Concept note on Land Right and Right to Food Sovereignty and Right to Livelihood:
We are aware of the growing trend in India towards industrialisation. We seem to be in a fast forward mode on this. While not denying the need for industrialization and growth we are confronted with another serious issue of land rights of the people and their right to livelihood and food sovereignty. Utsa Patanik would like to speak about the hungry people who constitute an alarming number of the Indian population. The government of India is indiscriminately using the provision of land acquisition law to acquire lands of the farmers. This is a pre independent piece of legislation and it is read to suite the convenience of the industrial class, as it suited the convenience of the colonial power.
The farmers whose lands have been acquired to form Special Economic Zones are the adivasies, the daliths and the small peasants. They have been promised employment in exchange of their land. The compensation paid to the farmers in the form of money does not address the problem these farmers face after their lands have been alienated. Some times it reminds me of my friend who wanted to acquire my cow. I had bought a cow to take care of our milk needs particularly after my first child was born. The cow also gave enough milk to make me earn some money. My friend saw the cow and found it to be an exceptional breed. He himself had many cows and was doing a good milk business. He approached me and asked me if I could give him my cow. Since I needed some milk he assured me that he will give me the quantity of milk I need every day. Obviously when my cow goes dry he would not be able to give me milk. The farmers are treated some what in this direction when they are promised jobs in exchange of their land. There are innumerable cases where this promise has not been kept as the farmers are not skilled enough to be employed in the industries that come up on their land. Montek Singh Alhuvalia has promise to give skill training to the youth so that they can become employable. But till that time the lands are being alienated from the farmers any way and they join the rank of the displaced people looking for employment in the urban centres where they live in slums.
If we look at this process of land alienation for industrialization then we face another issue. The recent food crisis and the present food inflation had indicated to us that food production is on the diminishing mode. This is primarily because of the change in the pattern of land use. We were made to believe that the food inflation was due to drought we faced in the previous year and the coming year where moon soon has been more than satisfactory the availability of food will make the food inflation vanished. We are in the post harvest period and even then there is no sign of easing the food inflation. Going by all indications available we may not see any chance of food inflation easing up.
There are some alternatives that the government is contemplating on. Food import is one such way out of this situation. The second if contract farming and big scale industrial farming by the corporates who will be able to make up for the inefficiency of our farmers. There are already some foreign companies who have entered into our agricultural sector. If the state thinks of our farmers being inefficient and cannot produce more food then they will be using this only as an excuse to pursue their designs. A similar argument was put forward in the fishery sector to allow the big mechanised fishing by big business and corporate houses. Today we see huge depletion of fish resource and environmental degradation of the coast and the sea.
We are aware that China is into buying land in overseas countries in search of food and mineral resources. Grain, a concerned organisation, has identified the buyers, the locations and the purpose of the purchase. Chinese agencies have struck the biggest deal, of 1.24 million hectares with the Philippines , along with 7,00,000 ha in Laos and 10,000 ha in Cameroon Sudan , 2,70,000 ha in Mongolia and 25,000 ha in Indonesia Sudan and about the same in famine-stricken Ethiopia Ethiopia Pakistan (9,00,000 ha), Sudan (3,80,000 ha) and the Philippines
Agriculturally productive countries like Japan , China and South Korea
Consider a situation where investors export the entire output to their home land. They pay money wages to employees and have no food to sell in the host countries. The extent of employment generation depends on the labour intensity of investment. Since agricultural activities over a large area will generate substantial local employment and income, the resultant higher demand for basic goods, primarily food, may lead to severe shortages and inflation, further aggravating poverty. Local government; or traders will have to import food any other basic necessities, but it will deepen the foreign exchange crisis and increase dependence on other economies. India too will face a problems emanating from depending on food import. It will not only have crisis of foreign exchange it will have to face the problem of ever growing number of hungry people in India.
Globalized economies might feel that we can resource food from any part of the world. But this is not easy and there is no guarantee that we will be able to avail food from other countries. When it comes to food there is need to be doubly sure that we can have it from within our country.
But more than this what we need to recognize is that the vast majority of the people are dependent on agriculture as the source of the livelihood. There is not corresponding source of livelihood for them in the urban and industrial centres. We face a herculean task of finding decent living space for those who were forced to migrate to the urban centres to find employment after being displaced from their land.
Eradication of poverty is integrally linked to the distribution of land. The failure of the land reform has resulted in continuation of massive poverty in our country. Land is a key to the solving the poverty of the people
The present trend of acquiring land will result in only a few wealthy industrialists having wealth and the rest of the population reduced to just workers who will be subjected to the frequent crisis and recession in the economy making their lives insecure. None other than David Smick had realised and states:
“For the middle class, wages alone are not enough to prosper in today's new economy. In recent years, the global economy has boomed to almost unprecedented levels. Mere wage earners, however, relative to those with a global stock portfolio, can't participate in this wealth creation. They are left at a huge disadvantage by having no way to benefit from worldwide economic growth.
To this extent, I agree with Barack Obama when he said in March 2008: "The core of our economic success is the fundamental truth that each American does better when all Americans do better; that the well-being of American business, its capital markets, and the American people are aligned."
Today the future of globalization is politically unpredictable fundamentally because the base of financial capital ownership is so small. Meanwhile, the wealth gap is widening. As a result, globalization's political base of support remains tenuous at best. Here is one astonishing statistic that makes the point: Today 40 percent of Americans do not have adequate liquid savings to live at the poverty level for three months, according to New York University's Edward N. Wolff. For a family of four, living at that level for that amount of time would require $5,300 in savings.” (David Smick, The World is curved)
If we resort to large scale industrial farming then the food security of the entire population will be shifted into the hands of a few corporate farmers whose sole objective would be to produce for profit and if their profits come from overseas then they will not mind the local population to starve. Further the productivity of land will be at risk as the decision to cultivate the amount of land owned by the corporate farmers would remain with them and even if they cultivate the entire land their method of cultivation heavily relying on chemicals would leave the land degraded and uncultivable over a period of time.
We have both the history and very many reliable studies which have shown that the small holding have greater productivity than the large holding. Consolidation of land in the hands of a few would compromise the productivity of land and the food security of the nation.
Stop Land Grabbing Now! |
Say NO to the principles of “responsible” agro-enterprise investment promoted by the World Bank State and private investors, from Citadel Capital to Goldman Sachs, are leasing or buying up tens of millions of hectares of farmlands in Asia, Africa and Latin America for food and fuel production. This land grabbing is a serious threat to the food sovereignty of our peoples and the right to food of our rural communities. In response to this new wave of land grabbing, the World Bank (WB) is promoting a set of seven principles to guide such investments and make them successful. The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) have agreed to join the WB in collectively pushing these principles. Their starting point is the fact that the current rush of private sector interest to buy up farmland is risky. After all, the WB has just finalised a study showing the magnitude of this trend and its central focus on transferring rights over agricultural land in developing countries to foreign investors. The WB seems convinced that all private capital flows to expand global agribusiness operations where they have not yet taken hold are good and must be allowed to proceed so that the corporate sector can extract more wealth from the countryside. Since these investment deals are hinged on massive privatisation and transfer of land rights, the WB wants them to meet a few criteria to reduce the risks of social backlash: respect the rights of existing users of land, water and other resources (by paying them off); protect and improve livelihoods at the household and community level (provide jobs and social services); and do no harm to the environment. These are the core ideas behind the WB's seven principles for socially acceptable land grabbing. These principles will not accomplish their ostensible objectives. They are rather a move to try to legitimize land grabbing. Facilitating the long-term corporate (foreign and domestic) takeover of rural people's farmlands is completely unacceptable no matter which guidelines are followed. The WB's principles, which would be entirely voluntary, aim to distract from the fact that today's global food crisis, marked by more than 1 billion people going hungry each day, will not be solved by large scale industrial agriculture, which virtually all of these land acquisitions aim to promote. Land grabbing has already started to intensify in many countries over the past 10-15 years with the adoption of deregulation policies, trade and investment agreements, and market oriented governance reforms. The recent food and financial crises have provided the impetus for a surge in land grabbing by governments and financial investors trying to secure agricultural production capacity and future food supplies as well as assets that are sure to fetch high returns. Wealthy governments have sought to lease agricultural lands for long periods of time to feed their populations and industries back home. At the same time, corporations are seeking long term economic concessions for plantation agriculture to produce agro-fuels, rubber, oils, etc. These trends are also visible in coastal areas, where land, marine resources and water bodies are being sold, leased, or developed for tourism to corporate investors and local elites, at the expense of artisanal fishers and coastal communities. One way or the other, agricultural lands and forests are being diverted away from smallhold producers, fishers and pastoralists to commercial purposes, and leading to displacement, hunger and poverty. With the current farmland grab, corporate driven globalisation has reached a new phase that will undermine peoples’ self-determination, food sovereignty and survival as never before. The WB and many governments see land and rights to land, as a crucial asset base for corporations seeking high returns on capital since land is not only the basis for producing food and raw materials for the new energy economy, but also a way to capture water. Land is being revalued on purely economic terms by the WB, governments and corporations and in the process, the multi-functionality, and ecological, social and cultural values of land are being negated. It is thus more important than ever that these resources are defended from corporate and state predation and instead be made available to those who need them to feed themselves and others sustainably, and to survive as communities and societies. Land grabbing – even where there are no related forced evictions - denies land for local communities, destroys livelihoods, reduces the political space for peasant oriented agricultural policies and distorts markets towards increasingly concentrated agribusiness interests and global trade rather than towards sustainable peasant/smallhold production for local and national markets. Land grabbing will accelerate eco-system destruction and the climate crisis because of the type of monoculture oriented, industrial agricultural production that many of these “acquired” lands will be used for. Promoting or permitting land grabbing violates the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and undermines the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Land grabbing ignores the principles adopted by the International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ICARRD) in 2006 and the recommendations made by the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD). Land grabbing must be immediately stopped. The WB’s principles attempt to create the illusion that land grabbing can proceed without disastrous consequences to peoples, communities, eco-systems and the climate. This illusion is false and misleading. Farmer's and indigenous peoples organisations, social movements and civil society groups largely agree that what we need instead is to: 1. Keep land in the hands of local communities and implement genuine agrarian reform in order to ensure equitable access to land and natural resources. 2. Heavily support agro-ecological peasant, smallhold farming, fishing and pastoralism, including participatory research and training programmes so that small-scale food providers can produce ample, healthy and safe food for everybody. 3. Overhaul farm and trade policies to embrace food sovereignty and support local and regional markets that people can participate in and benefit from. 4. Promote community-oriented food and farming systems hinged on local people's control over land, water and biodiversity. Enforce strict mandatory regulations that curb the access of corporations and other powerful actors (state and private) to agricultural, coastal and grazing lands, forests, and wetlands. No principles in the world can justify land grabbing! La Via Campesina FIAN Land Research Action Network (LRAN) GRAIN 22 April 2010 |
