By Asong Ndifor
Land grabbing: Fuse on a time bomb
Before someone could target me, let it be said, with no apology to
limping gods who want to be God, that I am not discussing the Fako land
grabbing scam
Cameroonians are still expecting the reports by CONAC and the prime
minister’s investigators and that’s when the whole truth will be told, over and
again until...
For now, even in the face of an array of active public opposition, “land
grabbing” is turning out to be an international phenomenon. The World Bank has a more
comfortable description for such land cheats. People or nations
with “interest in farm land,” although the appetite of those in Fako is
for building.
But as a
member of the farming community, who make up 70 percent of the working
population, I think interest in farm land should deserve
screaming headlines too. Several international
experts have found out that rich countries that are worried about food
security for their citizens are buying land in poor African countries including
Cameroon with peanut change to cultivate food for export. In the process,
indigenes are left with just starvation crumbs.
The
experts visited 25 countries in sub-Saharan Africa talking with more than 350
farmers' groups, non-governmental organizations, government agencies and
scientists to write a scathing land grabbing report released by Worldwatch.
Their conclusion: the outcome of large-scale land acquisitions “will not be
development but a litany of dire possible consequences: xenophobia, riots,
coups and more hunger.
"Deals
that focus solely on financial profit can leave rural populations more
vulnerable and without land, employment opportunities or food security,"
said the report. The grabbers claim that the land would be developed to help
alleviate the world food crisis by tapping into a country's 'unused'
agricultural potential. But according to the report “such investments often do
more harm than good, disrupting traditional land-use patterns and leaving
small-scale farmers vulnerable to exploitation."
The
experts say a minimum of 30m hectares is being grabbed from poor countries to
grow food for countries like the Gulf countries and China that “cannot produce
enough for their populations. The trend is accelerating and could severely
impair the ability of poor countries to feed themselves.
“Those targeted include not only fertile
countries such as Brazil, Russia and Ukraine, but also poor countries like
Cameroon, Ethiopia, Madagascar, and Zambia,” the report pointed out. Taking the
cue on an issue that is drawing global worry, an expert at the Forum for
Biotechnology and Food Security in India, predicts land grabbing if not checked
could lead to civil unrest:"Outsourcing food production will ensure food
security for investing countries but would leave behind a trail of hunger,
starvation and food scarcities for local populations, The environmental tab of
highly intensive farming – devastated soils, dry aquifer, and ruined ecology
from chemical infestation – will be left for the host country to pick up".
The
London-based International Institute for Environment and Development, comes in
soft with its position that land grabbing "create risks and
opportunities", while the US-based International Food Policy Research
Institute, says nearly $20bn to $30bn a year is being spent by rich countries
acquiring land at rock bottom prices in developing countries.
When I
read the international reports on “land grabbing” I am reminded by a
recent release by Prime Minister Philemon Yang stipulating prices for land
throughout the country. Compared with the astronomical demands and even with
the propensity of some administrators cum land speculators to grab land, isn’t
the prices just chicken feed? Would that not make the overnight civil service
billionaires made rich because of illicit wealth grab the land at the expense
of the overwhelming majority of local cutlass-and-hole farmers who depend
on such land for a livelihood?...And wouldn’t they just be cultivating violence
if the land is all grabbed suspending them in thin air?
Postscript: Morality cannot be
legislated, but behaviour can be regulated. Judicial decrees may not change the
heart, but they can restrain the heartless - Martin Luther King Jnr
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