The Great African Land Gulp

This morning I came across this article. I have included parts of it that stuck out to me.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Selling off Africa's resources isn't 'development'. It's greed

The result will be recently disenfranchised farmers working for wages. Oil supplies are being depleted and soon the major land grab in Africa will be to grow sugar cane and palm oil to keep the gas guzzlers running. The African governments may call it development but the fact is they are selling off their resources to line their own pockets – just as the chiefs once sold off their human resource.

One billion people live with hunger and there are more than 100 million hungry people today than there were 18 months ago. This is in stark contrast to the global promise to halve world hunger by 2015.

Governments rich and poor have failed to support smallholder farmers in the developing world. Between 1980 and 2006, aid to agriculture was cut almost in half with disastrous effects.

Some 50m hectares of fertile land in developing countries have now been acquired or are being negotiated to grow food crops and biofuels, most of which will be exported to richer nations. To put that into perspective, ActionAid estimates that 50m hectares could be the equivalent of some 75-100m tonnes of maize if grown in East Africa. This would be enough to feed the 1 billion hungry people for about four months of every year. The right kind of investment can end hunger, but these landgrabs will only make things worse.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I thought this would be important to get out to the rest of us at EVOKE.

Blessings and Peace Friends.

Love Robert