Palm oil giants target African land
Youth squat on vacant land as tribes get rent
| Without the clear understanding that the value of land belongs to all members of society, expect corporations, governments, and tribes to recover the value for themselves alone. We trim, blend, and append three 2011 articles, two from the Ecologist, Mar 25 on palm oil by Tom Levitt and Mar 28 on reclamation by Ian Fitzpatrick, and one from the Desert Sun, Apr 3 on leased land by Mike Perrault. |
by Tom Levitt, by Ian Fitzpatrick, and by Mike Perrault
- Palm oil giants target Africa in 'land grab' following Indonesia deforestation ban
Indonesia's move to bring in a two-year moratorium on new palm oil plantations to protect its remaining rainforests has seen agribusiness giants like Sime Darby, which has more than half a million hectares of palm oil in Indonesia and Malaysia, switch expansion plans to Cameroon, Ghana, and Liberia. There they’re considering buying a further 300,000 hectares and plan to reach 1 million hectares of plantation land worldwide by 2015. They sell the oil as a biofuel.
The sudden upsurge in land deals by palm oil companies in Africa could lead to large-scale deforestation and loss of farmland by local communities.
If land scarcity exacerbates, the hunger crisis in 2008 in Cameroon showed what the future could look like. People need to regain food sovereignty over promoting land concessions to foreign companies.
The International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) in February 2011 found agribusinesses as well as government agencies and investment funds were acquiring long-term rights to large areas of land and in some cases priority rights over water in exchange for little public revenue and vague promises of investment and jobs.
Land deal negotiations are unfolding fast and behind closed doors the gap between legality (whereby the government may formally own the land and freely allocate it to investors) and legitimacy (whereby local people feel the land they have used for generations is theirs) exposes local groups to the risk of dispossession and investors to that of contestation.
To see the whole article, click here .
JJS: Maybe the efforts to reclaim the fields in Europe could work in Africa.
- A fight for the landless generation
Earlier this month around eighty urban food growers, farmers, activists, and thinkers from around the country came to Grow Heathrow, an abandoned nurseries site in the village of Sipson -- marking the first UK gathering of Reclaim the Fields.
Activists in Sipson are turning a previously derelict site into a successful market garden producing local fruit and vegetables and a site for the local community to share skills and knowledge.
At present farmland in the UK is almost entirely in the hands of a tiny percentage of the population. Those who want access to land are restricted by inflated land prices.
This issue of access to land has never really been addressed. In the view of many this is a permanent impediment for people hoping to develop land-based livelihoods.
The actual roots of this loss of access to land goes back further than the advent of industrial farming. It can be traced back to the enclosure of common land in England in the 13th century, which accelerated during the 15th and 16th centuries as sheep farming became more profitable than arable farming. The gathering pace of these enclosures in the 17th century, combined with widespread food shortages resulting from crop failure, provided fertile soil for political turmoil. It was during this time of crisis that the Diggers emerged as a movement to cultivate food on common land. Their chief spokesperson, Gerrard Winstanley, said at the time that ‘Propriety and single interest divides the people of a land … and is the cause of all wars and bloodshed. As an experiment in land reform it was short-lived; but thanks largely to Winstanley’s prolific writings, the ideas lived on.
Echoing the Diggers movement, 'The Land Is Ours' emerged in 1994 as a campaign for a more equal and inclusive distribution of land. Their campaign began by occupying a disused airfield close to the site of the Diggers’ first experiment on St George’s Hill in Surrey. A number of sites were occupied over the years (the recent Kew Bridge Eco Village in London was inspired by it).
With the founders becoming absorbed by other campaigns, 'The Land Is Ours' receded from the spotlight in the late 1990s. While the issue of access to land for housing was broadly adopted by urban squatters and planning campaigners, the issue of access to land for agriculture had been left with no clear movement or campaign. It was out of this vacuum that Reclaim the Fields emerged.
To see the whole article, click here .
JJS: The cost of land drops when people can rent instead of buy but it is crucial that renters pay the correct recipients.
- Leased land can offer great value
In the Coachella Valley there are about 23,000 homes on lease land that roll across the valley in a “checkerboard” fashion with alternating Indian and non-Indian land.
Homebuyers typically pay 20 percent to 30 percent less for homes on lease land than they would on land that they purchase. Buyers don't pay up-front for the land.
Instead of paying $300,000 up-front for a lot on a golf course fairway, a buyer might pay a $3,000 monthly lease fee.
A buyer would need about 30 years of lease land payments to reach the original price of the same property on purchased land.
Money a buyer saves on the land purchase can be invested. One can almost leave it in the bank and break even.
To see the whole article, click here .
JJS: Imagine if residents paid rent to their community and received a share of all the pooled rents paid by residents. That’s fair, since nobody made land, everybody needs land, and everybody makes it valuable. And practicality speaking, doing that makes it possible to use land dues instead of taxes on nearly everything and to use rent dividends instead of subsidized programs that tend to favor insiders. It’s called geonomics and it has worked wherever tried. So let’s try more of it!
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Editor Jeffery J. Smith runs the Forum on Geonomics.
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Also see: Foreigners deprive people of land they used for eons
Malawi villagers move for new school, gift from pop star
Some Kyrgyz disapprove of renting land to Kazakhstan |
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