Outsourced agriculture: the new colonialism?
The Economist, that radical magazine, has produced an editorial and a long article about how rich countries in the Middle East and Asia are rapidly acquiring agricultural land – and the water rights that go with it – in impoverished developing countries in order to ensure food security for their own populations. The buyers are Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, South Korea, China, and the like. The sellers? Sudan, Ethiopia, Congo, and Pakistan.
If this sounds uncomfortably like colonialism revisited, it is for good reason. As The Economist so nicely puts it, while putting agricultural land to good use might help reduce Third World malnutrition, “these advantages cannot quell a nagging unease.” From whence comes the unease? The deals raise questions about lack of transparency, government collusion, bargain prices, effects on local food markets, and who gets the benefits.
The Economist suggests the need for a dose of skepticism, not least because of the size of the purchases – an astonishing total of 15 to 20 million hectares so far (a hectare is about 2.5 acres). Advises The Economist: “defer judgment and keep a watchful, hopeful but wary eye” on the process.
This sounds optimistic to me. You?
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Comments
Sounds optimistic to me too. Will we have wars fought over these rights as well (like we have over other resources)? Modern day slavery takes many forms.
Perhaps the greatest fiction is that colonialism has ever paused. Perhaps it has changed faces, swapped names. But ended? Not for a heartbeat.
The Financial Times did a great piece on this last November, focusing largely on the lease of more than 3 million acres of land in Madagascar by South Korean corporate giant Daewoo Logistics. The goal? To raise corn. Not only is Madagascar already suffering the effects of deforestation because of poverty and poor agricultural practices, now they’re facing the dangers of monoagriculture. Koreans don’t actually eat much corn themselves: most of the corn will be used for animal feed and industry.
I wrote a commentary on that story, with links to the Financial Times piece and other information here: http://industrialomelet.wordpress.com/2008/11/23/is-serfdom-making-a-comeback/.
Obviously, this trend is going to continue and it will have far reaching implications for potentially billions of people.
How different is that from what western corporations do today? Let’s take for example, Cargill. It is the largest agri-business in the world and has tremendous power in poor nations. They have properties around the world that go from mine fields to agricultural land. The difference is that, instead of selling their goods to just one country, they sell them to whomever pays the most. Evidently, developed countries are the ones who end up getting their goods due to their stronger buying power.
I don’t disagree that, what Middle Eastern and Asian countries are doing, is wrong. However, let’s not forget that we’ve been doing this for decades already.
Three words: “Irish Potato Famine”. ‘nuf said?
I have to admit that this is a disconcerting trend if all of the production is going to the purchasing country with no tangible benefit to the people living in the country from which the land is being purchased. I do agree with the thought that an international standard needs to be set which will establish guidelines for such activities. Regrettably, such a standard will inevitably be flaunted by a purchasing country should it choose to do so. Nevertheless, if these “purchases” could be turned into “investments” with true benefits to all the possible parties involved, especially if they could be used to make advances in greener farming practices, there is some positive potential. I do believe that defering judgment is not the appropriate thing to do because the purchases are not going to be deferred. They are going to continue. My suggestion would be to advocate the introduction of an international standard for such practices (despite the fact that it would not have a lot of “teeth”) as a minimum to raise sufficient awareness so that the purchasing countries are at least put on notice that the circumstances iof their purcahses are being watched. While it won’t solve the problem, it may at least make some think twice about the nature of the final sale.
Yeah, it might help solve world hunger. As much as any concentration of agricultural resoruces does. (In short, welcome to the dystopia.)
Export models and the destruction of local agricultural practices are a halmark of the globalitarian strategy. Local tradition is a bastion of resistance to globalization’s homogenization of culture and thereby consumption, so “buying” the “rights” to land and the crops it produces serve a twofold purpose of spreding the export virus and subverting local control of the economy, thereby weakening cultural structures . I agree with Melissa, colonialism is alive and well, it just prospers under a different name.