Open questions
In their efforts to restore food self-sufficiency, developing countries will have to tackle the question of access to land – the source of so many conflicts - as well as the place they are ready to give to biofuels and genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
Maize fields.
© Fataiphotorush
Access to land, a crucial issue
In Africa, while every country has its own system of land rights, access to land is most often the result of a forced marriage between private law (brought by the colonialists) and collective or customary law. Each of these systems of land rights brings with it a production method. This is often based on a single crop (export crops such as coffee and groundnuts) in the case of the ’Western’ model, or multifunctional, often showing more respect for ecological balances, in collective or customary law.
However, the system of land rights does not determine everything. Other factors have an impact, beginning with the migration of populations fleeing war and poverty, or the conflict between farmers, hunters and the authorities that manage natural parks.
The case of South Africa.
The land rights issue is one of the problems plaguing the new South Africa. But as Thierry Vircoulon, author of L’Afrique du Sud démocratique ou la réinvention d’une nation [Democratic South Africa, or the reinvention of a nation] (Paris, L’Harmattan, 2005), explains, “rather than the land rights issue we really need to speak of land rights issues!” He points out that since 1994, agricultural reforms have been trying to restore a balance in land rights that would favour previously dispossessed communities. Presently, the vast majority of farms are still owned by whites and the vast majority of farm workers are still Africans. Vircoulon goes on to explain that “this situation, which is poisoning inter-racial relations, conceals a second land problem that is woefully neglected - that of tribal land.” Managed by traditional authorities, but in reality belonging to the state, this land is coveted by various groups that make up Africa’s rural population with diverging, if not conflicting, interests. Vircoulon believes it is necessary, “to go beyond the dominant political discourse to realise that the South African land issue is not a simple problem of White/Black opposition, but a problem for opposing social groups in a rural African world that is in the grip of rapid change as well as great poverty.”
The not so good idea of biofuels?
“Aid and investments destined for biofuel production should be frozen.” That at least is the opinion of Olivier De Schutter, appointed last May as Special Rapporteur on the right to food by the United Nations Council of Human Rights (UNHCR). While some were hoping for a less direct message, this eminent Belgian lawyer has taken up the torch of his fiery predecessor, Jean Ziegler of Switzerland. Indeed, in June last year, on the eve of the Food and Agriculture Organisation’s (FAO) Summit, De Schutter stressed that, “A hundred million hectares will be needed to produce 5 per cent of fuel in 2015, and that is quite simply impossible. The US objectives of 136 bn litres of biofuel for 2022 and the EU objective of 10 per cent of transport needs met by biofuels by 2020 are unrealistic.” He added, “By abandoning these aims, we would be sending a strong signal to the markets that the price of food is not going to increase indefinitely, thereby discouraging speculation.”
For its part, the EU is trying to calm the biofuels debate, pointing out the benefits that they could bring for the developing countries that grow them. Furthermore, while the European Commission accepts that the high prices that result are unfavourable to consumers, it points out that these can only benefit producers. “The rise in food prices must not be regarded systematically as negative,” repeated European Development Commissioner, Louis Michel. He continued, “It also brings opportunities for developing countries that have the potential to export food.” Biofuels could therefore become a new cash crop, alongside coffee or cotton. However, there is the risk that countries will, as in the past, move away from a diversified, food-producing agriculture system. In the meantime, several private companies have already acquired land in Africa to produce biofuels, mainly from jatropha. This is happening particularly in Mozambique, Ethiopia and Tanzania and again raises the question of land rights as in some cases companies acquired land on 99-year leases, making it difficult for the state to repossess it if it wants to increase food production.
What to do about GMOs?
Advocates claim that genetically modified organisms (GMOs) make it possible to produce food on marginal land, especially on arid soils, and produce crops enriched with vitamins. They also require fewer pesticides. These are the arguments for GMOs that have convinced several developing countries, even if the sceptics in these same countries doubt the real impact of these super-crops. However, one thing is certain, GMOs can only develop within an existing, structured agricultural economy in which farmers have sufficient funds to purchase expensive – and patented – seeds. This explains their failure among Indian cotton producers in particular, who have often been faced with bankruptcy due to the cost. It also explains why the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) – financed by two US foundations (Bill Gates and Rockefeller), chaired by former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan – declared that, initially, it did not want to see the spread of GMOs in Africa.
But GMOs are already well established in some African countries. After South Africa, Burkina Faso launched experimental transgenic cotton crops in 2003, in close cooperation with the US Company Monsanto. In 2006, seven other African cotton producing countries (Benin, Mali, Chad, Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana and Togo), supported by the World Bank, set up a Regional Biotechnology Centre, agreeing that, “in addition to fertilisers, there is a need to also include the question of seeds and the transition to GMOs.” Once again, it is a matter of supporting a cash crop. One that is, in a pitiful state in the face of subsidised producers mainly in the United States and China.
Yet many analysts agree that the food crisis is first and foremost both political and social and that it is the implementation of GMOs that will enable the problem to be solved. Some also fear a headlong rush for technology as a solution, avoiding the issues of production distribution and purchasing power. This is a view held by the FAO’s Director-General, Jacques Diouf of Senegal who, at least in 2006, declared that GMOs in Africa “are not a priority” in achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
