The global food crisis and transnational land acquisitions

The outset of the food crisis also renewed the interest in the agricultural sector among key development actors and institutions. As a result of the food crisis the number of hungry people in the world grew from 820 to more than 1 billion people. Approximately two thirds of these people live in the rural areas of development countries, and a majority of these are involved in smallholder agricultural activities FAO, (2009). An underlying factor behind the food crisis was

9 E.g. 0.63 metric tons per hectare in upland rice cultivation and 1.23 metric tons per hectare in lowland rice cultivation (WFP, 2007).

underinvestment and neglect in developing country agriculture, both by donors and governments, for some 30 years Diouf, (2011)¹⁰. The World Bank’s structural adjustment programs led to removal of subsidies to smallholders, sharp decrease of development assistance and public investments in agriculture and deregulation that increased exposure to market volatility Havnevik, (2009). But the World Bank's World Development Report 2008 stipulated that the agricultural sector “must be placed at the center of the development agenda if the goals of halving extreme poverty and hunger by 2015 are to be realized” World Bank, (2007).

Since the food price crisis of 2007-2008, food security has become a key national security issue and a critical global issue. Increased food insecurity and higher food prices immediately led to social unrest and worsened political instability in many developing countries. During the crisis, capital exporting but potentially food insecure countries dependent upon imports and/or with limited or waning capacity to produce food domestically also had problems to source sufficient amounts of food on the world markets. Some of these countries (e.g. Gulf States and South Korea) lost confidence in global markets as a steady source of food. Hence, they began to acquire farmland overseas in order to produce food for their own populations. Food security concerns as a motivation to acquire land are also related to global trends of soil erosion, depletion of water resources, the conversion of farmland into non-food producing purposes as well as population growth, urbanization. Changing and/or improving food consumption patterns (e.g. from vegetables to livestock products), which require more resources, is another factor to consider Havnevik, (2009, p. 5), De Schutter, (2009b)

World hunger is arguably the most acute global issue. It is not only a major disgrace in its own rights but also have bearings on e.g. new and traditional security issues like armed conflict, mass migration and global climate change. According to the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), “Global food production is more than enough to feed the global population, the problem is getting it to the people who need it” (FAO webpage, Organic Agriculture). In Africa, the need to increase food production to enable increased food consumption has become more desperate as

10 E.g. FAO’s Director General Jacques Diouf has pointed out that the share of agriculture in ODA dropped from 19 % in 1980 to 3% in 2006 and up to 5 % in 2011. Low-income food-deficit countries spend about 5 % of their budgets on agriculture. Private investments in agriculture amounts to around $140 billion per year, compared with global military spending of $1,500 billion per year Diouf, (2011).

the demands of an increasing population have not been met. As a result, marginal land has been brought into production, and commercial operations continue to use fertilizers and chemicals for increased productivity, while fallow periods have been reduced (FAO webpage, How to Feed the World in 2050). The present problem of hunger must therefore address the issues of redistribution and distribution. However, FAO estimates that production must increase, and increase in a sustainable manner, in order to meet the food needs of the estimated global population of 2050 (e.g. FAO webpage, How to Feed the World in 2050). Thus one can argue that sustainable strategies to feed the world in the short and in the long run must address both issues of power and justice (redistribution, distribution etc.) and the issue of growth (increased food production).

Serious investments are needed to achieve sustainable rural development in the poor countries.

FAO estimates that additional investments of US$83 billion yearly are needed if the developing countries’ agricultural sectors are to meet food needs of 2050 Hallam, (2010, p 3). Transnational farmland acquisitions are seen as one potential source of investments. It is believed that foreign investments in agricultural land can facilitate “win-win” scenarios like energy and food security in investor countries and broad-based rural development in host countries. However, Olivier De Schutter, UN’s Special Rapporteur for the Right to Food (UN/SRRF) has written that the debate on large-scale land acquisitions “should not distract us from acknowledging that, to a large extent, the rush towards farmland in developing countries is the result of our own failures. We have failed in the past to adequately invest into agriculture and rural development in developing countries, particularly sub-Saharan Africa. We have failed to promote means of agricultural production which do not deplete the soils and exhaust groundwater reserves.” De Schutter, (2009)

A starting point for considering individual transnational land acquisitions must be basic human rights, including land rights and food rights, of impacted inhabitants. I met a lot of respondents among committed civil servants and staff at donor organizations who were very concerned about FDI in mining and extractives. At the same time many of them believed in the potential of FDI in agriculture, even though many of them pointed to risks related to weak monitoring capacity of the state, and weak political will. To assist them, and pressure their potentially less honest colleagues and superiors, I believe that international guidelines and principles could have merit.

Especially if they are developed through an inclusive process and tailored to specific local conditions that acknowledges inequalities and asymmetric power relations both within communities and between communities, the state and investors.

As illustrated by the Addax Bioenergy case, problems may occur even in cases where the foreign investors have followed existing formal international and national guidelines and laws regarding FPIC, food security, food rights and land rights. This suggests that both international and national guidelines and laws need to be revised and/or strengthened.

1) The Human Right to Food Framework,

2) The development of international guidelines such as the RAI principles and voluntary guidelines on responsible governance of tenure of land and other natural resources and

3) The elaboration of alternative concepts such as land sovereignty, land security and food sovereignty are worth to consider.

The importance of access by all in its widely repeated definition of food security was emphasized by the World Bank, “access by all people at all times to sufficient food for active, healthy life” World Bank, (1986). Even though it was a global agenda, the World Bank’s definition applied to other levels as well national, regional, household, or individual and is commonly referred to the household level. Knowing that the household is the institution through which most people have access to both land and food. In fact, an improved understanding of the household, based on differential intra household access to resources and food, is a potential result of closer examination of the links between land tenure and food security. For Chambers, (1988);

Frankenberger and Coyle, (1993), food security has come to be seen as a subset of “livelihood security,” which recognized the importance of other basic needs in addition to food.

Additionally, a secure livelihood is a necessary and often sufficient condition for food security Maxwell, (1994).

The World Bank’s definition of food security also requires that access to food be sufficient at all times. This requirement can be interpreted in at least two important ways. First, access must be sufficient over the long term, that is, it must be sustainable. A household can hardly be considered food secure if it is able to meet its current nutritional requirements only by depleting or selling its endowment of resources-yet this is what an uncritical focus on access and

sufficiency alone implies. Sustainability involves the ability of households and individuals to

“generate access to sufficient food while maintaining their endowments of resources over an extended period of time” Wiebe, (1994).

The World Bank’s definition of food security contains two features that help us sharpen our focus on access to food. First, it requires that access be sufficient for activity and health.

Sufficiency is usually measured in terms of caloric intake relative to physiological requirements for a specified period of time. Requirements vary with individual characteristics such as age, sex, and level of physical activity and with environmental characteristics such as climate and quality of water and health to which the household has access. A complete notion of sufficiency must also recognize factors such as cultural acceptability as well as the subjective criteria by which poor individuals and households are sometimes forced to weigh the trade-off between reduced consumption-with its attendant health risks and depletion of the household’s non labour resource base. The World Bank’s definition of food security also requires that access to food be sufficient at all times. This requirement can be interpreted in at least two important ways. First, access must be sufficient over the long term, that is, it must be sustainable.

In 1983, FAO expanded its concept to include securing access by vulnerable people to available supplies, implying that attention should be balanced between the demand and supply side of the food security equation: “ensuring that all people at all times have both physical and economic access to the basic food that they need” FAO, (1983). According to the highly influential World Bank report, “Poverty and Hunger” focused on the temporal dynamics of food insecurity World Bank, (1986). It was introduced the widely accepted distinction between chronic food insecurity, associated with problems of continuing or structural poverty and low incomes, and transitory food insecurity, which involved periods of intensified pressure caused by natural disasters, economic collapse or conflict. This concept of food security is further elaborated in terms of: “access of all people at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life” World Bank, (1986).

The World Food Summit in 1996 adopted a more complex definition: “Food security, at the individual, household, national, regional and global levels (is achieved) when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life” FAO, (2002). Which was

again refined in the State of Food Insecurity in 2001 it was defined as “a situation that exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life”

S. Amataya, (1981). This new emphasis on consumption, the demand side and the issues of access by vulnerable people to food, is most closely identified with the seminal study by S.

Amartya, (1981). Eschewing the use of the concept of food security, he focuses on the entitlements of individuals and households (Sen).

Given the fact that the state apparatus of Sierra Leone is weak and that poverty and food insecurity is endemic it seems very challenging to create a "win-win" scenario from large-scale transnational land acquisitions here. Moreover, as in many other countries in SSA, land tenure rights are often weak and poorly defined, especially for women. The state’s formal ownership of the land in the provinces is tangled with an informal and traditional communal land-holding system F. Martinez, (2010, p 9), Unruh & Turay, (2006). At the same time, most analysts have agreed that rural development is key to food security and poverty eradication in Sierra Leone, and the country’s agricultural sector has an enormous potential.

As I have stated above, 65% of the country’s population lives in rural areas but during the last decades’ rural neglect and the civil war has speeded up the rate of urbanization compared to rural population growth GTZ, (2009). Approximately 60% of the population is engaged in subsistence farming and 95% of the rural inhabitants are engaged in agricultural activities. The most important food product is rice followed by cassava, sweet potatoes and oil palm WFP, (2008).

The country has to import one third of its rice requirements WFP, (2008). Yet, about 63% of the rural population cultivate upland rice and 57% cultivates more lowland rice varieties WFP, (2007). But there is a gross lack of agricultural inputs, and lack of investment and incentives for investments has been pointed out as an important reason (SLIEPA web page). This situation still remains the same with little or no improvements in the agricultural sector.

As stated by Horner, the GoSL has set food security and agriculture at top of their development agenda and according to the deputy director general of MAFFS, it has implemented the 2003 Maputo declaration, which requested that at least 10% of the national budget be allocated to the agriculture sector Horner, (2010). Sierra Leone became part of the African Union’s

Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) in 2009 and has initiated a National Sustainable Agricultural Development Plan (NSADP). It is believed that agricultural led development should increase economic growth, eliminate hunger, reduce poverty and food insecurity and expand exports (GoSL, 2009). It is emphasized that CAADP “emanates from and is fully owned and led by African governments” (ibid.). CAADP is also conducive to the development community’s new focus on agriculture which is worth to mention since many LDC’s in SSA, including Sierra Leone, derives over 50% of their budgets from donors.

The GoSL’s NSADP, and its second Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper, the then “The Agenda for Change,” aims “at making agriculture the engine for socio-economic growth and development through commercialization and the promotion of the private sector, including farmers and farmer-based organizations.” To this end GoSL is working towards achieving;

Increase in agricultural productivity; Promote diversified commercial agriculture, improve agricultural research and extension delivery, promote efficient and effective management systems and include Mainstream cross-cutting issues like social protection, safety-nets, gender and youth, health and sustainability (GoSL, Development Plan).

Less than 1 million hectares, or less than 15% of the arable land was considered to be cultivated in 2004. Rice was grown on approximately 660 000 hectares F. Martinez, (2010). According to a Bio-energy Background Review compiled for the FAO (ibid), in principle, there is a clear potential for land acquisitions for the purpose of cash-crop production without intrusion on local smallholders or forested areas. The Review went further to state that, 28,447 % of the total area of Sierra Leona will be needed to ensure food security in 2050, and up to 61,823% could be used for other purposes FAO, (2004).