Global ChangeIntersection of Nature and Culture

Africa: Agro imperialism’s final frontier?

Saturday, November 21st, 2009

In an article titled, “Is There Such a Thing as Agro-Imperialism?” in the NY Times Sunday Magazine, Andrew Rice writes about how wealthy nations are now staking out land in the developing world—notably Africa—in order to feed their own future populations.  Let me say up front that if increasing foreign investment in domestic agriculture can pull African nations out of poverty, then it’s worth a serious look.

However, there’s a related issue that’s worth noting:  Sooner or later, the combination of (1) rising populations, (2) higher per-capita meat consumption, and (3) possible shifts to more sustainable meat production (pasture fed)—with its attendant land requirements and higher costs—will likely force the developed world to export more of its own food production to the developing world, where land and labor are cheap.

This could lead to potentially large ecological damage if the modern industrialized agricultural model—rather than sustainable modes of production— is also exported.

There are several conversations that need to happen:

• Who benefits from foreign cash flows, especially in countries with abysmal records of transparency, corrupt governments, and land tenure rights?  It’s not clear it will be the farmers.
• Should the developed world reduce its meat consumption to accommodate higher-yielding agriculture within its own geographic borders before it turns to the developing world—who has difficulty feeding its own people— for help.
• Is this even feasible in food-insecure nations?  As stated in the article, “The idea that one country would go to another country…and lease some land, and expect that the rice produced there would be made available to them if there’s a food crisis in that host country, is ludicrous.”

Excerpts:

There are basically two ways to increase the supply of food: find new fields to plant or invent ways to multiply what existing ones yield. [American botanist] Zeigler runs the International Rice Research Institute, which is devoted to the latter course, employing science to expand the size of harvests. During the so-called Green Revolution of the 1960s, the institute’s laboratory developed “miracle rice,” a high-yielding strain that has been credited with saving millions of people from famine. Zeigler went to Saudi Arabia hoping that the wealthy kingdom might offer money for the basic research that leads to such technological breakthroughs. Instead, to his surprise, he discovered that the Saudis wanted to attack the problem from the opposite direction. They were looking for land.

In a series of meetings, Saudi government officials, bankers and agribusiness executives told an institute delegation led by Zeigler that they intended to spend billions of dollars to establish plantations to produce rice and other staple crops in African nations like Mali, Senegal, Sudan and Ethiopia. “They laid out this incredible plan,” Zeigler recalled. He was flabbergasted, not only by the scale of the projects but also by the audacity of their setting. Africa, the world’s most famished continent, can’t currently feed itself, let alone foreign markets.

“Africa is the final frontier,” Payne [chief executive of Emergent Asset Management] told me after the conference. “It’s the one continent that remains relatively unexploited.” Emergent’s African Agricultural Land Fund, started last year, is investing several hundred million dollars into commercial farms around the continent. Africa may be known for decrepit infrastructure and corrupt governments — problems that are being steadily alleviated, Payne argues — but land and labor come so cheaply there that she calculates the risks are worthwhile.

Related post:  In defense of sustainable meat production

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