By Anuradha Mittal
OAKLAND, United States, Aug 4 2014 (IPS)

The first years of the twenty-first century will be remembered for a global land rush of nearly unprecedented scale.

An estimated 500 million acres, an area eight times the size of Britain, was reported bought or leased across the developing world between 2000 and 2011, often at the expense of local food security and land rights.

When the price of food spiked in 2008, pushing the number of hungry people in the world to over one billion, it spiked the interest of investors as well, and within a year foreign land deals in the developing world rose by a staggering 200 percent.

Anuradha Mittal

Today, enthusiasm for agriculture borders on speculative mania. Driven by everything from rising food prices to growing demand for biofuel, the financial sector is taking an interest in farmland as never before.

The Oakland Institute has reported since 2011 how a new generation of institutional investors – including hedge funds, private equity, pension funds, and university endowments – is eager to capitalise on global farmland as a new and highly desirable asset class.

But the thing most consistently missed about this global land rush is that it is precisely that – global. Although media coverage tends to focus on land grabs in low-income countries, the opposite side of the same coin is a new rush for U.S. farmland, manifesting itself in rising interest from investors and surging land prices, as giants like the pension fund TIAA-CREF commit billions to buy agricultural land.

One industry leader estimates that 10 billion dollars in institutional capital is looking for access to U.S. farmland, but that figure could easily rise as investors seek to ride out uncertain financial times by placing their money in the perceived safety of agriculture.

In the next 20 years, as the U.S. experiences an unprecedented crisis of retiring farmers, there will be ample opportunity for these actors to expand their holdings as an estimated 400 million acres changes generational hands. And yet, the domestic face of this still unfolding land rush remains largely unseen.

For all their size and ambition, virtually nothing is known about these new investors and their business practices. Who do they buy land from? What do they grow? How do they manage their properties? In an industry not known for its transparency, none of these questions have a satisfactory answer.

For more than six years the Oakland Institute has been at the forefront of exposing the murky nature of land deals in the developing world. The challenge today is to begin a more holistic discussion that places transfer of land in both the developed and developing worlds along the same continuous spectrum.

Driven by the same structural factors and perpetrated by many of the same investors, the corporate consolidation of agriculture is being felt just as strongly in Iowa and California as it is in the Philippines and Mozambique.

Down on the Farm, a new report from the Oakland Institute, aims to increase awareness of the overlapping global and national factors enabling the new American land rush, while at the same time introduces the motives and practices of some of the most powerful players involved in it: UBS Agrivest, a subsidiary of the biggest bank in Switzerland; the Hancock Agricultural Investment Group (HAIG), a subsidiary of the biggest insurance company in Canada; and the Teacher Annuity Insurance Association College Retirement Equities Fund (TIAA-CREF), one of the largest pension funds in the world.

Only by studying the motives and practices of these actors today does it become possible to begin building policies and institutions that help ensure farmers, and not absentee investors, are the future of our food system.

Nothing is more crucial than beginning this discussion today. The issue may seem small for a variety of reasons – because institutional investors only own an apparently tiny one percent of all U.S. farmland, or because farmers are still the biggest buyers of farmland across the country.

But to take either of these views is to become dangerously blind to the long-term trends threatening our agricultural heritage.

Consider the fact that investors believe that there is roughly 1.8 trillion dollars’ worth of farmland across the United States. Of this, between 300 and 500 billion dollars is considered to be of “institutional quality,” a combination of factors relating to size, water access, soil quality, and location that determine the investment appeal of a property.

This makes domestic farmland a huge and largely untapped asset class. Some of the biggest actors in the financial sector have already sought to exploit this opportunity by making equity investments in farmland. Frequently, these buyers enter the market with so much capital that their funds are practically limitless compared with the resources of most farmers.

Although they have made an impressive foothold, this is the beginning, not the end, of a land rush that could literally change who owns the country and our food and agricultural systems. Not only is there space in the market for institutional investors to expand, but there are also major financial incentives for them to do so.

If action is not taken, then a perfect storm of global and national trends could converge to permanently shift farm ownership from family businesses to institutional investors and other consolidated corporate operations. (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

Excerpt:

The World Bank has rejected a call to suspend its involvement in large scale agricultural land acquisition following the release of a major report by the international aid agency Oxfam on the negative impact of international land speculation in developing countries.

“We share the concerns Oxfam raised in their report,” the bank stated in an unusually lengthy public rebuttal to the Oxfam Report. “However, we disagree with Oxfam’s call for a moratorium on World Bank Group…investments in land intensive large-scale agricultural enterprises, especially during a time of rapidly rising global food prices.”

“A moratorium focused on the Bank Group targets precisely those stakeholders doing the most to improve practices – progressive governments, investors, and us. Taking such a step would do nothing to help reduce the instances of abusive practices and would likely deter responsible investors willing to apply our high standards,” the rebuttal said.

In 2011, Sylvia Meltina’s family could no longer afford regular meals because of rising food and fuel costs. Credit: Peter Kahare/IPS

Over the past year, aid agencies, local non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and development watchdogs have warned that international investors are increasingly engaging in massive and sometimes predatory land deals in the developing world, particularly in Africa. These acquisitions are partly to blame for rising food insecurity.

Food prices are once again nearing record highs. In late August, the World Bank warned that due to adverse weather in parts of Europe and the United States, the global cost of certain staple crops was approaching levels last seen in 2008.

Ironically, multinational companies interested in growing food crops to address this need have been doing much of the recent investing. According to Oxfam, however, two-thirds of the investments made between 2000 and 2010 were exclusively for export-oriented crops, while other lands are being used to meet the increasing international demand for biofuels.

“Already an area of land the size of London is being sold to foreign investors every six days in poor countries,” Oxfam stated, noting that in Liberia, land deals have “swallowed up” 30 percent of the country over the past five years.

The report did not reject what good can potentially result from private investment but warned that food-price spikes from 2008 to 2009 led to the tripling of land deals, as “land was increasingly viewed as a profitable investment” even though it largely failed to benefit local communities.

Slow the speculation

“The world is facing an unbridled land rush that is exposing poor people to hunger, violence and the threat of a lifetime in poverty. The World Bank is in a unique position to stop this,” Jeremy Hobbs, Oxfam’s executive director, said Thursday, noting that the bank both invests in land and advises developing countries.

Oxfam is calling on the World Bank to temporarily halt its investments in agricultural land to give it time to review the advice it offers developing countries, and to put in place stronger policies to slow or stop the speculation and “land-grabbing” projects in which it is said to be involved.

World Bank investment in agriculture has reportedly tripled in the past decade. Since 2008, however, local communities have also brought 21 formal complaints against bank-funded projects that they say have violated their rights.

In a way, the bank’s response to the call for a moratorium demonstrated outright denial: “The Bank Group does not support speculative land investments or acquisitions which take advantage of weak institutions in developing countries or which disregard principles of responsible agricultural investment.”

The bank also noted that 90 percent of its agricultural investment is focused on smallholders, and that the agricultural work of its private-sector arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), has provided 37,000 jobs. By 2050, it warned, the global population is set to grow by two billion people, requiring a 70 percent increase in global food production.

Still, the bank recognised that its massive systems are imperfect and highlighted an upcoming overhaul of related guidelines that would “review and update its environmental and social safeguards policies”.

“We agree that instances of abuse do exist, particularly in countries where governance is weak, and we share Oxfam’s belief that in many cases, practices need to ensure more transparent and inclusive participation in cases of land transfers,” the rebuttal stated.

Impetus from below

The degree to which these safeguards are followed nevertheless remains voluntary, said Anuradha Mittal, the executive director of the Oakland Institute, a U.S.-based think tank that has been at the forefront of recent civil society warnings about the effects of land speculation in the developing world.

“Back in 2009 and 2010, we were clearly identifying the role that the World Bank Group has been playing in promoting and facilitating these large-scale investments, completely ignoring the social and economic impact,” she told IPS, referring to two reports (available here and here) that the new Oxfam work builds upon.

“Oxfam is reiterating that this kind of investment is misinvestment in communities, in agriculture, and unfortunately the bank is choosing to ignore the clear evidence that has been brought forward.” Bank officials did not respond to requests for additional comment.

Mittal said that the development discussion needs to focus less on prescriptions handed down from multilaterals and more on the national implementation of internationally agreed rights including the rights to food and to free and prior informed consent.

“We’re not interested in voluntary guidelines coming from Washington or Geneva, but rather in strengthening local and national capacities that help communities work best themselves,” she said. “Each country in Africa, for instance, is in a unique situation. So what we need are real consultations at the local level to see what kind of development actually works for the local populations.”

While Oxfam had called on the World Bank to move to halt its involvement in land deals before the annual meetings between the bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), in Tokyo next week, the bank’s new president is now suggesting that he will use the meetings to begin pushing substantial reforms aimed at holding the bank’s anti-poverty approaches more to account.

“If we are going to be really serious about ending poverty earlier than currently projected…there are going to have to be some changes in the way we run the institution,” World Bank President Jim Yong Kim, preparing to attend his first annual meetings, told journalists on Thursday.

Kim said he would be pushing for a model “where our board and our governors focus much more on holding us accountable for results on the ground in countries, rather than focusing so much on approval of large loans”.

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Aug 27 2012 (IPS)

Small-scale irrigation schemes can provide the biggest opportunity for boosting food security in Africa, according to Meredith Giordano, the research director at the International Water Management Institute.

Improving the efficiency of small pumps could contribute to making irrigation viable for smallholder farmers. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

As World Water Week began in Stockholm on Aug. 26, the institute released an international study that shows how water management innovations could boost crop yields and raise household income on the continent.

According to the report, “Water for wealth and food security: Supporting farmer-driven investments in agricultural water management,” published on Aug. 24, expanding the use of smallholder water management techniques could increase yields by up to 300 percent in some cases, and could add tens of billions of dollars to household revenues across sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

The report, the result of a three-year AgWater Solutions Research Initiative coordinated by Giordano, shows for the first time how enterprising smallholder farmers are using their resources innovatively to finance and install irrigation technologies.

Giordano said that it is clear that smallholder farmers are driving the new trend that has the potential to cushion them against climate change. Excerpts of the interview follow:

Q: Is irrigation the solution to adapting to climate change?

A: It is one of a range of feasible solutions. With predictions of increased frequency of extreme weather events (flooding and droughts) in Africa, capturing and storing floodwater and using it for irrigation is one option for agricultural adaptation to climate change.

Investing in smallholder agricultural water management (AWM) provides increased options for farmers, increased incomes and food security, which in turn foster greater resilience and capacity to adapt to climate change.

Q: How can science and technology contribute to making irrigation viable for smallholder farmers?

A: Research such as that conducted under this project can provide information for investors on what, where and how to invest to support smallholder AWM for poverty reduction.

Many viable, small scale AWM technologies already exist, but important areas for future technology research and development include improving the efficiency of small pumps and exploring new – or reducing the cost of existing – alternative sources of energy (e.g., solar).

Satellite images and remote sensing can provide data on groundwater resources, water storage and distribution patterns, crop yields, droughts and flooding to facilitate expansion and scaling up of small-scale irrigation. They also allow monitoring of environmental problems in near real time, so that effective solutions can be quickly implemented.

Q: What has been the problem with large irrigation schemes in the developing world, especially Africa?

A: There are a wide range of AWM options for poverty alleviation and economic growth — from improving rain-fed and small-scale irrigation to constructing large-scale irrigation structures.

The continued rise in food prices and the threat this poses to the food security of the vulnerable poor have led to a renewed interest and focus among investors in large-scale irrigation schemes, which, given that very little irrigation infrastructure exists in sub-Saharan Africa, are indeed relevant and warranted.

However, large-scale investments can be expensive and only reach smallholders who farm close to where the systems operate. Moreover, the focus on large scale overlooks significant investment opportunities within the smallholder AWM sector — a growing, farmer-driven trend that is already increasing incomes and food security of the rural poor and has the potential to benefit millions of smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa alone.

The performance record of large-scale public sector irrigation schemes in Africa has been poor due to high capital and operating costs, poor cost recovery and service delivery that is supply, rather than demand, driven. These problems can be avoided or better handled in small-scale irrigation systems.

Q: Irrigation has its own challenges, for example, with initial infrastructure installation and maintenance. How can farmers address this?

A: Indeed, even small-scale irrigation requires upfront investments and regular operation and maintenance costs. Supporting rental markets, for example, can be an option to help smallholders who cannot afford to buy AWM technologies, such as motorised pumps, and who lack the technical knowledge to maintain them.

Other solutions include training both farmers and dealers on which technologies best suit different needs and how to operate and maintain equipment. Existing agricultural networks can provide effective outlets to disseminate information about AWM technologies, prices, vendors, and after-service support, while others can provide the necessary training and capacity-building on equipment installation and maintenance.

Q: Can irrigation save scarce water resources, if at all?

A: Investments in AWM technologies can improve water use efficiency. For example, investments to upgrade community-managed river diversion irrigation schemes in Tanzania have resulted in improved water productivity through more efficient water conveyance. Drip and sprinkler irrigation can deliver water to match crop requirements and can save water compared with large-scale canal irrigation systems.

Excerpt:

David Rudisha, far right, trained with Kenya’s top athletes in a strict regimen of pre-Olympic training before heading off to the games in London. Credit: Brian Ngugi/IPS

By Brian Ngugi
NAIROBI, Aug 1 2012 (IPS)

On a chilly morning at the Moi International Sports Centre in Nairobi, the largest multi-purpose sports centre in Kenya, 800m world record holder David Rudisha looked like just another athlete.

At 1.90m tall, Rudisha is not diminutive. But as he trained with Kenya’s reigning Olympic and world 1,500m champion, 23-year-old Asbel Kiprop, and close to two dozen of the country’s top athletes in a strict regimen of pre-Olympic training, he appeared to be just another member of the Kenyan team.

But Rudisha and his teammates are far from average. The East African nation’s athletics team competing in this year’s summer London Olympics consists of three Olympic and four world champions. Rudisha, 23, has been tipped as a potential favourite to break his own 800m world record time of 1.41.01 at the games.

Vanity Fair called him “the best Olympic track star” yet to be discovered. The magazine said that once he takes to the track in London, Kenya’s star runner will become a global household name – just like the Olympic and world sprint record holder Usain Bolt. However, Rudisha is already a household name in Kenya, with locals nicknaming him “King David”.

Any medals he and his team mates win will really be medals also for the developing world, given that athletics is dominated by sportsmen and sportswomen from the developed world.

But when IPS met with him after his training session, he played down the adoration.

Instead, his mind was focused on winning gold.

For almost a month, the athletes trained uninterrupted and in isolation, with no visitors allowed. But the media was given access to them during one of their last training sessions on home soil before they boarded a flight for the United Kingdom on Jul. 30. The team had opted to remain at high altitude for as long as possible, deciding against training in England.

The soft-spoken athlete told IPS that he was confident of winning a gold medal at his Olympic debut in London.

“I don’t think I am going for anything less than gold. This is my first Olympics. Since I am the world record holder and the world champion, so far, I want to clinch Olympic gold. It is the only medal missing on my shelf,” Rudisha said.

He exuded optimism, buoyed by his good running times this year.

“This is my best year already and I am in the best shape of my life. So I want to go there and win,” Rudisha said.

“There are good guys out there who have processed good times this year, but I am confident because they haven’t come close to what I have done this year. I am very confident, I am in a shape of my own.”

He said spirits in the Kenyan camp were very high and the team expected to win a number of medals at the Olympics.

“We expect good results, and good things to come from this competition,” he added.

Teammate Kiprop told IPS that Kenya currently boasts the best team in middle-distance running, and that the world should expect his country to take all the medals in the 1,500m.

“We have a very strong team in the 1,500m with me, Silas Kiplagat and Nixon Kiplimo Chepseba being the three top athletes in the world at the moment. If things work well, we are surely talking of a clean sweep in the 1,500m,” Kiprop said after his training session.

Also included in the team are double world 5,000m and 10,000 champion Vivian Cheruiyot; reigning 800m Olympic champion Pamela Jelimo; former 800m world champion Janeth Jepkosgei; and world champion marathon runner Edna Kiplagat.

Ezekiel Kemboi is the reigning Olympic 3,000m steeplechase gold medallist, and Brimin Kipruto is the current 3,000m steeplechase world and Olympic champion.

Kiprop, meanwhile, played down expectations of breaking the 1,500m record. He effortlessly won the 1,500m with a world-best time of 3:28.88 at the Herculis Meeting in Monaco in July.

“At the moment I think the first priority is to win an Olympic gold medal, and then we’ll see when to attack the record. If not this year, maybe next year,” he said.

Jepkosgei, the country’s Olympic women’s 800m silver medallist, wants to bring home a gold medal.

She said that her primary focus was to make it to the finals of the 800m.

“Obviously, I want to be on the podium. The 800m is a tactical race, but I am prepared for this,” she told IPS.

Jepkosgei said she anticipated stiff competition in the heats. She singled out African champion Francine Niyonsaba of Burundi, her Kenyan compatriot Jelimo, South Africa’s Caster Semenya and Russia’s Mariya Savinova as some of her biggest threats.

She could not say if she would be able to beat Jelimo if they met in the finals. “I can’t tell if I can beat her, but am going to do my best,” she said.

Indeed Jepkosgei and her fellow athletes know that Kenyans expect nothing less than victory from them. The country’s runners are legendary and Kenya has been a fertile training ground for the development of world record-setting athletes.

Since Kenya participated in the Olympics for the first time in 1956, the country has won a total of 78 medals, mainly in athletics and boxing.

Kenyan Henry Rono is considered the greatest long-distance runner the world has known. In 1978, in less than three months he broke four world records: the 10,000m, the 5,000m, the 3,000m steeplechase, and the 3,000m. It is an achievement that no one has been able to beat.

Kipchoge Keino, a two-time Olympic gold medallist whose winning time at the 1978 Summer Olympics remained the 1,500m record for 16 years, is still a national hero.

Assistant head coach for the Kenyan Olympic team, Sammy Rono, told IPS that they would enter as many athletes as possible in the races as part of the country’s game plan to win as many medals as they could.

“It will then give us a strong base to execute their strategies in the individual races,” Rono said.

“Anything goes in these championships…There is no room for mistakes,” said Rono.

Olympic head coach, Julius Kirwa, told IPS that beyond seeking to maintain the country’s success in middle-distance running, Kenya will aim for medals in the men’s and women’s 10,000m, and in the 5,000m men’s race.

“We have trained well and are hopeful, but at the same time we are cautiously optimistic. In 2008 we had six gold medals; we hope to surpass this number,” he said. The team landed in London on Tuesday Jul. 31.

Each year, 16 million girls aged 15-19 give birth. 50,000 of them die from complications related to pregnancy and childbirth. And 95 percent of those births occur in developing countries.

Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa lead the world in this department, with 80 and 120 births, respectively, per 1,000 adolescent females in 2009. But young girls’ bodies are not ready for childbirth, and getting pregnant before the age of 18 is a risk to both mother and child, as a UNICEF report, “Progress for children”, has shown. In fact, childbirth is the leading killer of adolescent girls in Africa.

Better access to and more effective use of contraceptives would help prevent 272,000 maternal deaths worldwide each year, according to a recent Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health study. But in ensuring that girls can access and know how to use contraception, education is key, despite various cultural challenges that educating girls often faces.

Studies have shown that keeping girls in school improves their sexual and reproductive health. A recent released report by Save the Children shows that the higher a mother’s level of education, the lower children’s under-five mortality rate.

Laura Laski, chief of the sexual and reproductive health technical division at the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), told IPS that some families “believe that more education will not contribute to what (young girls) would…become later in life”.

Cultural barriers

Winifride Mwebesa, senior director of family planning and reproductive health at Save the Children, told IPS about cultural barriers in Sub-Saharan Africa. “Very often, poor families find themselves obliged to marry their children. The tradition has been that as soon as the girl menstruates she needs to get married because you don’t want the shame of having a pregnancy in the house before she is married.”

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), in the developing world 90 percent of adolescent pregnancies are those of married girls.

Early marriage is a problem in Sub-Saharan Africa because it’s rooted deeply in the traditional values of the community. “Over 30 percent of girls in developing countries marry before 18 years of age; around 14 percent do so before the age of 15,” said Laski. Then, community expectations that girls soon have children prevents them from going to school.

In Latin America, early marriage is not as big a problem as in Sub-Saharan Africa. The report “Jóvenes y derechos” by Family Care International shows that in Latin America, factors related to a higher rate of teenage births have more to do with poverty, sexual abuse, absence of parents, culture and education levels.

María Faget, regional consultant in Latin America and the Caribbean for Family Care International, told IPS that “sexual context is still something not in the open”. Talking about the topic with parents or friends is difficult, and there is a reigning culture mandating that “young people do not need or should not be looking for contraception”, Faget explained.

Efforts in this region focus on providing “friendly services” and a welcoming environment for young people because sometimes, confidentiality is a problem. “These services are open and many times they are opened within hospitals and so young people do not go because they are afraid they are going to meet people, people they know,” said Faget.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, “friendly services” are also trying to be implemented. They include the training of  health personnel to provide accurate information to young people without interfering with their own values.

Education as the foundation

In both Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, the solution is strongly linked to the improvement of girls’ education.

Mali is a clear example. The percentage of female attendance in primary school between 2005-2010 (latest data) was 55 percent. But this number falls to 24 percent in secondary school, according to UNICEF data.

The number of girls in school is very low and the teenage pregnancy rate is extremely high – 190 births per 1,000 women – as the “Countdown to 2015 report” shows. The number is even higher than  the Sub-Saharan Africa average of 120 births per 1,000 women.

Often, families won’t take their girls to school because they are so far away . But Save the Children is working to build community schools there, as well as to create a girls-friendly environment –  also important in a family’s decision to let girls go to schools. “We build community schools that are friendly to girls, that have separate latrines,” Mwebesa told IPS.

Family Care International was part of a plan called Plan Andino para la Prevención del Embarazo en Adolescents (Plan Andino to Prevent Pregnancies Among Adolescents) that worked in six countries: Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Perú, Venezuela and Colombia.

Of those countries, Colombia has seen major improvement. “Colombia has made enormous effort in  friendly health programs,” explained Faget. In 2010, it launched an important communication campaign, “Por el derecho a una sexualidad con sentido,” that had a strong rights component.

Organisations agree that in these reproductive health and sexual education programmes, including young people’s voices is critical. After all, youth are the bridge between health and education systems and what is really needed.

Save the Children relies on youth participation to help develop materials related to sexual education. “We may have an idea of the content that needs to be in, but the format has to be decided by young people,” said Mwebesa.

Family Care International also believes in the importance of youth involvement, because youth can shift attitudes and they can have a big impact in changing culture, explained Faget.

In addition to keeping girls in school, young people need to have access to family planning and receive age-appropriate sex education, which Laski descrbied as “comprehensive sexuality education (where) girls and boys are educated about not only about their sexuality but (also) about…relationships and how to protect and promote human rights”.