Challenging misconceptions: Inclusive agricultural economies already exist in Africa

Eggs by Umma wa Wapanda Baisikeli Dar es Salaam (UWABA)
on Flickr (cc-by-nc-nd)

Often depicted as merely a begging bowl waiting for the munificence of superior westerners, Africa is seriously maligned. Indeed, across Africa citizens have always engaged in vibrant, innovative livelihoods activities, and these activities are ongoing. So when foreigners and Africans themselves imagine that inclusive agricultural growth can only come from foreign investment, they need to check the blind spots which render thriving African economic activity invisible.

For example, as presented by Marc Wegerif of Oxfam at the third day of the inaugural Conference on Land Policy in Africa, in Tanzania rural villages surrounding Dar es Salaam are already supplying the city’s massive food needs. Wegerif described how about 950,000 eggs were delivered daily by bicycle to the city, generating income for chicken farmers, those bringing the eggs to the city on bicycle, and the traders who sell the eggs in Dar es Salaam. People purchasing these eggs pay about half of what they would in a Dar supermarket, yet this route is more lucrative for chicken farmers than supplying to supermarkets. If the chicken farmers instead sold to supermarkets, the produce would not have the diversified multiplier effects that existing processes do, and yet, policy makers and foreign development practitioners often seek to encourage value chains to be geared towards supplying formal markets.

Wegerif went on to highlight how easily this economic activity could be enhanced if the Tanzanian government simply invested in building bicycle paths in and around the city. He told similar stories for milk (45,000 litres of milk delivered daily to Dar es Salaam by just one small producer project) and maize (33 tons of maize trucked to Dar es Salaam every week by one woman, who gathered maize by the barrow and ox car load from small producers). He discussed how these activities were preferable to pushing millions of small producers off the land to make way for large scale land based investments in agriculture. Wegerif emphasized that investment needed to take place in partnership with small producers, who are actually the drivers of African economic activity. If the problems of insecurity and poor infrastructure were solved, these activities would boom. The bottom line is that for African economic development, bigger and more concentrated are unlikely to be better, and in fact are likely to push smaller producers into further livelihoods hardship. He said African farmers are impressive, but are hampered by poor infrastructure and insecurity, including in some countries, harassment by soldiers.

Where to invest?

At the same time, said Madiodio Niasse of the International Land Coalition, African agriculture needs huge investments, but we have a choice whether to invest in existing producers and enhance their abilities, or to put aside existing farmers and take over their land with foreign companies adopting their preferred agricultural, land use, and trade model. Niasse pointed out that if we opened to foreign companies, we were going to lose control of our land and our countries, which would lead to increased inequality. The extent of foreign large scale land based investment in Africa at present meant that foreign land ownership was close to reaching the levels of foreign ownership under colonialism. Such asset loss would be detrimental to Africans. Niasse pointed out that it was easy to simply hand land over to foreigners and hope they would somehow allow Africa to prosper; going the route of securing African farmer’s land rights and building infrastructure was more complex and difficult, but in the end, security and investment would allow African landholders to prosper, while building African economies.

Have large scale land deals delivered prosperity?

Ward Anseeuw of the Land Matrix pointed out that the evidence was overwhelming that large land deals did not deliver on promises, particularly had failed to create jobs and provide livelihoods security for those who lost land through these deals. Indeed, he pointed out that nowhere in the world had large scale farming led to the levels of job creation that Africa needs. At the same time, since large scale agricultural projects cannot deliver on job creation, Anseeuw said rather than focusing on externally-driven, outsourced and hired labour solutions, African countries should focus on enhancing the viability of their many small scale producers. Even when projects created jobs, as Chrispen Matenga from the University of Zambia pointed out, African governments were held hostage against introducing minimum wages by the threat of retrenchments.

Instead of opting for solutions from outside, African countries need to undertake more territorial, inclusive spatial and political economy planning for African development, Anseeuw said. Inclusive agricultural growth in Africa could not be achieved simply by adopting international instruments; local people need to be involved in planning, implementation and monitoring to bring about inclusive growth. This starts with African governments having the guts to negotiate much more lucrative trade deals, rather than simply accepting the prices and terms of international markets.

By Rebecca Pointer, PLAAS

This post first appeared on the PLAAS blog.

Read other blog posts from the Conference on Land Policy in Africa.

7 ways to work for better land rights

Beekeepers in Ethiopia, ©Tom Pietrasik / Oxfam

What have we learnt from past efforts to secure land rights in Africa? And how can land rights be secured under different tenure regimes?

These are the questions that were tackled on the second day of the inaugural Conference on Land Policy in Africa, hosted by the Land Policy Initiative of the African Union, African Development Bank and UNECA, taking place currently at African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa.

Recognise and strengthen customary rights, starting with statutory recognition

Most of Africa’s land is held under customary land rights, and many of these property regimes are robust and have local legitimacy. Conventional land administration systems often fail in Africa, as they are not appropriately configured to address customary tenure rights.

Across the continent, there has been a move away from formal titling as the only or best way to secure rights. One of the main arguments in favour of titling – the ‘credit effect’ – has been been widely discredited. Customary tenure is the norm in Africa, not an aberration, and should be recognized and supported, not treated as an inferior form of tenure.

Policy, law and land administration need to recognise and secure rights held under diverse tenure systems. Individual land titling is a very limited type of formalization, which often fails to capture the complex and overlapping nature of customary tenure rights.

To what degree can statutory recognition of customary and other informal and unregistered property rights assist? While this provides a defence for local people against intrusions on their land, it does not clarify who holds what, and access to appropriate land governance and dispute resolution institutions. In particular, the inaccessibility of formal legal institutions of the justice system means that strengthening institutions from the local level is a key point of intervention.

Community, rather than individual, titling must be further explored as an option

At the same time, with enormously growing competition for land, and multiple threats of loss of tenure, there is widespread demand for registration or certification of some kind, and policymakers and practitioners need to respond to this.

Experiments with group or community titling of outer boundaries are an important innovation that has been implemented in a number of different ways in different environments, in Africa but also elsewhere, such as in the case of the Mexican ejidos.

Research is urgently needed to determine whether, in the recent cases in Africa, such as Mozambique, securing the outer boundary has provided effective relief against external threats to community land and natural resources and averted conflicts with neighbouring villages. We know that it does not automatically do so. How can community titling work for transhuman societies such as pastoralists, who assert collective rather than individual claims to land and related resources? Research is also needed to assess what impacts registering an external boundary and establishing local land administration committees has had on internal configurations of rights. Are rightsholders more secure?

Women’s land rights remain weak under customary tenure, but formalization is not necessarily the answer

Land grabbing does not only take the form of big corporate land deals – women are subject to having their land grabbed by extended family and local elites. Women who are trying to defend their land are subject to asset stripping, land grabbing and accusations of witchcraft. In these ways, women face the combination of traditional laws of inheritance with new challenges associated with growing urbanization, land demand and land values, as well as large-scale land-based investments.

Certification and commodifying land is not necessarily the answer. Even where statutory recognition is offered, women may be excluded through informal processes from becoming involved in land governance institutions. Land administration committees were established at kebele level to take forward certification, but only 7% of those participating in these committees were women. Men dominate dispute resolution mechanisms, and for these reasons there remain disparities between land policy goals and implementation. And while some policymakers favour the growth of land markets, these do not benefit women, especially poorer grassroots women. We need to understand markets as being gendered institutions.

Custom or rights for women? This is a false dichotomy

African traditional systems are patriarchal, treating women as dependents, despite their central roles in land use. This prevents women from participating in land administration processes and institutions.
A salient message from several sessions, including the plenary and the session on women’s land rights, was that neither statutory nor customary laws adequately protect women. The tensions and contradictions between global frameworks, national laws, and traditions and customs must be resolved through challenging customs to conform with women’s human rights. The challenge is to transfer the issue of women’s property rights from the private domain of the household to the public domain of human rights. This means working with and transforming traditional institutions, as these are the fora to which women turn when seeking justice, rather than the formal legal system.

Supporting women’s collective action is key

There have been positive experiences of women mobilizing to challenge discriminatory practices and institutions. Women can be supported to increase community awareness of gender injustice, even through processes that do not have an explicit gender focus, such as community mapping exercises to identify existing land uses and claims.

Women’s land rights can be strengthened through grassroots mobilization combined with supportive state institutions and wider alliances. Mobilization of women across rural but also urban areas can help to build broader coalitions pursuing their rights. Securing women’s land rights requires capacity building to equip women leadership skills to mobilise more women.

One priority is to design and implement new community justice mechanisms and processes, such as community monitors and community paralegals to intervene in violations of all people’s land rights. Again, interventions to secure rights in general can achieve real benefits for women, if appropriately designed. Women can collectively access services unavailable to individuals – for instance, a revolving loan fund based on women’s own savings and contributions from funding agencies enabled women to access land and engage a surveyor

Political leadership and evidence from research are needed to transform policies and practices
Parliaments have an important role in land governance: they approve, ratify and enact laws, frameworks and policies in their countries and regionally. They represent the communities and can sensitize and mobilize people on land policy issues. They also can approve budgets, and hold governments accountable, for land policy implementation.

They do, though, face constraints and the complexity of land issues requires parliamentarians to forge relationships with a wide variety of stakeholders. Parliaments can enact laws to strengthen transparency in land transactions, and to curb corruption, by requiring that Parliaments must consider and ratify large-scale land acquisitions above a certain size threshold, and all countries must have laws regulating large-scale land-based investments.

At the same time, promoting best practices requires us to have clear examples of positive customary systems – this is the foundation for evidence-based policy making. But evidence by itself does not change policy. Land is a profoundly political issue, and political leadership and support to challenge and transform. This requires working with national political leaders – in collaboration with regional and global bodies – to become champions of ordinary people’s land rights, and especially those of women, young people, and marginalised groups such as pastoralists.

Technical tools to secure land rights require wider policy and institutional support

Land rights tools should be implemented at country level to ensure that policies are implemented – but we need to learn about how multiple tools can be synchronized. There needs to be increased participation in interacting with the tools for in depth understanding of their application and particularly how civil society can make use of them and interrogate them.

The social domain tenure model (STDM), for instance, can be useful as information and planning tool for informal settlements. As a type of barefoot surveying, STDM is a bottom-up approach with a key role for the local community and both requires but can also strengthen partnerships among relevant stakeholders. It is key to include traditional leaders and community leaders and to ensure a mix of technical and social skills among implementing teams, to reduce land-related conflicts and to guard against discrimination, such as against women’s, young people’s and minority rights, in the course of implementation.

The third day of the conference will build on these discussions by focusing on inclusive agricultural growth: investment, productivity and land rights in the context of large-scale investments. Documentation and discussions are underway on twitter at #africalandpolicy and further information is available at www.africalandconference.org

by Ruth Hall, Future Agricultures Consortium Southern Africa Hub convenor and Associate Professor at the Institute of Poverty Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS)

This post originally appeared on the PLAAS blog.

Does land titling work?

Rural land tenure reforms are often justified as a route to improving agricultural productivity and investment. Is there evidence that they do, and to what degree is formalization a worthy intervention for policymakers aiming to improve productivity in agriculture?

A recent systematic review, funded by DFID, addressed these questions, reviewing available literature on titling and other certification initiatives. Its findings reveal important differences in the impact of reforms, depending on where they occur.

Only 20 studies over the past 30 years met the strict inclusion criteria. Very few studies disaggregated positive effects on women, a clear gap in the available research on tenure reforms.

The results showed strong regional variations in the outcomes of tenure interventions. In Latin America and Asia, the studies show strongly positive gains to productivity ranging from 50-100% after tenure recognition, usually in the form of titling. In contrast, in Africa there were zero or modest gains to productivity ranging from 0-10%, and also weak impacts on investment and income.
Across all regions, there was no evidence of discernible credit effects – a significant finding since this is often a key reason for interventions in property rights.

Why would the impacts in Africa be different from Asia and Latin America? The study put forward three hypotheses for further testing through research. First, pre-existing customary institutions could mean that tenure insecurity was not the primary productivity constraint in Africa. Second, the muted impacts could be a wealth effect, in that African farmers are less able to improve investment into production due to constraints in access to inputs. Third, the absence of complementary public investments in infrastructure and services in Africa could explain the contrast with Latin America, where agrarian reform is approached as a package. Titling alone is likely insufficient to unleash greater productivity.

by Steve Lawry (@stevenlawry) and Ruth Hall (@RuthHallPLAAS)

This post first appeared on the PLAAS blog.

Tackling land questions: Searching for systematic solutions amid a web of politics

Across the world, access to land and related resources are probably our most hotly contested political issues: who does the land belong to, who has the right to access the land, who gets to make decisions about land use, and who is barred from the land are tied to people’s history, culture and ability to pursue decent livelihoods.

In an effort to reduce contestation, most countries have developed complex systems of laws to govern land, some with more success than others. But for many African countries these are still open questions — with different systems of land governance, chosen and imposed, clashing, as countries try to keep space for traditional, customary land practices, grapple with the land legacies of the colonial era, while trying to make land systems that are legible to and compatible with globalised capital.

Amid these tensions, the inaugural Conference on Land Policy in Africa started on Tuesday 11 November 2014 at the African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa. Contradictions abound: UN and World Bank aficionados praising the technical solutions many African countries are beginning to find, and the compatibility of these new systems with the FAO Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security, while the reality ‘large scale land investments’ hit home with many African communities facing devastating land loss as a result.

And yet, there are some innovative solutions to addressing land questions. For example in Uganda, women have started coming together to actively contest customary and legislated land rights, as a group demanding attention and access with some success, as discussed by Joyce Nangobi from Slum Women Initiative for Development (SWID). Or the Social Tenure Domain Model (STDM) being used in Uganda, Zambia and Kenya to determine land rights. The model involves training and working with local people to mark off existing land plots using GIS and aerial photography, alongside community mapping, while also facilitating participatory processes among different stakeholders to negotiate and determine land rights locally.

What these innovations show is that technocratic top-down solutions are not the answer; whatever land rights are ultimately determined need to arise out of local relations, and governments need to become much more adept in navigating the local, taking cognisance of the particularities of each environment. This is not without challenges: whatever land rights are ultimately determined there will be winners and losers, so even when systematic solutions are found, they will still be political, open to change and contestation.

Determining the future of land in Africa cannot be a final solution — contestations will be ongoing, but if governments become more listening, more participatory and more responsive to the needs of people to access land, perhaps the solutions can be more equitable. Such approaches are not without their challenges — complexity being chief among them, but it is likely that negotiated processes can hold up against the tide of pressure to simply sell off land to the highest bidder — if there is political will.

By Rebecca Pointer, PLAAS

This post originally appeared on the PLAAS blog.

Land policy for the next decade: Taking stock and moving forward

The inaugural Conference on Land Policy in Africa got off to an energetic start on Tuesday 11 November 2014 at the African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa, with a panel of eminent speakers issuing a clarion call for action to secure the land rights of rural residents across the continent. Dr Abebe Haile Mariam, Director of Rural Economy and Agriculture in the African Union Commission, chaired this first plenary session and opening ceremony.

Land and agriculture are central to our future
Her Excellency Rhoda Peace Tumusiime, AU Commissioner for Rural Economy and Agriculture, officially opened the conference, declaring: ‘We are proud that Africa is the only continent that has defined its own agenda for land policy.’

‘This conference is timely and allows us to track progress in the implementation of the AU declaration on land,’ she said.

Her Excellency further observed that, in Africa, about 60% of the population derives its livelihood and incomes from farming, yet Africa’s agriculture is yet to match the needs of its growing population. The Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP) is the collective approach to addressing this limitation, and to promote sustainable land management. As Her Excellency insisted, agriculture will remain key to our continent’s transformation, and will need to provide employment opportunities and livelihoods to our growing population.

His Excellency Ato Tefera Derbew, Ethiopia’s Minister of Agriculture, endorsed such sentiments. He welcomed participants and issued a challenge to all national governments: with Africa’s substantial land resource, he said, the situation of low productivity and food security is ‘not acceptable’. He called on AU member states to ‘diligently implement our continental guidelines’.

A strong foundation has been laid
A core message from the inaugural ceremony was that Africa has already laid a solid basis to secure land rights. Speakers reflected on the progress made over the past five since the African Union heads of state Declaration on Land Issues and Challenges in Africa. There is now widespread agreement that ensuring secure and equitable access to land and natural resources is essential, especially in face of increasing economic and population pressures.

European Union ambassador to the African Union, Gary Quince, emphasized the partnership and collaboration that has been forged between the EU and AU, with the EU now supporting land tenure programmes currently in ten countries. Quince pointed out that, since the AU Declaration was adopted five years ago, a lot has happened: Africa has enjoyed good economic growth, and the importance of agriculture has been recognized, while at the same time the continent’s population has increased by over 100 million. Many challenges remain: there has been an upsurge of conflict across Africa, displacing many thousands of people from their land and livelihoods, and large acquisitions are increasing.

Women’s land rights must be at the centre
If African states are to secure land rights for their citizens, then women must be at the centre of policymakers’ concerns. Speakers concurred that women are the main users of rural land for both production and reproduction.

‘We will work to ensure that marginalized groups and women’s voices are brought to the fore’, promised Kafui Afiwa Kuwonu of Women in Law and Development in Africa (WILDAf).

She referred to the rural women’s initiative in 2012 under the slogan ‘Our Land, Our Life’ and indicated that civil society groups had met in the past two days to plan how to support rural women to advance their cause. Their initiative would culminate at a gathering of rural women from across the continent in Kilimanjaro in 2016. She issued an appeal to participants to join this initiative to ensure that rural women are at the centre of all discussions about land and other natural resource rights.

Josephine Ngure of the African Development Bank supported these sentiments, arguing that patriarchal systems have discriminated against women, reinforced by land laws that have tended to cement the discriminatory inheritance rights. If law and policy are to redress gender imbalances, she reasoned, then both customary and statutory laws need to be transformed to strengthen women’s access and control of land. This must be done in recognition of human rights, but also in recognition that women are the primary users of agricultural land in Africa.

Civil society is on board to partner in implementation
Kuwonu of WILDAf also spelt out how civil society organisations intend to use the platform provided by this conference: to share experiences and to challenge policymakers, but also to inspire participants to forge ahead with implementation and to be part of the solution.
‘We commit to disseminate information on land policy and collaborate in efforts and to share best practices’, she promised.

It’s about politics
While land rights and land tenure are longstanding challenges, these issues are receiving more attention from governments, especially in the wake of the food price hikes from 2007/8 and other global factors that have contributed, together with domestic demand, to growing large-scale commercial pressures on land. While all speakers agreed on the need to secure existing customary and informal rights to land, there was an evident tension in where they placed their emphasis. Is the priority to secure existing property rights for those who already occupy, use and claim land – or to facilitate the commodification of land rights so that they can be more readily transacted? How can these competing priorities be squared in practice? These questions will no doubt animate debates among conference participants over the coming three days.

How to secure rights in a context of rising demand for land?
At the centre of the politics is the rising demand for arable land. Kuwonu of WILDAf declared: ‘The issue of land in Africa is at the heart of our concerns… Land is coveted by all, including farmers and fishers, but it is also subject to new demand from outsiders.’

Josephine Ngure of the AfDB argued that ‘land grabs’ which have been described as the ‘new imperialism’ are giving rise to problems of governance. Global changes are bringing new impacts on Africa’s land, with growing demand for food, energy and water supplies, and growth in foreign direct investment in land. A key challenge is for Africa to have policies that can manage the risk of loss of land rights by the poor. In this context, how can we provide security while attracting investment, and how can we do this while ensuring our people have access to land?

As Susan Minae of FAO astutely observed, while there is a need for technical expertise and governance solutions: ‘Securing land rights is not just about governance, it’s about politics!’

Leadership
To confront such competing imperatives, in the real world of politics, Africa needs strong leadership. Aisa Kirabo Kacyira of UN-Habitat declared, to nods of agreement from the audience: ‘Leadership is needed where the common good is in conflict with the private good – and land is such an area that calls for leadership.’

Without leadership, she observed, things can go wrong. The engagements at this conference, then, between policy makers, practitioners, civil society and academics, are crucial for strengthening such leadership.

Land is about industrialization as well as agriculture
Several speakers emphasized the importance of land tenure and land use management in facilitating wider economic and social change. Stephen Karingi of the UNECA pointed to the role of land in supporting national development priorities. He observed that this event builds on the Malabo Declaration, which called on African states to leverage natural resources to drive national economic growth and industrialization. In this context, land is a strategic resource and Africa needs a new sense of determination to take strategic control over its resources and maximize its value from this capital. Land has been used as the foundation of economic development elsewhere in the world, and promoted food production. In light of this, he argued, where large-scale land-based investments happen, these must be in support of national development priorities and in line with land policy guidelines.

Land is an urban issue too
Africa is the least urbanized continent, but is urbanizing faster than anywhere else, at double the global rate, making sustainable urbanization an urgent priority for policy and planning. As Kacyira of UN-Habitat insisted, we need to use this resource that has been a source of conflict and make it a driver of security and prosperity.

A new phase of operationalizing policy principles
We’re into a new phase – indigenizing these, operationalizing them in the national context in each member state, and learning from practice. The principles are well established, but how are these to be interpreted and to operationalized in the very diverse national contexts? Now is the time to focus on practice, and learning from practice. How do we bring evidence into policy?

How to secure land rights, to improve agriculture, and how to ensure that land rights of smallholders are protected against speculation and large acquisitions?

This moment is auspicious, coming in the AU Year of Agriculture and Food Security.
Complementing the AU Framework and Guidelines on Land Policy are the FAO Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security. Several speakers agreed that, together with the new AU Guiding Principles, these constitute a formidable basis for inclusive and sustainable investment in land while securing land rights.

A flagship sharing and learning event for Africa
Speakers reiterated their appreciation for the Land Policy Initiative, jointly convened by the AU, AfDB and UNECA, and the valuable work it does. In convening this event, they observed, the LPI is helping to promote evidence-based policy making. This ‘flagship’ sharing and learning event for Africa will enable knowledge to be shared which can support evidence-based policy and implementation.

Inclusive growth in agriculture?
In the inaugural ceremony, relatively little was said about what form inclusive growth in agriculture means, and how it can be achieved. Yet most speakers alluded to the tensions between the rights agenda and the need to increase investment, re-investment and productivity. Kacyira of UN-Habitat commented: ‘Even though land symbolizes life, it only supports life when it is translated into viable incomes that can help people to meet their needs.’

Securing land rights is not, by itself, enough, as the existing rural population needs investment in their own production. How this can be achieved, and what lessons have already been learnt, will be addressed in detail in the conference sessions over the coming three days.

by Ruth Hall, Future Agricultures Consortium Southern Africa Hub convenor and Associate Professor at the Institute of Poverty Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS)

Note: The Guiding Principles on Large Scale Land Based Investment, endorsed by Heads of State in April 2014, are to be officially launched on the second day of the conference, on the morning of Wednesday 12 November 2014.

This post first appeared on the PLAAS blog.

Journal of Peasant Studies new special issue: critical perspectives on Food Sovereignty

A new special issue on ‘Critical perspectives on food sovereignty’ from the Journal of Peasant Studies has been released, with free articles available for a limited period. The guest editors are Marc Edelman, James C. Scott, Amita Baviskar, Saturnino M. Borras Jr., Deniz Kandiyoti, Eric Holt-Gimenez, Tony Weis and Wendy Wolford.

The issue is volume 2 in a series on Global Agrarian Transformations (Volume 1 is also still accessible for free from the Taylor and Francis website).

As JPS’s contribution to the ongoing food sovereignty debate, the journal is also making available for free for a limited time three commentary articles:

• A comment on Henry Bernstein's way with peasants, and food sovereignty Philip McMichael
• Can there be food sovereignty here? Tania Murray Li
• The debate on food sovereignty theory: agrarian capitalism, dispossession and agroecology Kees Jansen

Related articles

• Food Sovereignty: a critical dialogue – event in January 2014
• Missing politics and food sovereignty by Ian Scoones, 27 January 2014 (Future Agricultures blog)
• Food sovereignty: a growing activist and intellectual movement by Ruth Hall, 27 January 2014 (PLAAS blog)

Food sovereignty: a contested concept

Emerging out of two major conferences and with a background reading list of more than 90 papers, a special issue of the Journal of Peasant Studies has just emerged on 'critical perspectives on food sovereignty'. This is free to view for a limited period (here: http://www.tandfonline.com/r/fjps-41-6 – click to articles via this link if you don't have a subscription), and contains a number of important papers and commentaries by both academics and activists, and many hybrids. It is an important moment, both for the food sovereignty movement and for the debate around it. For far too long there has been an absence of sustained critical and engaged debate about the meanings and implications of food sovereignty. These papers discuss, among other things, the origins of the concept, its connection to other food justice movements, its relation to rights discourses, the roles of markets and states and the challenges of implementation. It demonstrates a maturing of the movement, and a growing willingness to debate from a position of confidence and strength.

The most visible representation of the food sovereignty movement is the peasant movement, La Via Campesina. This has grown through combining diverse campaigns for changes in the global agri-food system. Some claim that it is the world's largest social movement. 'Food sovereignty', is a term, as Marc Edelman notes in his paper that has a longer genealogy but has become very effectively popularised. This is an argument for peasant autonomy, local food systems, fairer more environmentally-sound, agroecological production and trade and much more besides. As a vision and political programme it is one to which many would subscribe.

For a while I have been intrigued to find out where the food sovereignty debate had got to, what political strategies were emerging and whether, in different and diverse contexts, the ideals were in fact realisable. I attended one of the conferences early this year in the Hague. Elizabeth Mpofu, a Zimbabwean farmer from Shashe resettlement area near Mashava and now the General Coordinator of La Via Campesina and a leader of the movement, opened the proceedings with a passionate rallying call.

What are my reflections on the debate? In many ways I remain rather confused as to what food sovereignty is, and how it is to be translated into a political struggle. The concept has evolved, and the movement has adopted many different angles as more and more elements have been incorporated. These included the move from a focus on small-scale production and markets to concerns with gender, indigenous peoples, environment, workers, consumers, migrants, trade relations and more.

Through accreting issues and agendas, the movement thus offers an all-encompassing vision where nothing is left out it seems. This helps build linkages between different areas of activism, but it also makes it very difficult to get a handle on what the core issues are, and where to focus intellectual and political energies. This is made more challenging by the lack of clarity over the focus of the key concept – sovereignty. There is much focus on 'the local', but this may not be sovereign without addressing the role of the state, or indeed the relationships between states in international trade and global politics. A populist appeal to locality may miss the importance of defining the arenas for political action that necessarily impinge on what happens in local settings.

It is clearly intensely political issue, part of an assertive political project, but it often lacks a solid political analysis. As many argue in the Journal of Peasant Studies issue, a more thorough-going engagement with critical agrarian studies might help address this gap. Three areas of politics, I felt, are missing.

The first is the politics of peasants. La Via Campesina – the peasant's way – asserts the rights of peasants. But who is the peasantry in the context of a globalising world, with dynamic patterns of differentiation across sites? Classic issues of class formation and differentiation are raised, ones that Henry Bernstein so effectively elaborates in his 'sceptical view' paper for the issue. What is the relationship between the peasantry and workers, or indeed worker-peasants, with one foot in town and another in the countryside? Are petty commodity producers or even emergent commercial farmers part of the peasantry, or separate? What differences of gender, age, race for example cut across these class differences, and what conflicts and tensions arise? These are old questions, but highly pertinent to the formation of the emergent solidarities that must define a movement. Creating an idealised vision of a peasant, seemingly independent of context, makes the political project problematic, as the contradictions and conflicts that arise between and within groups may act to undermine the alliances required for a movement to gain traction.

The second area of missing politics is around the politics of technology and ecology. An important strand of the food sovereignty movement is the advocacy for an agroecological approach to farming. Low external inputs, organic production, rejection of biotechnology and so on are all hallmarks. Yet in the advocacy of agroecology too often there is a resort to an essentialist, technical argument, thus falling into the same trap as the advocates of the technologies that are opposed. As Jack Kloppenberg puts it in his paper in respect of agricultural biotechnology, the argument should be less about the particular technology but instead around the terms of access. An open access approach to research and development may generate a range of productivity-enhancing technologies that improve efficiency and reduce production costs, without being at the behest of large-scale corporations. New technologies are of course essential for improving agriculture. Improving the yield of crops through high-tech genetics or the use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides may be essential, yet seem to be rejected by agroecology fundamentalisms.

The bottom line is that farmers want good prices, and consumers want cheap food. This structural relation between producers is crucial. The current agri-food system involves much distortion of prices, and a distribution of value in corporate-controlled value chains that often benefits agribusinesses and retailers, and neither producers nor consumers. Yet too often local food systems can only produce expensive food for elite markets. Clearly internalising the costs to the environment and to labour of the current agri-food system is essential, and this will doubtless produce shorter commodity chains, more localised production and marketing, better conditions for workers and a more equitable distribution of value, as well as more ecologically-sensitive forms of production. Yet, even with such measures, a diversity of innovative, technological responses will be necessary that should not be limited by a technically narrow definition of agroecology.

The third area is the politics of capital, and in particular the relationships between capital and the peasantry. Again, a very old debate. Peasants, however they are defined, are never disengaged from the historical processes of capitalist development. Indeed they are mutually constituted by such processes. The debate is not therefore how to disengage, but how to negotiate the terms of incorporation. There are many examples of adverse incorporation, where poor, marginalised farmers are disadvantaged. But the solution is not to go back to earlier forms of production and market relationship, but to organise for a better deal. Re-embedding markets in social contexts, following Karl Polanyi, is essential if a more democratic control of the food system is to be realised, and this means a political struggle around the terms of trade, the rejection of monopolistic market behaviours, and the opening up of markets to a wider range of players. In many ways, this is an advocacy for a better functioning capitalism without the distortions of corporate concentration, not its rejection outright. This means developing a more strategic engagement with capital around the terms of incorporation and the relationships between markets and societal values, much as the fair trade, organic certification and other movements have done.

The progressive ambitions and utopian ideals of food sovereignty are clearly evident, and ones that many can easily subscribe to. You only have to visit Elizabeth Mpofu and her colleagues on Shashe farm to get a sense of the vision. But how to translate this into a political programme and strategic advocacy around which clear solidarities and alliances can build is less evident. Perhaps with a tighter political economic analysis of the nature of the problem, always necessarily contextualised by history and place, then a more targeted, more effective approach might emerge. I am inspired by the passion and vision of the movement participants and their academic allies, but I am perhaps more sceptical about the practicalities of how, in any setting that I know of, such a vision might be realised in practice, including in Shashe (a question asked by Tania Li). This is of course not a reason to reject trying, but it also suggests the need to think harder about both political possibilities and strategies, and be less dogmatic about approaches, technologies and economic arrangements for more sustainable, people-centred agriculture than sometimes the agroecology and food sovereignty advocates allow.

This blog draws from an earlier reflection on the ISS conference published by Future Agricultures

The post was written by Ian Scoones and appeared on Zimbabweland

World Food Day 2014: Seven new papers unpick debates on African agriculture and rural development

To mark World Food Day, IIED, ODI and IDS have launched the first seven of 12 new papers addressing agricultural and rural development debates in sub-Saharan Africa.

World Food Day celebrates the anniversary of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization's creation on 16 October 1945, and is a good occasion to reflect on the challenges of achieving food security worldwide. This year’s theme, 'Family Farming: Feeding the world, caring for the earth', was chosen to raise the profile of family farming and smallholder farmers.

There is general agreement that family farming plays important roles in eradicating hunger and poverty, providing food security and nutrition, improving livelihoods, managing natural resources, protecting the environment, and achieving sustainable development. However, the debates around the specific policies and investments needed for this are as heated as ever.

In sub-Saharan Africa in particular, the challenges of feeding a growing and increasingly urbanised population, while increasing household incomes for rural producers, have given rise to fierce debate and contested recommendations.

A new form of Afro-optimism
IIED, the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) and the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) have teamed up to explore these debates by commissioning research with funding from the Department for International Development (DFID) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), and the first seven papers are published today.

The project team wanted to see what has changed since 2001, when influential papers in an issue of Development Policy Review entitled "Rethinking rural development" suggested the power of agriculture to drive development was declining, as more and more people sought jobs in other sectors.

Today, the world is a different place. Agriculture is firmly back on the African development agenda, but the political and institutional environment has changed. Most rural Africans now live and farm in liberalised markets, which most African and international policy forums assume to be the best basis for economic activities.

This shift has been accompanied by changes in the framing and narratives that underpin policy discourse and processes. Mainstream debates on agricultural policy now orbit around notions like opportunity, competition, entrepreneurialism, value chains and public-private partnership, resulting in an enterprise-agrarian variant of Afro-optimism.

Liberalisation, coupled with rising food prices, has also sparked interest among private investors in Africa's agricultural land and commodities. African institutions such as the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) seek to help African countries reach a higher path of economic growth through agriculture-led development and boosting agricultural productivity. Donors such as the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition are keen to support this vision.

But not everyone is happy with these developments. Those questioning the effectiveness of liberalisation to catalyse sustainable and fair development point out that many big questions remain unanswered.

• Will smallholder farmers drive agricultural growth or will such growth side-line these farmers?
• Will 'farming as a business' contribute to rural poverty, unemployment and migration, or support the growth of the rural non-farm economy? And
• What about agroecology and food sovereignty?

Our new papers shed light on such questions. They aim to improve the understanding of agricultural and rural development in Africa in the context of both long-standing and new drivers of change, so as to stimulate debate and research, and contribute to improved policy and food security outcomes.
T.S. Jayne, Ferdinand Meyer and Lulama Ndibongo Traub investigate 'megatrends' such as rising food and energy prices, climate change, urbanisation and demographic transitions that are shaping African economic, political and social landscapes. They discuss how policy choices will influence each of four plausible scenarios for African food systems, and argue that the state can play a major role to engage the public in determining what a 'good society' looks like.

• Africa's Evolving Food Systems - Drivers of change and the scope for influencing them

Douglas Gollin asks what type of investment is best for the viability of smallholder systems. He concludes that the implications for development policy are not straightforward, as the priorities vary across and within countries due to the highly heterogeneous nature of the smallholder sector.

• Smallholder agriculture in Africa. An overview and implications for policy

Felicity J. Proctor discusses emerging policy implications for economic diversification in rural sub-Saharan Africa. She explores the potential of bringing rural and urban development policies together, ideally within a territorial or regional development framework, to strengthen the market and service linkages between rural and urban areas.

• Rural economic diversification in sub-Saharan Africa

David Booth investigates the scope for reforming African agricultural policy choices. While recognising the difficulties that many countries face in developing the agricultural policies they need to transform their economies, he encourages policymakers to abandon 'pessimistic' political-economy diagnostics. Instead he provides evidence that social and economic reforms can be achieved 'against the odds' when local actors are empowered to pursue a politically smart, entrepreneurial approach.

• Agricultural policy choice: interests, ideas and the scope for reform

Henry Bernstein and Carlos Oya distinguish different approaches to markets that affect rural sub-Saharan Africa. They propose a political economy approach as an effective way to grasp the complex social dynamics of 'real markets', the subsequent class differentiation of 'small farmers' and how this affects rural 'livelihood diversification'.

• Rural futures. How much should markets rule?

Andrew Dorward and Ephraim Chirwa review the changing paradigms, politics and theories associated with input subsidy programmes. Their paper discusses how such programmes can improve and realise their potential to deliver major benefits to smallholder farmers and wider economies.

• The rehabilitation of agricultural subsidies?

Towela Nyirenda-Jere and John Kazembe look at the role of knowledge management and information and communications technologies (ICTs). They conclude that the capacity to collect and analyse locally-relevant data for policymaking is still low and the linkages between ICTs, knowledge management and policymaking are not yet well established.

• Improving policymaking for agricultural and rural development in Africa

The remaining papers in this series, which we will publish later this year, will focus on agricultural innovation systems, the social relations of agrarian transitions, rural resource 'grabs', and the future of rural financial services.

by Barbara Adolph and Laura Silici, IIED

This article first appeared on the IIED website.

To improve access to seeds for African farmers, we need more than technical solutions

Inside the agro-vet by STEPS Centre (Flickr),
used with kind permission

Despite huge investment from governments and donors in seed sector development in Africa over the better half of a century, access to quality seed remains a great challenge for smallholder farmers across the continent.

Addressing this challenge is a complex task, and requires an integrated, multidisciplinary and innovation systems approach. Certain aspects of the greater challenge may be best addressed at regional level, through the collaboration of countries, experts, seed programmes, and their associated organizations and institutions in the public and private domains.

A select number of challenge areas have been prioritised for deeper exploration and intervention through an action-oriented research and learning approach during the Piloting Phase of the Comprehensive Programme on Integrated Seed Sector Development in Africa.

These include:

• Promoting entrepreneurship: ISSD Africa sees a challenge in promoting entrepreneurship in more than just the typical seed value chains, such as maize.
• Improving access: unless we improve access to those varieties developed in the public domain, they are destined to stay on the shelf.
• Impacts of global commitments: African seed sector stakeholders, in government, in development and in industry, need to be more critical in their evaluation of global commitments in terms of the implications upon national seed sector development strategies and their domestication into local realities.
• Coherence and strategy: last on the agenda of the Piloting Phase is addressing the challenge of keeping national investments in the seed sector coherent, cohesive and strategic in meeting the ambitious targets of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) and the African Seed and Biotechnology Programme (ASBP).

Technical solutions, while essential, are only part of the answer. While straightforward technical solutions may provide the important building blocks - such as high yielding hybrid varieties and knowledge on seed business management - what is absent is the architecture for further shaping and combining these building blocks.

For this we require integration of technical and social systems, technologies and institutions, knowledge and good will, if we are to be successful in addressing such a complex challenge in a changing environment.

By Gareth Borman, Centre for Development Innovation, Wageningen UR

Inclusive business model? The Case of Sugarcane Production in Tanzania

Since the emergence of the “land grab” phenomenon in the mid-2000s, alternative approaches to land-based investments have been developed and tested to mitigate the often significant and adverse impacts on rural people of such grabs while still supporting foreign direct investments, particularly in agriculture, for economic development in African countries.

The use of more inclusive business models is one approach. These models aim to ensure that the existing land users do not lose their rights to access, control and own land. They are meant to empower communities to have a voice in business decision making processes and share benefits and risks resulting from the business activities.

As suggested in a number of voluntary guidelines, including the African Union Framework and Guidelines, and the FAO Voluntary Guidelines for the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security, the rights of women and indigenous communities to access, control and own land are critical to local development. Research clearly indicates that in areas where women have access and control over the land they farm, they earn a significantly more income and have greater power in family decision making processes. Inclusive business models are crucial in ensuring these rights are upheld.

An inclusive business model is one in which the elements of resource ownership, voice, risks and rewards are clearly defined, understood and respected by all parties engaged in such a business.

Currently, a range of existing business models used in the production, processing, marketing and distribution of both cash and food crops is considered inclusive. The most commonly referred to “inclusive business model” is a hybrid model - a combination of plantation and outgrowers.
‘Plantation farming’ refers to a system in which a single operator or company (sometimes with partners) is responsible for organizing the economic activities of production, processing and marketing. The term ‘outgrower farming’ includes small-scale, medium and large-scale farmers supplying their agricultural produce to a processer or a miller. This relationship is based on specific contractual obligations, for example, that the company will buy farmers’ produce and provide them with inputs and training, while farmers commit to supply produce in specified quantities and quality.

The Case of Kilombero Sugar Company Limited in Tanzania
To illustrate, most of the existing sugarcane millers in sub-Saharan Africa have leased or owned plantations, sugarcane crushing and processing facilities, while the sugarcane outgrowers own or rent their farmland, and supply their produce and some labor to the company. The miller markets, processes and distributes the final products such as sugar, molasses and spirits. At the end, both the miller and the outgrowers share the final proceeds in the pre-agreed manner. Overall, agricultural business models which utilize partnerships between plantations and outgrowers remain more successful than single large-scale investments in land or plantations.

However, it is important to note that almost all ‘inclusive’ models have shortcomings—some serious enough to disqualify them as inclusive business models.

 

The sugarcane production model used by the Kilombero Sugar Company Limited (KSCL) in Kilombero District, Tanzania, provides an example of some elements of inclusive business models and their challenges. KSCL has been partnering with sugarcane smallholder farmers to produce sugarcane that is processed, marketed and distributed by the miller (KSCL). The partnership is based on a Cane Supply Agreement (CSA) which is signed between the company and the farmers’ associations every three years, and may be amended every harvesting season if the need arises. Individual outgrowers cannot sign contracts with the company. Instead, they participate through local farmers’ associations, of which there are now 15 in the Kilombero District.

How it works
The CSA spells out the division of proceeds, and it requires the company to pay the outgrower for the sugarcane delivered to the company on the 15th day of the following month. For the year 2013/14, outgrowers earned US$35.6/tonne, before adjustments for sucrose levels and actual sales are made. Based on these adjustments, outgrowers are paid less if the sucrose level of their cane is too low; and all growers are paid based on final sales. Payment is done on the ratio of 57 percent to 43 percent of the profits for outgrowers and the company, respectively.

The outgrowers can participate in the sugarcane production business with as little as one acre of land. Since each farmer has full control of his or her land, he or she is still free to lease out such land or turn it to the production of other crops such as rice or maize – all suitable in the area, although their production is now affected by birds nesting in sugarcane fields.

At the moment, KSCL is the largest miller in Tanzania; it runs two irrigated estates with a total 8,022 hectares and two factories. It buys sugarcane from over 8,000 registered outgrowers who own individual sugarcane farms amounting to 11,900 hectares. Currently, outgrowers supply 43 percent of the total sugarcane processed by the company annually. In 2013/14 the company produced 116,495 tonnes of sugar, about 40 percent of the total sugar produced in the country. The company, through outgrowers’ associations, has managed to mobilize a large number of outgrowers to put their farmland into sugarcane growing fields, and attracted some donor support to finance the maintenance of both the estate and outgrowers’ infrastructure.

This partnership is not without challenges. The inadequately planned and executed expansion of sugarcane production in the area is now causing problems for the outgrowers and the company. This is because the production levels have overshot the company’s processing capacity, leaving farmers with sugarcane that is unharvested and unsold, and no options rather than being indebted. Recently, farmers have also registered complaints around the measurements of their sugarcane weights and sucrose levels by the company.

Yet, as the sugarcane business becomes more lucrative, elites are buying out land from small farmers, and outgrowers have turned most of their farmland into sugarcane fields, increasing land scarcity for food crops in the area.

 

This has resulted in the phenomenon of ‘commuter families’; that is, families commuting between the sugarcane producing villages to other villages in search of land to produce food crops. This can negatively affect families, as their children are either left alone or with only one parent.

Problems are aggravated by increased importation of cheap foreign sugar. Although, the importation of foreign sugar is necessary to fill the gap left by local producers, levy-free or subsidized sugar imports are far cheaper than locally produced sugar.

Actions Needed
To address these challenges, required immediate actions include improved transparency and accountability within the sugar board of Tanzania to avoid excessive importation of sugar. A transparent measurement system for farmers’ sugarcane weights and sucrose levels is also needed, preferably one approved by both the farmers’ representatives and those of the company. Also, efforts should be made to ensure KSCL has the capacity to process all produced sugarcane each season. Otherwise, markets for other crops, such as rice, should be improved in the area to give farmers an opportunity to turn the extra sugarcane farms to rice producing fields.

Some lessons from the KSCL business model are critical for Tanzania’s new initiatives such as the development of the Southern Agriculture Growth Corridor of Tanzania (SAGCOT) and Big Results Now (BRN) – all of which include the expansion of sugarcane farming as a priority crop. These new initiatives need to ensure that the positive aspects of the hybrid model -- such as few barriers to enter the sugar business, and the clear and respected division of business proceeds between the agribusiness and outgrowers -- are emulated.

Important takeaways from this model include attention to the structure of resource ownership between the miller and outgrowers, institutional arrangements, and the contract flexibility which allows both partners to negotiate sugarcane prices whenever there is a need to do so. Assuming the outgrower associations have access to adequate market information, this helps every partner in the business to maximize benefits and minimize business related risks. However, it is also critical to note that compared to the company, local farmers remain weak partners and effort is needed to ensure they have the knowledge and capacity to be able to negotiate reasonable terms with the company.

Is bigger better?
The model suggests that for agricultural investments to work, an investor does not necessarily need large plots of land of up to 50,000 hectares as suggested in SAGCOT plans, but rather a moderate amount of land which could also encourage an investor to look for extra outputs from neighboring farmers as has happened with KSCL. In fact, all operating sugar mills in Tanzania have plantations of less than 10,000 hectares.

In addition, during the implementation of SAGCOT and BRN, proper land use planning must be done to ensure that the land allocated to nucleus and outgrower farms for cash crops includes food producing zones. In this way, the issues of food insecurity and farmers commuting from one location to the other in search of food producing land will be addressed.

Lastly, it is critical to understand that inclusive business models do not operate in a vacuum; rather they require enabling policy, legal and institutional frameworks that are efficiently and effectively executed.

By Emmanuel Sulle, researcher, Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape, Souch Africa

Related Resources:
Opportunities and Challenges in Tanzania’s Sugar Industry: Lessons for SAGCOT and the New Alliance (pdf) Future Agricultures Policy Brief 76, by Emmanuel Sulle

Blog: 'Commuter farmers’ in Tanzania’s valley of sugar and rice

This article first appeared on the Focus on Land website.

Engaging parliamentarians on large scale land investments in Africa

Africa needs agricultural investments that facilitate inclusive and broad-based growth.  The investments must be transparent and fair in order to respect and protect the land rights of the rural communities and women.

These issues were highlighted by the Pan African Parliamentarians (PAP) and Southern African Development Cooperation (SADC) Parliamentarians Forum in a workshop co-organized by the International Institute for Sustainable Development, Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, African Land Policy Initiative, International Land  Coalition, the Land Policy Initiative of the African Union, European Parliamentarians with Africa, Oxfam, Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, Future Agricultures Consortium, Africa Forum  and NEPAD. The Conference was held in Johannesburg from 11-12 August 2014.

The conference was the fourth and final one in a process that has taken place in the four sub regional parliaments of West, East, Southern and Central Africa African parliaments respectively.

The Pan African Parliamentarians were appraised of the achievements by the Pan African parliament since it launched a campaign to raise awareness against of Large Scale Land investments in 2010 by the researchers, community members and policy making institutions. Parliamentarians were provided with evidence based stories of ongoing research on the phenomenon through academic papers, policy briefs, video evidence and testimonies from affected women and civil society organizations that work with these communities. The video recorded by the Zambian Land Alliance highlighted tangible experiences of the affected communities to the Pan African Parliamentarians.

The presentations echoed the lack of transparency in contract negotiations; disproportionate livelihood loss, unsustainable business models and consistent weak governance and poor oversight and lack of readiness on the part of the African continent to negotiate effective contracts.  The few positive cases were still experimental, few and far between.  Legislators were challenged to reflect on the current investment models and provoked through the presentation of alternatives and different ways of thinking about large scale land based investments.  Although the campaign to engage regional parliamentarians in the debate on large scale land investments was a success, the PAP proposed measures have not yet implemented at the national levels.

Parliamentarians’ response showed their increased appreciation of the dynamic of large scale land based investments in their countries.  They also singularly and collectively decried their weak oversight ascribed to, among other clauses in the investment contracts which prohibited public disclosure of contracts. The turnover of parliamentarians linked to their five year term of office was also cited as another factor that undermines their capacity to exercise their mandate and sustain the momentum.  The Pan African Parliament has 10 committees and yet member countries second five parliamentarians to PAP. The result is that some countries are not represented on five committees. This further undermines the reach and effectiveness of the Pan Africa Parliament and its resolutions. The Pan African Parliament lacks resources to invest in the knowledge production for parliamentarians. This was attributed to the failure to pay subscriptions by member states.  The legislators also cited limited resources, lack of information and the failure by their member states to ratify and uphold regional and international instruments that they ratify.

Parliamentarians also cited their limited powers to enforce regulations and resolutions on national governments as another challenge. It was also clear that parliamentarians do not share a common understanding of the issues raised and challenges posed by large scale land based investments. This was evidenced by the type of clarifications that they MPs seek from the participating experts. The lack of a common language also posed some barriers in debates and sharing and dissemination of information among members of the PAP.

Here are suggestions to improve the effectiveness of Pan African Parliamentarians’ role in improving the governance of large scale land transactions in Africa:

• Continuous supply of evidence based knowledge on the large scale land based investment and their impacts in Africa
• Technical secretariats to support committees with skills, knowledge and continuity of debates throughout the parliamentary cycles. The same secretariat would also monitor and evaluate progress on land based investments
• Sub regional engagement on the subject through regional and national parliaments
• Parliamentarians need to demonstrate and motivate political will at the highest levels of the government to address the staggering public investments in agriculture.

By Gaynor Paradza and Emmanuel Sulle

Land Rush, Day 1: Food availability doesn’t always equal food access

While proponents of corporate farms argue that large scale land investment will enhance food security, activists and academics alike are highlighting how detrimental such land deals could be for the food security of those who are moved off the land to make way for corporate farming.

Speaking at a meeting of the Pan African Parliament yesterday, parliamentarians, civil society, academics and agribusiness came together to discuss how to make large scale land investment work for Africa.

Civil society activists, such as Constance Mogale from the Land Access Movement of South Africa (LAMOSA), highlighted how moving women off land to make way for investors meant that women could no longer produce food to secure their livelihoods. As this leaves affected women all but destitute, they also cannot access the food being produced by the commercial farm which had replaced their activity. Food security for the poor and vulnerable is often not about availability, but about access. Increasing production through commercial farming, therefore, does not help those who do not have cash to purchase their food.

Echoing Constance Mogale’s point, Prof Ruth Hall (PLAAS/Future Agricultures) explained that large scale land deals are not just creating land loss, but are actually restructuring the entire food system towards a model in which the food system is controlled and owned by multinational corporations. Corporate farming is leading to the supermarketisation of the food system, limiting access for those who cannot pay. She gave the example of South Africa, where most food is produced by the corporate sector. South Africa is food secure, produces abundant food and even exports food, yet many South Africans are going hungry, simply because they cannot afford to buy it.

While African governments enter into investment deals under the belief that large scale commercial farming will improve the lot of the hungry populations, the evidence from these examples suggests the opposite: these types of land deals often make the vulnerable even more vulnerable. Therefore it is essential that African governments look more closely at the fine print of such deals. They must ensure that the benefits of investment will accrue to their populations, not just to profit-hungry corporate investors.

by Rebecca Pointer, Institute of Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) 

The EU-Brazil partnership on development: a lukewarm affair

Lidia Cabral, researcher with our China & Brazil in African Agriculture project, has written a policy brief for the think tank FRIDE assessing the limited success of the EU-Brazil strategic partnership on international development.

In particular, the brief identifies problems with a 'North/South' discourse which persists in spite of the changing dynamics of power and influence across continents.

From the brief:
"Much of the debate is infused by a discourse that, by juxtaposing 'North' versus 'South' and 'traditional' versus 'emerging' players, places Brazil and the EU on opposing sides. Yet, there are opportunities to build alliances around specific thematic issues, such as the global fight against hunger. With regard to trilateral cooperation, the analysis reveals a mismatch between high-level pledges and motivations on the one hand and on-the- ground operational capacity on the other. It also shows a fading emphasis on this modality of engagement. There is still scope, nonetheless, for joint learning on trilateral cooperation."

The EU-Brazil partnership on development: a lukewarm affair (FRIDE website)

A culture of extraction and exclusion: How philanthropy impoverishes the vulnerable





Maintenance crew, Zambia by Merlin on Flickr (cc-by-nc-2.0)

Well-intentioned people the world over see transformation to green ways of doing as absolutely essential. Many argue that by switching to green ways of doing, we can have win-win situations in which we tackle both environmental degradation and poverty, through innovative projects and by conserving wild areas where there still exist.


Yet at the Green Economy in the South conference, which took place from 8-10 July in Dodoma, Tanzania, case study after case study has showed how the language and practices of switching to ‘green’ result in the extraction of resources from Africa to the North, from the poor to the wealthy, all under the guise of philanthropy and development. Processes funded by Northern development agencies, such as REDD+, result in capital accumulating more by dispossessing Africans, enclosing African land, and selling ecological services to the wealthy few who can afford the high price tag.

 

Mining: what counts as development?
In extractive industries like mining, despite using development language, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programmes are problematic. For example, regarding mining companies in Zambia, Tomas Frederikson argued that while CSR models were changing to become more than just public relations exercises, and while CSR projects were ever more complex, employing many staff in development projects, projects were still counting and costing development in controversial ways.

 

For example, when mines build roads to improve transport to and from the mining area to enhance extractive activities, they declare this as development; when they upgrade airports to improve their own access to mining areas, this is called development; and when they build schools (but only for the children of their workers) or healthcare facilities (but only for workers and their families) this is also called development, despite the fact that these were not developments identified or chosen by the ‘recipient’ communities, nor necessarily benefitting them. So while they were being displaced from their land, the touted ‘developments’ of CSR never flowed to all the community members, thus ensuring that they are dispossessed with little compensation.

 

Hope and knowledge in Mtwara

In Tanzania, the newly discovered natural gas boon in Mtwara, is touted to create a ‘boom’ for local communities; the communities themselves have great expectations for this development, and for example, expect that at least one family member per household will be employed in the gas extraction project. Once the gas is extracted, the local community also expects that the power plant for generating electricity from the gas will be located in Mtwara.

 

However, as Nancy Rushohora pointed out, local communities are not aware of the likely disadvantages and challenges of natural gas extraction, such as adverse environmental impacts. Nevertheless,‘if extracting natural gas will not serve to benefit local communities, local communities feel it would be better not to extract the gas at all’, Rushohora said, and at this stage there is no clear explanation of nor legislation ensuring that benefits will accrue to the Mtwara people.

 

‘Revenue Sharing’ in Kilimanjaro

Similarly, as described by Hanne Svarstad, in Kilimanjaro National Park in Tanzania, which was extended to cover a greater area in 2005, communities were displaced by extending the conservancy without displaced communities having any guarantee of accruing benefits. However, the Kilimanjaro National Park is held up as a best practice model for other game farms and national parks, because they have undertaken ‘revenue sharing’ with displaced and surrounding communities.

 

Revenue sharing takes place through several ‘development projects’ like a project giving local communities goats; a calculation of how beneficial the goat project could be calculated that at the current rate of revenue sharing, it would take 17 years for every household to receive one goat. While development agencies and international conservation NGOs involved in the park call it a ‘triple win’ solution (winning for biodiversity, climate change mitigation, and poverty reduction), the main narrative of communities living around the park was one of exclusion, dissatisfaction with the lack of compensation for expropriation of previous commons, and lack of influence and consultation before land was expropriated.

 

The costs to local communities is more than 10 times higher than the benefits, so in this ‘best case’ scenario there is a marked lack of distributive justice. Despite donors and international NGO rhetoric being pro-people, there has been no effort to look for local solutions to environmental management, but only impositions from outside either from the state or from donors and conservation NGOs.

Limpopo: game theory

 

In the Greater Limpopo Conservancy, linking South Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, Francis Massé explained how Mozambican communities are being forcibly removed from their land (albeit with some compensation), ostensibly in order to protect South African rhinos, but in practice to set up private game farms and game lodges for wealthy tourists in Mozambique.

 

This is argued to philanthropically benefit Mozambicans through the investment of private South African and other foreign countries in Mozambique, but the compensation paid to communities displaced by these processes nowhere nearly makes up for the loss of access to land (the main means by which they secure their livelihoods). Locals are also not even employed in these game farms, as once they have been displaced they are seen as colluding with rhino poachers by providing information about where the animals are, so it is seen as essential to exclude them from the land where they have lived for hundreds of generations.

 

The securitisation that typically goes along with the creation of conservation areas is escalated and extreme in the Greater Limpopo Conservancy as former apartheid security forces police the South African side of the border, and Mozambicans from far afield police the Mozambican side of the border. Displacing Mozambican citizens is argued to be the only strategy by which South African rhinos can feasibly be protected from Asian syndicates even though no poaching is taking place in Mozambique, and expanded conservancies are encouraged by conservation NGOs who argue such areas contribute to the green economy.

 

Exclusion in Indonesia

Outside Africa, for example in Indonesia, similar extractive processes are taking place, both in logging and mining industries. Peter Howson described how in international agency discourse the green economy is equated with ‘green growth’; he argued that this invites elite capture and makes exclusion almost inevitable, particularly when programmes such as REDD+ specifically sought private finance funding. He described exclusion as taking place on the level of regulation, force, markets and legitimation and suggested that ‘the uneven distribution of REDD+ benefits intersected with already existing intimate processes of exclusion’.

 

At the same time, however, Rini Astuti described how notions of indigeneity were being used to produce obedient conservation subjectivities among Bahaneis and on Bahanei forest land, where concessions were also being granted to mining companies. While Indonesia’s indigenous communities had disintegrated through Indonesia political processes, new processes of reclaiming indigeneity and reterritorialising Bahanei land were being supported by planning land use around carbon markets, thus resulting in a carbon marketisation of Bahanei land. By promising carbon payments through REDD+, indigenous REDD+ subjectivities were also be produced inscribing new sets of customary identities with new rules and new ideologies.

 

Financialising nature

In Costa Rica, Brett Matulis described how REDD+ programmes promoted by the World Bank are also leading to the financialisation of nature, by creating a direct link between ecosystem services “users” and “providers”, so that, for example, water users are taxed, but water polluters are not, and the biggest users receive more, improved ecosystem services, while the most needy receive poorer ecosystem services. These tariffs have mirrored existing inequalities in Costa Rica, perpetuating uneven conservation development because those most in need cannot afford to pay.

 

by Rebecca Pointer, Information and Communications Officer, Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS)

 

The Green Economy in the South conference ran from 8-10 July in Dodoma, Tanzania. This post first appeared on the Green Economy in the South conference blog.

Missionary discourses: can the green economy bring climate justice to the South?

Colonialism by Clapagaré on Flickr (cc-by-nc-sa-2.0)

The green economy has become one of the most powerful political and social agendas in the era of climate change. This week, researchers have met in Dodoma, Tanzania at the Green Economy in the South conference – the first meeting of its kind. Central to this green economy is the emergence of carbon market mechanisms as a form of green development for climate change mitigation and adaptation.

 

The carbon phenomenon has attracted a variety of multilateral and bilateral investments from the North to the South, with the premise that it represents a form of climate justice for the states and local communities who could participate in these schemes. But in academic and political debates on green economy, questions have been raised as to what extent these carbon schemes – as part of the green economy – represent realistic climate justice to climatically vulnerable farmers and pastoralists in the South.

 

Specific cases of carbon schemes in Ghana (Vision 2050 carbon project), Zimbabwe (Kariba REDD project) and Kenya (the Kenya Agricultural Carbon Project) indicate that these schemes, in their designs, perpetuate a generic discourse around ‘ecological and social missionary’. In this discourse, projects claim to bring a new life to the ecosystem and livelihoods in the respective target localities that are now suffering the impacts of global change.

 

The Kariba carbon project in Zimbabwe, for instance, claims that it will alleviate poverty, help people have food, education and health and at the same time provide enormous ecological benefits in terms of reduced degradation and wildlife protection. Similar arguments were put forward by the Vision 2050 carbon project in Ghana, which expects to create livelihoods opportunities for different land owners in the forest transition zones; and the Kenya Agricultural Carbon Project, which aims to achieve ecological and social ‘triple wins’.

Shifting the blame

In this missionary framing however, there seems to be a hidden shift in the blame game. Global problems of climate change are blamed more on local activities such as firewood collection, hunting or unsustainable subsistence agricultural practices in these landscapes. For example, the Vision 2050 project in Ghana claims that the loss of forest in the transition zone is due to peasants’ grazing activities –implicitly absolving from blame greater timber concessions and plantation companies that extracted large sections of the forest.

 

While carbon projects must find a justification for situating their work in certain localities in the South, they fail to capture the actual drivers of change. Instead, the schemes tend, largely, to pass on the burden and sense of guilt to the local communities – who then become co-opted as part of the solution and cast as beneficiaries of this new ecological and social missionary work from the North.

 

Hope and hype

On the ground, the new ‘carbon missionary’ discourse potentially creates hopes and hypes that may degenerate into more livelihood injustices and inequalities. For instance, the Zimbabwe case depicts a new wave of repositioning in which rich immigrants expect the Kariba REDD project to displace land ownership claims by indigenous locals – who have been blamed for forest degradation. Our Ghana case paints a picture of a failed mission in which the project was unable to meet its promises to the local people, who abandoned certain forest-based livelihood practices and took responsibility for planting trees along the forest transition zone.

 

Learning from potential

While the general examples here seem to point to the shortcomings of carbon schemes in achieving climate justice, it is important to note that these shortcomings do not apply to all carbon schemes in the South. Indeed some carbon schemes, for example the Kasigau Corridor REDD+ project in Kenya, have demonstrated the potential for these interventions to change lives and livelihoods.

 

Achieving this potential is only possible if projects take into account the history of land use, development processes and people’s aspirations in the target localities. In this era of green economy, therefore, packaging solutions under carbon is necessary but must be done with caution, historical cognition, and an eye on the global nature of climate change drivers and the local impacts of such actions. It is only through this the green economy debates and actions can realize climate justice for the South.

 

By Joanes Odiwuor Atela

 

Author’s note: For more details and insights on this topic look out for the forthcoming book Carbon conflicts and forest landscapes in Africa (Routledge, March 2015) by Ian Scoones and Melissa Leach (eds).

 

Joanes Atela is a former Early Career Fellow with Future Agricultures and a member of the STEPS Centre's project 'Political ecologies of carbon in Africa'.