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	Africa bears brunt of global rise in food costs by Toronto Star / Globe and Mail (Canada)   May 2011   Founder of Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation calls on rich countries to fund poor farmers, by Jessica Leeder. (Globe and Mail)   Bill Gates has called on the world’s richest nations to unite against the challenge of increasingly volatile global food prices.   “It’s decision time,” said Microsoft co-founder-turned-philanthropist Bill Gates, outlining his case for increased government investment in South Asian and African agriculture programs designed to boost the viability of small farms in the world’s poorest nations.   Mr. Gates’ speech at a Chicago Council on Global Affairs’ symposium was his first major address on agriculture to high-level members of the Obama administration. Over the past five years, the philanthropic foundation named for Mr. Gates and his wife, Melinda, and fuelled by the fusion of their fortune to Warren Buffett’s, has spent $1.7-billion in pursuit of food security by helping small farmers in struggling nations.   “It may sound like a lot – but against the need, it’s not,” Mr. Gates told his audience, which included U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack and Rajiv Shah, the country’s top aid official. “The scale of the challenge means no one can do it alone – it demands the full participation of donor countries and national governments.”   That includes Canada, which last year joined the launch of the Global Agricultural and Food Security Program, a $925-million initiative sponsored by the foundation and the U.S., Spain, South Korea, Ireland, Australia and Canada. As of April 30, 2011, only 45 per cent of the money pledged had been received by the fund, which will dole out grants next month to many needy countries with sustainable agriculture proposals. The U.S. is the leading laggard, having only contributed $66.6-million of the $475-million it committed, according to the GAFSP.   While Canada has disbursed the $230-million pledged, Mr. Gates’ implication was that all nations who say they are committed to combatting global hunger and poverty through agricultural advances need to sharpen their focus and renew their commitments in an era of widespread cutbacks.   In Canada, global food security has been identified as a top priority at the Canadian International Development Agency, which disburses foreign aid. Nonetheless, aid contributions have been slowing: The Conservative government’s 2010 budget outlined $1.8-billion in cuts to planned foreign assistance by 2014-15. Official assistance to Africa, the continent most in need of agriculture-related development assistance to combat malnutrition and hunger, has also been scaled back in recent years.   Namanga Ngongi is president of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), an organization started by former UN secretary general Kofi Annan devoted to boosting food security in Africa by facilitating sustainable growth on smallholder farms and the top recipient of Gates foundation agriculture funding.   He said G20 countries have failed to understand that making significant investments in Africa’s on-farm productivity – and pressuring their comrades to do the same – will reduce the need to “put out fires” that arise from political and food-related instability.   “The African productivity in agriculture is so low that just a marginal investment in improving productivity can lead to huge changes in the production levels,” he said. “There are good indications that African agriculture can become a leader in the future in terms of growth and in terms of potential.”   That, according to Mr. Gates, is indication that African farmers are a good investment. “A fiscal crisis shouldn’t become a crisis of courage – and it should not force cuts in programs that pay huge returns,” Mr. Gates said. “When the benefits are this clear, fiscal sanity means you spend the money.”   What is the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa: Started by former United Nations’ Secretary General Kofi Annan, AGRA works across sub-Saharan Africa to facilitate the sustainable development of smallholder farms, many of which are run by women and produce much of Africa’s food with little government support or technology.   Development of smallholder viability is critical to solving issues around hunger, poverty and malnutrition in Africa.   AGRA has three objectives with a 2020 target.   The organization, run by a former president of the UN World Food Program, aims to reduce food insecurity by 50 per cent in at least 20 countries, double the incomes of 20 million smallholder families, and put at least 15 countries on track to attaining “a uniquely African Green Revolution: one which supports smallholder farmers, protects the environment and helps farmers adapt to climate change.”   Apr 2011   Africa bears brunt of global rise in food costs. (Toronto Star)   Food prices are rising across the globe, driven in part by the higher transport costs that accompany rising oil prices.   Stephen Omandi scratched out the number “55” on the sign advertising buckets of maize and wrote in the new price: 60 Kenya shillings.   The price hike amounted to only $0.06. But for the residents of Nairobi’s largest slum, where most people live on $1 a day, that 10 per cent increase is enough to make the essential food stuff unaffordable.   “We haven’t gotten many customers because they complain, ‘Why have you increased the price?’” said Omandi. “Five shillings. It’s a lot of money, because many people could not afford it at 55, and now it’s 60.”   Food prices are rising across the globe, driven in part by the higher transport costs that accompany rising oil prices. The World Bank said last week that food prices are 36 per cent higher today than a year ago, and are pushing people “deeper into poverty.”   But no region has been hit harder by rising food costs than Africa over the last three months. Wheat costs 87 per cent more in Sudan. Rice is up 30 per cent in Chad. Maize has risen at least 25 per cent in Uganda, Somalia, Mozambique and Kenya.   Omandi used to sell 40 small buckets of maize a day, but on one recent day — the first of his most recent price hike — he sold only two. Omandi was forced to increase his price because the government had just raised the price ceiling it sets for gasoline.   About 100 people blocked traffic near parliament in downtown Nairobi on Tuesday to protest the price increases. A day earlier the government cut taxes on kerosene and diesel, but protesters said the cuts were too small. Yash Pal Ghai, a constitutional law expert who took part in the demonstration, said the issue was both prices and corruption.   “The revenue authority said recently that one-third of the (tax) revenue is stolen by politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen,” he said. “Some people have a single meal a day while others live in obscene luxury and comfort. It is amazing there has not been a rebellion by now.”   In Uganda, Kenya’s western neighbour, the country’s top opposition politician has led three marches over the last 10 days to protest higher food and fuel prices. Police have unleashed tear gas and bullets on the protests, and even shot the opposition leader, Kizza Besigye, in the hand. Protests have been held countrywide.   Thomas Mugisha, a worker in a mattress factory in Kampala, Uganda’s capital, said he now walks to work because the price of public transport rose from $0.30 to $0.60. The protest walks have been a reflection of that reality.   “We decided to walk to places of work as a sign of solidarity with other many Ugandans who are suffering from high prices,” said Alice Alaso, an opposition parliamentarian who invoked the example of the French Revolution during an interview. She complained of high military spending at a time when people can’t even afford food.   The price of maize in Uganda has risen 114 per cent over the last year, according to the World Bank. That’s the highest year-over-year increase in the world. Gasoline and meat prices are also soaring.   The World Bank said much of the recent increase of food prices was due to a 21 per cent rise in oil prices in the first quarter, partly due to unrest in the Middle East and North Africa. Higher crude oil prices mean products like corn and vegetable oil are more frequently used as biofuels. Transportation costs rise.   “More poor people are suffering and more people could become poor because of high and volatile food prices,” said World Bank Group President Robert B. Zoellick. “We have to put food first and protect the poor and vulnerable, who spend most of their money on food.”   In Nairobi’s largest slum, Kibera, many people eat what more affluent Kenyans simply don’t want: Dried mini sardines, cow lungs, and fish heads discarded from higher-end shops and restaurants.   Many of the slum’s youngest are fed by the World Food Program or aid groups. First Love, a U.S. group, feeds 1,150 students a day in Kibera. Breakfast is a cup of porridge.   “Kids will sneak an extra cup and take it home. We’re OK with that because we know that will be his dinner,” said the group’s Philip Muthui, who was fed by the program when he was a student. Visit the related web page
	African Farmers displaced as investors move in by Neil MacFarquhar New York Times & agencies   Soumouni, Mali: — The half-dozen strangers who descended on this remote West African village brought its struggling farmers alarming news: their humble fields, tilled from one generation to the next, were now controlled by Libya’s leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, and the farmers would all have to leave.   They told us this would be the last rainy season for us to cultivate our fields; after that, they will level all the houses and take the land,” said Mama Keita, 73, the leader of this village veiled behind dense, thorny scrubland. “We were told that Qaddafi owns this land.”   Across Africa and the developing world, a new global land rush is gobbling up large expanses of arable land. Despite their ageless traditions, stunned villagers are discovering that African governments typically own their land and have been leasing it, often at bargain prices, to private investors and foreign governments for decades to come.   Organizations like the United Nations and the World Bank say the practice, if done equitably, could help feed the growing global population by introducing large-scale commercial farming to places without it.   But others condemn the deals as neocolonial land grabs that destroy villages, uproot tens of thousands of farmers and create a volatile mass of landless poor. Making matters worse, they contend, much of the food is bound for wealthier nations.   “The food security of the country concerned must be first and foremost in everybody’s mind,” said Kofi Annan, the former United Nations secretary general, now working on the issue of African agriculture. “Otherwise it is straightforward exploitation and it won’t work. We have seen a scramble for Africa before. I don’t think we want to see a second scramble of that kind.”   A World Bank study released in September tallied farmland deals covering at least 110 million acres — the size of California and West Virginia combined — announced during the first 11 months of 2009 alone. More than 70 percent of those deals were for land in Africa, with Sudan, Mozambique and Ethiopia among those nations transferring millions of acres to investors.   Before 2008, the global average for such deals was less than 10 million acres per year, the report said. But the food crisis that spring, which set off riots in at least a dozen countries, prompted the spree. The prospect of future scarcity attracted both wealthy governments lacking the arable land needed to feed their own people and hedge funds drawn to a dwindling commodity.   “You see interest in land acquisition continuing at a very high level,” said Klaus Deininger, the World Bank economist who wrote the report, taking many figures from a Web site run by Grain, an advocacy organization, because governments would not reveal the agreements. “Clearly, this is not over.”   The report, while generally supportive of the investments, detailed mixed results. Foreign aid for agriculture has dwindled from about 20 percent of all aid in 1980 to about 5 percent now, creating a need for other investment to bolster production.   But many investments appear to be pure speculation that leaves land fallow, the report found. Farmers have been displaced without compensation, land has been leased well below value, those evicted end up encroaching on parkland and the new ventures have created far fewer jobs than promised, it said.   The breathtaking scope of some deals galvanizes opponents. In Madagascar, a deal that would have handed over almost half the country’s arable land to a South Korean conglomerate helped crystallize opposition to an already unpopular president and contributed to his overthrow in 2009.   People have been pushed off land in countries like Ethiopia, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia and Zambia. It is not even uncommon for investors to arrive on land that was supposedly empty. In Mozambique, one investment company discovered an entire village with its own post office on what had been described as vacant land, said Olivier De Schutter, the United Nations food rapporteur.   In Mali, about three million acres along the Niger River and its inland delta are controlled by a state-run trust called the Office du Niger. In nearly 80 years, only 200,000 acres of the land have been irrigated, so the government considers new investors a boon.   “Even if you gave the population there the land, they do not have the means to develop it, nor does the state,” said Abou Sow, the executive director of Office du Niger.   He listed countries whose governments or private sectors have already made investments or expressed interest: China and South Africa in sugar cane; Libya and Saudi Arabia in rice; and Canada, Belgium, France, South Korea, India, the Netherlands and multinational organizations like the West African Development Bank.   In all, Mr. Sow said about 60 deals covered at least 600,000 acres in Mali, although some organizations said more than 1.5 million acres had been committed. He argued that the bulk of the investors were Malians growing food for the domestic market. But he acknowledged that outside investors like the Libyans, who are leasing 250,000 acres here, are expected to ship their rice, beef and other agricultural products home.   “What advantage would they gain by investing in Mali if they could not even take their own production?” Mr. Sow said.   As with many of the deals, the money Mali might earn from the leases remains murky. The agreement signed with the Libyans grants them the land for at least 50 years simply in exchange for developing it.   “The Libyans want to produce rice for Libyans, not for Malians,” said Mamadou Goita, the director of a nonprofit research organization in Mali. He and other opponents contend that the government is privatizing a scarce national resource without improving the domestic food supply, and that politics, not economics, are driving events because Mali wants to improve ties with Libya and others.   The huge tracts granted to private investors are many years from production. But officials noted that Libya already spent more than $50 million building a 24-mile canal and road, constructed by a Chinese company, benefiting local villages.   Every farmer affected, Mr. Sow added, including as many as 20,000 affected by the Libyan project, will receive compensation. “If they lose a single tree, we will pay them the value of that tree,” he said.   But anger and distrust run high. In a rally last month, hundreds of farmers demanded that the government halt such deals until they get a voice. Several said that they had been beaten and jailed by soldiers, but that they were ready to die to keep their land.   “The famine will start very soon,” shouted Ibrahima Coulibaly, the head of the coordinating committee for farmer organizations in Mali. “If people do not stand up for their rights, they will lose everything!”   “Ante!” members of the crowd shouted in Bamanankan, the local language. “We refuse!”   The looming problem, experts noted, is that Mali remains an agrarian society. Kicking farmers off the land with no alternative livelihood risks flooding the capital, Bamako, with unemployed, rootless people who could become a political problem.   “The land is a natural resource that 70 percent of the population uses to survive,” said Kalfa Sanogo, an economist at the United Nations Development Program in Mali. “You cannot just push 70 percent of the population off the land, nor can you say they can just become agriculture workers.”   In a different approach, a $224 million American project will help about 800 Malian farmers each acquire title to 12 acres of newly cleared land, protecting them against being kicked off.   Jon C. Anderson, the project director, argued that no country has developed economically with a large percentage of its population on farms. Small farmers with titles will either succeed or have to sell the land to finance another life, he said, though critics have said villagers will still be displaced.   “We want a revolutionized relationship between the farmer and the state, one where the farmer is more in charge,” Mr. Anderson said.   Soumouni sits about 20 miles from the nearest road, with wandering cattle herders in their distinctive pointed straw hats offering directions like, “Bear right at the termite mound with the hole in it.”   Sekou Traoré, 69, a village elder, was dumbfounded when government officials said last year that Libya now controlled his land and began measuring the fields. He had always considered it his own, passed down from grandfather to father to son.   “All we want before they break our houses and take our fields is for them to show us the new houses where we will live, and the new fields where we will work,” he said at the rally last month.   “We are all so afraid,” he said of the village’s 2,229 residents. “We will be the victims of this situation, we are sure of that.”   * Visit the link below to access the farmers advocacy site Grain. Visit the related web page
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