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Land Grabbing for Food & Fuel Outsourcing

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Land Grabbing for Food & Fuel Outsourcing P.O. Box 5675, Berkeley, CA 94705 USA Land Grabbing for Food & Fuel Outsourcing: A Rising Threat to the Right to Food Contact Information: Jeffrey L. Kaloustian, Frank C. Newman Intern [email protected] Representing Human Rights Advocates through University of San Francisco School of Law’s International Human Rights Clinic Professor Constance de la Vega Tel: 415-422-2296 I. INTRODUCTION The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization reports that the world produces more than enough food to feed everyone, but the number of hungry people continues to grow. As part of the Millennium Development Goal initiative, the international community committed itself to eradicating extreme poverty and hunger by halving, between 1990 and 2015, the number of people who suffer from hunger.1 Yet 105 Million people have been driven into poverty by rising food prices since 2007, bringing the number of chronically hungry people to nearly a billion.2 This paper analyzes a growing threat to the full realization of the human right to food. Recognized under international law,3 states have an obligation to respect, protect and fulfill the right to food both at home and abroad.4 This paper focuses on a global land grab trend that is occurring at an alarming pace and scope and is raising concerns over the development of a “neocolonial system.” It begins by analyzing the economic forces that led to the creation of the current rush to acquire farmland across the globe, then discusses the roles of various public and private actors that are carrying out the land grab deals. The paper then discusses two examples: (1) the scramble for land in Tanzania for biofuels production and (2) the reported 99-year lease by the South Korean transportation firm Daewoo Logistics of 1.3 million hectares of fertile land in Madagascar. Right to food concerns surrounding the land grab deals 1 http://un.org/millenniumgoals/poverty.shtml 2 A Billion Hungry People, Oxfam Briefing Paper, January, 2009, available at http://www.oxfamamerica.org/newsandpublications/publications/briefing_papers/a-billion-hungry-people/A-Billion- Hungry-People.pdf. 3 The legal basis of the right to food derives from a number of international instruments, including Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), Article 11 International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), and Article 27 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. General Comment No. 12 of the Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights states “[t]he right to adequate food is realized when every man, woman and child, alone or in community with others, has physical and economic access at all times to adequate food or means for its procurement.” See E/C.12/1999/5. 4 See General Comment no. 12 at para. 15, E/C.12/1999/5; See also http://www.fian.org/programs-and- campaigns/extraterritorial-state-obligations . 1 will be discussed with reference to the recent work of Olivier de Schutter, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food.5 This report then discusses mechanisms to increase transparency and enhance government and corporate accountability in the context of transnational investment in agricultural lands. Turning to longer term, transformational solutions, this paper concludes with a section focusing on food sovereignty as the most viable path to a just, equitable, and sustainable food system. II. THE 2008 LAND GRAB TREND Since the latter part of 2007, land grabbing, the acquisition of fertile land for outsourced food and fuel production, has been occurring at an astounding pace across the globe.6 Triggered by the inter-related forces of skyrocketing food prices and the global economic meltdown, the land grab trend illustrates how fertile lands have been turned into a “new strategic asset” for governments seeking food security and profit-driven financial firms hunting for safe havens for investment funds. Cash-rich nations such as China, Saudi Arabia, Japan, South Korea, and other Gulf States are pursuing food security strategies that seek to secure control of millions of hectares of fertile lands in target nations like Madgascar, Tanazania, Cambodia, Laos, and the Sudan.7 Alarmingly, although many of the target nations of this land grab trend are themselves food insecure, they are ceding control of vast tracts of fertile land to foreign corporations. The deals are often couched in “win-win” language, as target nations are said to secure funds for infrastructure improvements, rural development, and some job creation may result. However, a deeper analysis reveals that large-scale farmland acquisitions by foreign actors raises a litany of human rights concerns for impoverished people in “target nations.” Primary among these are the undermining of local food production systems, the forced displacement of smallhold farmers and indigenous people, diminished access to resources by the rural poor, and the expansion of the export-oriented, agri-industrial complex. 5 Olivier de Schutter of Belgium was appointed Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food in May, 2008. Jean Zeigler served in the post from 2000 until April, 2008. http://www2.ohchr.org/english/issues/food/index.htm. 6 Seized!, The 2008 Land Grab for Food and Financial Security, Grain Briefing, October, 2008, available at http://www.grain.org/briefings_files/landgrab-2008-en.pdf [hereinafter Seized]. 7 Id. 2 Deforestation and environmental degradation, the erosion of cultural and labor rights, and the potential for civil unrest are also matters of great concern, as is the general lack of transparency and accountability. Some fear that unrestrained land grabbing could produce scenarios where heavily guarded, foreign-owned farms ship food overseas while starving locals look on.8 The next section will provide an overview of the forces and players involved in this phenomenon. A. Dual Forces: Escalating Food Prices and the Global Financial Meltdown Acquisition of foreign land for food and fuel production is by no means a new phenomenon. Transnational corporations such as Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill have controlled foreign land and resources for food production for decades. However, since the latter part of 2007, land grabbing in the name of “food security” has occurred at an astounding pace. Between 2006 and March 2008, the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization food price index grew by 73 percent.9 Sharp increases in food prices were a major factor in driving tens of millions of people into extreme poverty and hunger. Over-dependence on international trade in the global food system left many developing countries particularly vulnerable to the historic spike in food prices. As a result of the food crisis, a number of exporting countries implemented trade restrictions. For example, India curbed rice exports, Ukraine ceased exporting wheat, and Argentina imposed heavy taxes on sales of soya overseas.10 Net food importing countries were suddenly left vulnerable not only to escalating food prices but also to interruptions in supply. As a result, food importing nations have lost some faith in the international market and are turning to food outsourcing as a key element of a food security strategy. Trade ministries and other public officials from cash-rich, net-importing nations have begun traveling the globe to secure control of land to shore up future food supplies for their citizens.11 8 Foreign Fields, Financial Times, Javier Blas, August 20, 2008, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/8de8a3e0-6e17-11dd- b5df-0000779fd18c.html. 9 UN FAO, “Crop Prospects and Food Situation,” No. 2, April 2008, at p. 13, available at ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/010/ai465e/ai465e00.pdf. 10 Foreign Fields, Financial Times, Javier Blas, August 20, 2008. 11 Seized at p. 3-4. 3 The virtual collapse of the global financial markets occurred nearly contemporaneously with the global food crisis, providing the second major impetus for the global land grab trend. Driven away by diminishing returns in the financial arena, global investment firms, hedge funds, and grain traders have turned to control of farmlands for both food and fuel production and for new sources of profit. With food prices high and land prices relatively low, investment in agricultural lands is increasingly being seen as a safe haven for investment funds.12 Concern over land grabbing has been widespread. According to a December 2008 report by the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO): [w]hile some of these arrangements include heavy investments leading to increased production and employment generation, they also carry the risk, unless they are properly regulated and negotiated, of having dramatic consequences on access to land by farmers and communities in developing countries and for the countries themselves in terms of lost income.13 Jacques Diouf, Director-General of the FAO warned that the current rush to acquire foreign farmlands runs the risk of creating a “neo-colonial” system.14 In a recent report to the Human Rights Council, the Special Rapporteur stated: [T]he question ’for whose benefit’ is at least as important as the question ‘how to produce more? ... One of the opportunities created by the current crisis is that investment in agriculture …will be given the priority it deserves. But how the investments will be channeled, towards whom, and for which purpose, deserves close scrutiny…There is a risk that … opportunities will be mistaken for solutions, and that, in the name of raising production, the need for both the social and environmental sustainability of the solutions devised will be underestimated.15 12 Id. at 7-8. 13 Country responses to the food security crisis: Nature and preliminary implications of the policies pursued, Mulat Demeke, Guendalina Pangrazio and Materne Maetz, at p. 26, FAO, December, 2008. 14 Land Leased to Secure Crops for South Korea, Javier Blas, Financial Times, Nov, 18, 2008, available at http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/98a81b9c-b59f-11dd-ab71-0000779fd18c.html.
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