite a bit of investment. In unstable conditions, it is difficult to get the infrastructure in place to handle all these components. Consumers have to be able to pay enough to support all the different components so everyone involved in this chain can feed their own families.

Some people are passionate about what they think and are quick to condemn any other possible solution. I get a clear feeling on this and other forums that many people are really opposed to big companies that make big profits from any component of this chain. Folks, if big investment is required, then big profits are required to support those investments. Big does not automatically mean bad. One guy in a 2-1/2 ton truck cannot transport all the food the roughly 3,000,000 people in Nairobi need every day.

Does it really matter to a hungry person in Nairobi if someone can grow more food per acre using conventional, organic, or some other method if that food cannot be moved through the supply chain at a price they can afford? I'm suggesting yield per acre may not be the most significant statistic in the whole process. I'm not suggesting it is not important, it is, but there are certain economies of scale that may be more important. Then you have the different costs to the environment, not only of the different growing methods but transporting, processing, storing, and all that.

My thought process in this is of feeding a projected 8,000,000,000 people on this planet in the year 2050, not growing my own vegetables and raising my own chickens. I consider that a totally different topic. I can do that, but how many of the roughly 3,000,000 people in Nairobi can?

Anyway, my opinion.

 

[thistlebloom]

An intelligent and articulate assessment Ridgerunner.

 

[wifezilla]

My neighbor has a much bigger yard than me. He doesn't use most of it. Because I could make way better use of his property than him (gardens, quail, ducks, chickens, etc...) do I get to use the government to take it from him and give it to me?