LRAN

New report on Land Concentration and Land Grabbing in Europe

LRAN — 2013-04-22T02:42:15Z

New report argues that :

Land concentration and land grabbing are occurring and reaching blatant levels in Europe

Land concentration and land grabbing do not occur only in developing countries in the South ; in fact, both are underway in Europe today. A new report by European Coordination Via Campesina and Hands off the Land network shows that land grabbing and access to land are a critical issues today in Europe, and also reveals that the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) subsidy scheme and other policies is implicated in a variety of ways.

The report, involving 25 authors from 11 countries and titled Land concentration, land grabbing and people's struggles in Europe, reveals the hidden scandal of how just three per cent of landowners have come to control half of all farmed land. This massive concentration of land ownership and wealth is on a par with Brazil, Colombia and Philippines.

Some of these processes of ever-increasing land concentration are not new ; however they have accelerated in recent decades in particular in Eastern Europe. Many feature European companies, as well as new actors including Chinese companies and Middle Eastern Hedge Funds, tied into an increasingly global commodity chains, and all looking to profit from the increasingly speculative commodity of land.

The report features in-depth case studies on strong land concentration trends in Spain, Germany, Italy, France and Austria. It also features various forms of land grabbing in Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia and Ukraine. Just like their counterparts in Ethiopia, Cambodia or Paraguay, many of these large-scale land deals are being carried out in a secretive, non-transparent manner.

The report reveals that one of the drivers of this European land grab and land concentration is the subsidies paid under the Common Agricultural Policy, which explicitly favours large land holdings, marginalises small farms, and blocks entry by prospective farmers. In Spain, for example, in 2009, 75 percent of the subsidies were cornered by only 16 percent of the largest producers. Other drivers for land grabs have come from the extractive industry, urban sprawl, real estate interests, tourism enclaves, and other commercial undertakings.

Prof. Dr. Jan Douwe van der Ploeg of Wageningen University, a member of the research team, says : “This is an unprecedented dynamic of land concentration and creeping land grabbing. It has worsened the existing situation where many young people want to stay in or take up farming but cannot maintain or gain access to land. This was already a serious issue before, but has become worse. The current and planned CAP subsidy schemes are likely to solidify the barrier to more democratic access to land and entry to farming by young people. Access to land is a basic condition to achieve food sovereignty in Europe. Indeed, the three most pressing land issues in Europe today are land concentration, land grabbing, and inability of young people to maintain or gain access to land to enter sustainable farming – interlinked, triangular land issues quite similar to the ones we see in Africa, Latin America and Asia today.”

The report however shows that land concentration and land grabbing are not going unopposed, but instead inspiring a massive wave of resistance. Land grabbing and access to land are a central theme of this years celebration of the international day of peasant struggles. The study includes the case of the community of Narbolia, Sardinia mobilising against the use of prime agricultural land for massive solar greenhouse projects, and the case of opposition to the Notre Dames des Landes airport project in Nantes in France.

There are also growing cases of communities occupying land, mirroring actions by many social movements in the global South. The report highlights the case of SOC in Andalusia, where landless peasant farmers are collectively occupying land and cultivating it using agroecological farming techniques, and SoLiLA in Vienna where young people are coming together to “squat” fertile urban land for community supported agriculture and city food gardening thereby preventing it being converted for use by urban commercial projects.

Jeanne Verlinden of the European Coordination Via Campesina (ECVC) says the study shows clearly that : “Land needs to be seen again as a public good. We must reduce the commodification of land and instead promote public management of this common resource on which we all depend. Priority should be given to the use of land for smallholder and peasant agriculture and food production, rather than handing over land to those private property commercial interests who seek land for speculation and ever increasing concentration of wealth. Access to land should be given to those who work it.”

For more info contact :

ECVC : Jeanne Verlinden : +32497605884

TNI : hildevanderpas@tni.org ;+31 20 6626608

ISS : Jun Borras


informe completo en inglés: PDF 2.9 MB

Assumptions in the European Union biofuels policy: frictions with experiences in Germany, Brazil and Mozambique

LRAN — 2013-02-14T03:16:43Z

- Global Capitalism

Strike Four in Climate Change: A “Climate Space” to rethink analysis and strategies

LRAN — 2013-02-14T03:14:33Z

- Global Capitalism

The Committee on World Food Security (CFS)

LRAN — 2013-02-13T17:28:00Z

Language: English (Available in French and Spanish)

Content: For many years the CFS was a space that was neglected by governments as it had no impact on the world governance of agriculture, which states considered as resting more in the hands of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Then in 2009 the committee was reformed. This booklet focuses on this reform and its consequences for civil society.

Edition: La Via Campesina

Food Sovereignty and Alternative Paradigms to Confront Land Grabbing and the Food and Climate Crises

LRAN — 2013-02-13T16:52:02Z

KEYWORDS La Via Campesina; food sovereignty; food crisis; agrarian reform

In the contemporary world we face a systemic crisis where multiple dimensions converge, including an economic crisis, a financial crisis, a climate crisis, an energy crisis, a food crisis, and runaway land grabbing. Peter Rosset argues for a paradigm shift toward food sovereignty based on genuine agrarian reform and sustainable peasant agriculture, which he sees as the only way to address the multiple crises.

In the contemporary world we are facing a systemic crisis where multiple dimensions converge. There is a convergence of an economic, a financial, a climate, an energy and a food crisis, and all are manifestations of medium- to long-term trends in global capitalism. Underlying this is a long-term crisis of access to land by food producing rural people (Rosset, 2006a, b; De Schutter, 2010), and the recent surge in land grabbing by foreign capital (Zoomers, 2010). In the past few years, we have witnessed the explosion of mining concessions, petroleum exploration, bioprospecting, large-scale logging, eco- and adventure-tourism investment, large infrastructure projects (dams, ports, airports, economic development zones, highways, etc.), agrofuel plantations, carbon-credit plantations, paper-pulp plantations, food plantations for export to wealthy food deficit countries, and other old and modern forms of land grabbing through concessions, rentals, forced sales, and outright theft (Rosset, 2009c; Zoomers, 2010).

Almost all of this has come at the expense of local communities of peasants, indigenous people, pastoralists, potential agrarian reform beneficiaries, artisanal fisherfolk, etc., who have progressively lost their land and territories or at least become engaged in protracted struggles to defend them, typically becoming the victims of the criminalization of social protest and rampant militarization of rural areas (Rosset, 2009c)

Preventing hunger: Change economic policy

LRAN — 2013-02-13T16:47:48Z

Simply giving people food is not enough to prevent famine, says Peter Rosset. Instead, we need to overhaul the policies that have upended the food supply.

The global food system is broken. The number of hungry and undernourished people in the world hovers at around 1 billion1 and the past few years have seen both worldwide food riots as well as epidemics of obesity and diabetes.

Fifty years ago, the United Nations World Food Programme was formed to help reduce hunger. But its original mandate of handing out food was a band-aid at best — and can actually make people more vulnerable to hunger. We now have a food system that has been destroyed by decades of misguided policies that emphasized exports over feeding domestic populations and by runaway financial speculation. We now need to reverse those policies and fix what's broken.

According to the economic law of comparative advantage, agribusinesses should export the food, agrofuels and other products that are grown in a country, while cheaper foods are imported to feed the people. Any gaps in such a ‘productionist' and ‘free trade' system should then be covered by food aid, in which organizations such as the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the World Food Programme purchase surpluses from some countries to donate to the poor in others.

But in reality, such a system exacerbates rather than alleviates hunger. When agribusinesses use land in poor countries for exports, local food producers are driven off and poor consumers become dependent on imports to feed themselves.

At a global scale, hunger is not the result of insufficient food. Although per capita food production has climbed steadily for decades, food prices have become very volatile (see ‘Roots of hunger'). And when food prices go up, so does the number of hungry people.

The Campesino-to-Campesino agroecology movement of ANAP in Cuba

LRAN — 2013-02-13T16:37:30Z

Agroecology has played a key role in helping Cuba survive the crisis caused by the collapse of the socialist bloc in Europe and the tightening of the US trade embargo. Cuban peasants have been able to boost food production without scarce and expensive imported agricultural chemicals by first substituting more ecological inputs for the no longer available imports, and then by making a transition to more agroecologically integrated and diverse farming systems. This was possible not so much because appropriate alternatives were made available, but rather because of the Campesino-a-Campesino (CAC) social process methodology that the National Association of Small Farmers (ANAP) used to build a grassroots agroecology movement. This paper was produced in a ‘self- study' process spearheaded by ANAP and La Via Campesina, the international agrarian movement of which ANAP is a member. In it we document and analyze the history of the Campesino-to-Campesino Agroecology Movement (MACAC), and the significantly increased contribution of peasants to national food production in Cuba that was brought about, at least in part, due to this movement. Our key findings are the spread of agroecology was rapid and successful largely due to the social process methodology and social movement dynamics, farming practices evolved over time and contributed to significantly increased relative and absolute production by the peasant sector, and those practices resulted in additional benefits including resilience to climate change.

Keywords: agroecology; Cuban agriculture; social movements; ANAP; La Via Campesina; Campesino-to-Campesino; agricultural extension

Recent years have seen increased interest in agroecology among peasant organiza- tions and rural social movements around the world. In the case of the rural peoples' organizations that belong to La Vı ́ a Campesina (LVC), this is due to a convergence of factors. On the one hand, participation by national organizations in a global social movement has largely politicized the question of how land is farmed.

This is especially because LVC views the contemporary period as characterized by an historic clash between two models of farming: peasant agriculture versus agribusiness (Rosset 2006, Martı ́ nez-Torres and Rosset 2010), where reproducing the agribusiness model on one's own land – by using purchased chemicals, commercial seeds, heavy machinery, etc. – will also reproduce the forces of exclusion and the destruction of nature that define the larger conflict. There is an increasing search for alternatives by the grassroots membership of LVC member organizations, partly in response to the dramatic fluctuations of prices of petroleum-based inputs over recent years, putting these inputs largely beyond the reach of many peasant farmers (Schill 2008).

The past three to five years have seen virtually every organization in LVC around the world attempt to strengthen, initiate, or begin to plan its own program for promoting, to varying extents, the transition to agroecological farming among their members.1 Although Holt-Gimenez (2009, 2010) has argued that agroecology has in practice been largely the provenance of community-based organizations and non- governmental organizations (NGOs) rather than national peasant organizations and social movements, this, while once partially true, may now begin to change. Over the past three years LVC has given a key role to its ‘International Working Group on Sustainable Peasant Agriculture'.

Among other tasks, this Working Group (with a female and a male representative from each of the nine regions in which LVC divides the globe), under the leadership of the National Small Farmers Association of Cuba (ANAP) and the National Union of Peasant Associations of Mozambique (UNAC), is charged with strengthening and thickening internal social networks (Fox 1996) for the exchange of experiences and support for the agroecology work of the member organizations. This includes identifying the most advanced positive experiences of agroecology, and studying, analyzing and documenting them (sistematización in Spanish) so that lessons drawn can be shared with organizations in other countries.

UNAC statement on the ProSavana Programme

LRAN — 2012-10-24T15:26:31Z

We, peasants of the Provincial Nucleus of Peasants in Nampula, the Provincial Nucleus of Peasants in Zambezia, the Provincial Peasants Union of Niassa and the Provincial Union of Peasants of Cabo Delgado, and who are all members of the National Peasants' Union (UNAC), met on the 11th of October 2012, in the town of Nampula with the aim of discussing and analyzing the ProSavana Programme.

The ProSavana Programme is a triangular project between the Republic of Mozambique, the Federal Republic of Brazil and Japan, for the development of large-scale agriculture in the Nacala Development Corridor, affecting 14 districts in the provinces of Niassa, Nampula and Zambezia, covering an area of approximately 14 million hectares. The project was inspired by an earlier agricultural development project implemented by the Brazilian and Japanese governments in the Brazilian Cerrado (savannah), where large-scale industrial farming of monocrops (mainly soybeans) is now practiced. This Brazilian project led to a degradation of the environment and the near extinction of indigenous communities living in the affected areas.

The Nacala Corridor was chosen because its savannah has similar characteristics to the Brazilian Cerrado, in terms of its climate and agroecology, and because of the ease with which products can be exported.

Ever since hearing about the ProSavana Programme, we have noticed a lack of information and transparency from the main stakeholders involved (the governments of Mozambique, Brazil and Japan), and this is why we held the aforementioned meeting.

We, peasant farmers, condemn the way in which the ProSavana programme was drafted and the way it is intended to be implemented in Mozambique, which has been characterised by reduced transparency and the exclusion of civil society organisations throughout the process, especially peasant organisations.

Following a comprehensive analysis of ProSavana, we peasant farmers have concluded that:

ProSavana is a result of a top-down policy, which does not take into consideration the demands, dreams and basic concerns of peasants, particularly those within the Nacala Corridor;
We vehemently condemn any initiative which aims to resettle communities and expropriate the land of peasants to give way to mega farming projects for monocrop production (soybeans, sugar cane, cotton, etc.);
We condemn the arrival of masses of Brazilian farmers seeking to establish agribusinesses that will transform Mozambican peasant farmers into their employees and rural labourers.
We are extremely concerned that Prosavana requires millions of hectares of land along the Nacala Corridor, when the local reality shows that such vast areas of land are not available and are currently used by peasants practicing shifting cultivation.
Considering the way in which the ProSavana programme was drafted and the process for implementing it, we peasant farmers warn of the following expected impacts:
- The appearance of landless communities in Mozambique, as a result of land expropriation and resettlement;
- Frequent social upheaval along the Nacala Corridor, and beyond;
- The impoverishment of rural communities and a reduction in the number of alternatives for survival;
- An increase in corruption and conflicts of interest;
- The pollution of water resources as a result of the excessive use of chemical pesticides and fertilisers, as well soil degradation;
- Ecological imbalances due to vast deforestation for agribusiness projects.

If there is to be investment in the Nacala Corridor, or in Mozambique in general, we recommend and demand that these investments be made in developing peasant farming and the peasant economy, as a priority, which we, members of UNAC and members of Via Campesina, know is the only kind of farming capable of creating dignified and lasting livelihoods, of stemming rural exodus, and of producing high-quality foods in sufficient quantities for the entire Mozambican Nation, all of which will lead us towards the realization of Food Sovereignty.

We remain firmly committed to peasant farming and the agroecological production model— the foundations of Food Sovereignty— as alternatives to the development of the agricultural sector in Mozambique which consider all aspects of sustainability and are, in practice, friends of nature.

Peasant farming is the pillar of the local economy and contributes to maintaining and increasing rural employment, as well as allowing towns and villages to survive. It allows collectives to strengthen their own culture and identity. The development policies in this alternative model must be socially and environmentally sustainable and must be adapted to the real challenges and demands of the people.

Peasants are the guardians of life, nature and the planet. As a peasants' movement in the family sector, UNAC pursues production models based on the foundations of peasant farming (respect and conservation of the soil, use of adapted and appropriate technologies, and a rural extension that is participative and interactive).

At a time when the United Nations, through the FAO, informs us that one out of eight people in the world are hungry, with hunger especially severe in developing countries, as is the case of Mozambique, we demand that the Government of Mozambique give priority to the production of food by the family farming sector for domestic consumption, aiming to develop local potential and involving different segments of society.

UNAC, 25 years of peasant farming struggles for Food Sovereignty

Fighting to give peasant farmers a greater role in building a fairer, more prosperous society, based on solidarity.

THE SUGARCANE INDUSTRY AND THE GLOBAL ECONOMIC CRISIS

LRAN — 2012-10-16T03:41:54Z

This article presents information on the latest trends in ethanol production in Brazil and their relation to the global economic crisis. We highlight the role of financial capital, its linkage to the territorial expansion of agribusiness and the impacts of this expansion on labour relations and disputes over the land of indigenous peoples and peasant farmers.

In rural Brazil, we have observed that the expansion of monocropping for the production of agrofuels, namely sugarcane ethanol, continues. Ethanol made from sugarcane is said to be Brazil's main source of agro-energy, considering the volume produced, the total area used for sugarcane production and the amount invested in the expansion of the sugar-energy industrial park. Data from the National Supply Company (Companhia Nacional de Abastecimento or CONAB in Portuguese) allow us to observe recent trends in the amount of sugarcane processed in order to produce sugar and ethanol

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Authors: Maria Luisa Mendonça; Fábio T. Pitta; Carlos Vinicius Xavier

Translation: Karen Lang, Transnational Institute (TNI)

Photos: Carmelo Fioraso; Douglas Mansur and Maria Luisa Mendonça

Layout: Flávio Valverde

Administration: Marta Soares and Claudia Felippe

Sponsors: ICCO & Kerk in Actie; EED - Evangelischer Entwicklungsdienst

Publisher: Rede Social de Justiça e Direitos Humanos Rua Heitor Peixoto, 218 São Paulo, SP, 01543-000 rede@social.org.br www.social.org.br Editora Outras Expressões ISBN 978-85-64421-34-9 São Paulo, 2012

Occasional Paper 12: Lessons of Transparency from EITI

LRAN — 2012-08-27T19:02:23Z

Since first being announced a decade ago, the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) has been heralded as a revolutionary solution to corruption and related difficulties that extractive industries bring to developing countries. While it could be argued that the EITI provides information that can be useful for well-intentioned policy- makers and others, claims that the EITI provides levels of transparency that are needed to truly address corruption, let alone a device that can address larger problems presented by resource extraction, are grossly overstating EITI's limited benefits. By limiting the discussion to transparency of government revenue and in-country company payments, EITI overlooks essential issues, from whether resource extraction is worth the human and environmental impacts, to how to distribute resource revenues.

At the same time, given its voluntary nature and disregard of serious problems such as tax avoidance, the EITI fails to bring meaningful transparency into the resource industry. Unfortunately, rather than ending the “resource curse”, the EITI is primarily successful in deflecting criticisms away from the World Bank and the extractive industry while concentrating the burdens and the blame on the governments of resource-rich countries.

source: http://www.focusweb.org/content/occ...

http://www.focusweb.org/sites/www.f...