Global Land Rush in Africa. Do not read this story: The number of people requiring humanitarian assistance in the Horn of Africa could increase sharply in coming months due to below-average rainfall and high food and fuel prices, say aid workers. Moreover, funding shortfalls, drought and conflict could further increase the number of people needing humanitarian aid in the region from an estimated 8.75 million people…On 15 May, international NGO CARE called for more attention to severe food insecurity in Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia, saying almost eight million people in these countries needed emergency aid. “Chronic vulnerability, poverty, social injustice and climate change are all responsible for recurring food insecurity in the Horn of Africa,” Mohamed Khaled, CARE’s regional emergency coordinator for East Africa, said in a statement. “On top of that, a significant increase in food and fuel prices has worsened the current situation.
Without also reading this story: Like this: Like Loading... Fueling hunger - Agriculture. By Douglas Hansen-Luke June 2011 How American and Arab governments are making food security more difficult to deal with It is well known that food prices have risen significantly over the last four years. It is also well known that around one in six of the world's population go home hungry each night. Food production will need to rise by 70 per cent to meet the forecast global population of nine billion by 2050. What is not so nearly well known is that the world currently consumes 30 per cent more food per head than it currently needs.
If this is the case then why are food prices rising and why do so many, including myself, talk about the challenge of food security? The long-term answer is that as a society we have under-invested in agriculture for decades and now, as demand increases, supply and logistics are unable to keep pace. A more recent US contribution to rising food prices is quantitative easing from the Fed. Such policies have an impact here in the Middle East. . © The Gulf 2011. Ethiopia: Are “Land Grab” Deals a Path to Food Security? This post is part of our special coverage Global Development 2011. This post was commissioned as part of a Pulitzer Center/Global Voices Online series on Food Insecurity. These reports draw on multimedia reporting featured on the Pulitzer Gateway to Food Insecurity and bloggers discussing the issues worldwide. Share your own story on food insecurity here. The push by multinational corporations and foreign governments in recent years to obtain fertile land in African countries such as Ethiopia, Madagascar and Tanzania has spurred debate over whether the move will lead to development or is simply a “land grab” that further threatens the continent's food security.
Worku Mengiste, a farmer in Ethiopia's Ghibe valley. Land rush There has been growing interest by foreign investors to buy or lease large areas of arable land in sub-Saharan Africa, either to grow food for their own countries or to export it for profit. In Ethiopia, farmland is being bought or leased on an immense scale. US universities in Africa 'land grab' | World news. Harvard and other major American universities are working through British hedge funds and European financial speculators to buy or lease vast areas of African farmland in deals, some of which may force many thousands of people off their land, according to a new study. Researchers say foreign investors are profiting from "land grabs" that often fail to deliver the promised benefits of jobs and economic development, and can lead to environmental and social problems in the poorest countries in the world. The new report on land acquisitions in seven African countries suggests that Harvard, Vanderbilt and many other US colleges with large endowment funds have invested heavily in African land in the past few years.
Much of the money is said to be channelled through London-based Emergent asset management, which runs one of Africa's largest land acquisition funds, run by former JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs currency dealers. Emergent said the deals were handled responsibly. African Arguments - Land ‘grabs’ in Africa. Lorenzo Cotula – International Institute for Environment and Development Recently, the media spotlight turned on so-called ‘land grabs’ – whereby agribusiness, investment funds and government agencies acquire farmland in Africa, Latin America and Asia.
Private sector expectations of higher food and commodity prices and government concerns about longer-term food and energy security have made land a more attractive asset. But land is central to livelihoods, culture and identity for millions across the developing world. Large-scale land acquisitions can have lasting repercussions for the future of agriculture, including the role of agribusiness and family farming. Farmland acquisitions – what are the risks? Some media reporting has oversimplified what is often a complex reality. In general, large land deals carry big risks. In addition, where investors do not deliver on their promises, recipient countries bear significant opportunity costs. Investors too may lose in the process. African Arguments - Land Grabbing in Africa II. Robin Palmer Mokoro Ltd In February 2007 Oxfam GB retired me and simultaneously abolished the post of Global Land Adviser which I had held. It did this at precisely the moment when land was becoming a global issue in ways that very few, myself included, could have predicted.
As I came to read and learn more about the phenomenon of global land grabbing and its impact on Africa, I felt it important to try to raise awareness of the issues involved. One way of doing this has been to post bibliographies and a commentary on Oxfam’s Land Rights in Africa website. The phenomenon worries me because of the nature, scale and secrecy of land grabbing, the power imbalances involved, the muted responses to it, and the seemingly limited capacity of anyone to do much to either halt or modify it. Some questions At the African Studies Association of the UK (ASAUK) conference in September 2010, I organised a series of 6 panels on land rights. Why Africa? We must fervently hope that she is proved right. Would Cecil Rhodes have signed a code of conduct?
Eating Fossil Fuels. [ Note: The most frightening article FTW has ever published is now a free story for all to read. Our paid subscribers read it last October. As Peak Oil and its effects become a raging national controversy it's time everyone reads the story that puts the most serious implications of Peak Oil and Gas into perspective. Your biggest problem is not that your SUV might go hungry, it's that you and your children might go hungry. What has been documented here is no secret to US and foreign policy makers as China experiences grain shortages this year and, as CNN's Lou Dobbs recently reported, the US and Canada will soon no longer be the world's breadbasket. - MCR ] Eating Fossil Fuels by Dale Allen Pfeiffer © Copyright 2004, From The Wilderness Publications, www.copvcia.com.
What follows is most certainly the single most frightening article I have ever read and certainly the most alarming piece that FTW has ever published. The Green Revolution · 31% for the manufacture of inorganic fertilizer 1. 2. Jim Rogers is Right. Guest post from SovereignMan.com. Published with author permission. By Simon Black April 28, 2011 Asuncion, Paraguay Jim Rogers saw the writing on the wall for America several years ago. He uprooted his wife and family from New York and went where the opportunity was– Singapore. Rogers has famously said that the best career advice he can give a young person setting out to make a fortune today is to become a farmer. Unlike some news anchors, who seem to take the comment in jest, I believe he is completely serious. Those quick to dismiss the notion assume this means toiling in the fields all day from dawn to dusk.
Farming itself is just one part of the supply chain. There are literally dozens of ways to play this. I just finished reading an uplifting account of a young Filipino entrepreneur (only thirty-one years old) who’s well on the way to floating his diversified agribusiness company on the Philippine Stock Exchange for P2 BILLION ($46.5 million). Food rights.