The Next Breadbasket
TO SEE IN ORIGINAL FORMAT/VIDEO:
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/foodfeatures/land-grab/
She never saw the big tractor coming. First it
plowed up her banana trees. Then her corn. Then her beans, sweet
potatoes, cassava. Within a few, dusty minutes the one-acre plot near
Xai-Xai, Mozambique, which had fed Flora Chirime and her five children
for years, was consumed by a Chinese corporation building a 50,000-acre
farm, a green-and-brown checkerboard of fields covering a broad stretch
of the Limpopo River Delta.
“No one even talked to me,” the 45-year-old
Chirime says, her voice rising with anger. “Just one day I found the
tractor in my field plowing up everything. No one who lost their
machamba has been compensated!” Local civil society groups say thousands
lost their land and livelihoods to the Wanbao Africa Agricultural
Development Company—all with the blessing of the Mozambican government,
which has a history of neglecting local farmers’ rights to land in favor
of large investments. Those who managed to get jobs on the giant farm
are working seven days a week with no overtime pay. A spokesman for
Wanbao denied such allegations and stressed that it’s training local
farmers to grow rice.
Chirime’s situation is hardly unique. She’s just one
character in the biggest story in global agriculture: the unlikely quest
to turn sub-Saharan Africa, historically one of the hungriest places on
the planet, into a major new breadbasket for the world. Since 2007 the
near-record prices of corn, soybeans, wheat, and rice have set off a
global land rush by corporate investors eager to lease or buy land in
countries where acreage is cheap, governments are amenable, and property
rights often ignored.
Most land deals have occurred in Africa, one of
the few regions on the planet that still have millions of acres of
fallow land and plentiful water available for irrigation. It also has
the largest “yield gap” on Earth: Although corn, wheat, and rice farmers
in the U.S., China, and eurozone countries produce about three tons of
grain per acre, farmers in sub-Saharan Africa average half a ton—roughly
the same yield Roman farmers achieved on their wheat fields in a good
year during the rule of Caesar.
Despite several attempts, the green
revolution’s mix of fertilizers, irrigation, and high-yield seeds—which
more than doubled global grain production between 1960 and 2000—never
blossomed in Africa, thanks to the poor infrastructure, limited markets,
weak governance, and fratricidal civil wars that wracked the
postcolonial continent.
Sugarcane
hawkers await customers on the Nacala railway in northern Mozambique,
where Brazil and Japan hope to turn 35 million acres of small farms over
to industrial-scale soybean production. The country has leased roughly 7
percent of its arable land—among the highest rates in Africa.
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Many of those hurdles are now falling. Sub-Saharan
Africa’s economic growth has hummed along at about 5 percent a year for
the past decade, besting that of the U.S. and the European Union.
National debts are declining, and peaceful elections are being held with
increasing frequency. More than one in three sub-Saharan Africans now
own cell phones and use them for mobile banking, to run small
businesses, or send money to relatives in rural areas. After 25 years of
virtually no investment in African agriculture, the World Bank and
donor countries have stepped up. The continent is emerging as a
laboratory for testing new approaches to boosting food production. If
sub-Saharan African farmers can raise their yields to even two tons of
grain per acre using existing technology—a fourfold increase and still a
tall order—some experts believe they could not only better feed
themselves but actually export food, earning much needed cash and
helping to feed the world as well.
Small Farmers, Big Questions
Large agriculture companies are taking an interest in Africa’s arable
land. For now, most of the continent’s food comes from small farmers.
These are the faces of some of those men and women. Click here to launch
the gallery.
It’s an optimistic vision, for sure. Thailand currently
exports more agricultural products than all sub-Saharan countries
combined, and the specter of climate change threatens to hammer Africa’s
yields. But the thorniest question is, Who will do the farming in
Africa’s future? Will it be poor farmers like Chirime working one-acre
plots, who make up roughly 70 percent of the continent’s labor force? Or
will it be giant corporations like Wanbao, operating industrial farms
modeled on those of the American Midwest.
Humanitarian groups that deal with global hunger and
peasants’ rights call corporate land deals neocolonialism and
agri-imperialism. Yet veterans of agricultural development say the
massive infusion of private cash, infrastructure, and technology that
such deals may bring to poor rural areas could be a catalyst for
desperately needed development—if big projects and small farmers can
work together. The key, says USAID’s Gregory Myers, is protecting the
land rights of the people. “This could significantly reduce global
poverty, and that could be the story of the century.”
This land outside Maputo
provides a snapshot of Africa’s agricultural choices: Will its food be
produced on giant, leveled plantations like Bananalandia (at left) or on
small farms, called machambas? “It must be a mix of big ag and small,” says Dries Gouws, the sprawling banana farm’s founder.
“If you wrote a letter to
God and asked him for the best soil and climate conditions for farming,
this is what he’d send you,” says Miguel Bosch, an Argentine agronomist
who manages Hoyo Hoyo, a nearly 25,000-acre corporate soybean farm in
northern Mozambique. “It is a paradise for growers. I’ve spent many
years farming in Brazil and Argentina and have never seen such soil.”
Fertile land, skyrocketing demand for soybeans and rice,
and a government willing to cut big land deals have put the former
Portuguese colony at the center of the land rush sweeping the continent.
In 2013 the nation was the third poorest on the planet, with almost
half its children under five stunted by malnutrition. Recent discoveries
of world-class coal and natural gas deposits in the north as well as
other mining and forestry concessions are slowly changing its fortunes.
The rush to tap these hydrocarbons has ignited Mozambique’s economy,
which grew by an estimated 7 percent in 2013. Massive infrastructure
projects are springing up, many financed largely by loans from nations
eager to curry favor with political leaders and get in on the action.
Japan is building roads and bridges. Portuguese companies are building
ports and rail lines. China has already built a new airport, the
parliament building, the national soccer stadium, and even the new
presidential palace overlooking the broad bay in the capital, Maputo. In
2013 President Armando Guebuza spent a week visiting the new Chinese
president with a ten-billion-dollar wish list of new construction
projects in hand.
Africa’s Food Challenge
The world’s population will likely reach nine billion by 2050, and
Africa could help feed it. In some areas arable land may be developed;
in other areas it never will be. Click to see why.
Little of that bounty has trickled down to the nation’s
24 million citizens, more than half of whom still live on less than
$1.25 a day. A return to civil unrest is the only thing that could upset
the river of cash flowing into Mozambique. After riots over food prices
broke out in Maputo in 2010, President Guebuza fired his agriculture
minister and replaced him with Interior Minister José Pacheco, an
agronomist, who has continued courting investors at conferences around
the world. Of its 89 million acres of arable land, the government deems
almost 85 percent “unutilized.” Since 2004 some six million acres have
been leased to both foreign and domestic investors for everything from
forestry products to biofuels to sugarcane, roughly 7 percent of the
country’s arable land—among the highest rates in Africa.
Signing a deal with a ministry official in a swank
Maputo hotel is the easy part. Getting a massive corporate farm up and
running and turning a profit in the midst of often hostile neighbors is
something else entirely. Hoyo Hoyo, located in the nation’s prime
soybean-growing region of Gurué, was supposed to be a shining example of
the new African agriculture. Instead it became the poster child for how
such deals can go wrong. In 2009 Mozambican officials leased the nearly
25,000 acres of an abandoned state farm to a Portuguese company with
ties to the government.
But local villagers had been growing food for
their families there for years. When the Portuguese managers came in,
they met with village leaders and promised them double the amount of
land to farm elsewhere as well as a school, a clinic, and new wells.
A
Chinese chicken farmer haggles with his customers in Lusaka, Zambia.
Like many foreign-owned food operations in Africa, his company doesn’t
ship its chickens back home but sells them to locals and the country’s
20,000 Chinese. Overall Africa is home to some two million Chinese.
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Few of those promises were kept. The school and clinic
were never built, though the company did buy an ambulance to take the
sick to a hospital in Gurué, an hour’s ride away. Only about 40 men got
low-paying jobs as watchmen on the farm, while hundreds were displaced.
Those who did receive acreage have found it to be far from home, swampy,
and overgrown. Custódio Alberto is one of them. I meet the 52-year-old
farmer at a threshing party just outside the Hoyo Hoyo boundary, where
two dozen men from the local Roman Catholic church are beating piles of
soybeans with wooden clubs. An equal number of women are winnowing the
chaff with handwoven baskets. The seven-acre plot, for the moment still
controlled by the church, is next to Hoyo Hoyo’s wide-open fields, which
stretch toward the green mountains in the distance.
“For us as small farmers, the production of this soy
guarantees the family income, even enough for us to send our children to
college so they can become engineers or even doctors,” Alberto says.
“Fields are fundamental for us. No fields, no life.”
The displaced villagers, who survived 16 years of war,
are poor but far from powerless. Soon after the Portuguese got the lease
to Hoyo Hoyo, which means “welcome” in the local language, the farm
began having trouble with its equipment. John Deere tractors imported
from the United States mysteriously failed to start. I ask a farmer
working nearby what the problem was.
“I don’t know how it happens,” he said with a knowing smile. “Maybe African magic.”
At left, Mary Mukarukaka, 36,
peels and ties maize husks with her children on their farm in Rwanda.
At right, also in Rwanda, 60-year-old farmer Joseph Nindekwet shells
beans from this season’s harvest.
The conflict over Hoyo Hoyo
pales in comparison with what’s coming down the road. In 2009 the
government signed an agreement with Brazil and Japan to develop an
agricultural megaproject dubbed ProSavana, which would make almost 35
million acres of northern Mozambique available for industrial-scale
soybean production, possibly the largest such land deal ever reported.
The plan is inspired by a Japanese-Brazilian project that transformed
Brazil’s cerrado grasslands into one of the largest soy-exporting
regions in the world, with the bulk of its yield going to feed Europe’s
and China’s livestock. The North Carolina–size corridor would be dotted
here and there with modern, 25,000-acre farms run by Brazilian
agribusinesses and with technical centers to educate local farmers on
how to boost yields of cassava, beans, vegetables, as well as soy—or so
the initial vision went. But when a group of Brazilian farmers toured
the region in 2013, they had a rude awakening.
“They saw good lands, but everywhere was a community,”
says Anacleto Saint Mart, who works with farmers in the region for the
U.S. nonprofit TechnoServe. “They were seeing a reality very different
from what they were told in Brazil.” Development experts who’ve pored
over maps of the area say most of it is already leased for mining or
logging, is protected as wildlife reserves, or is already being
cultivated by local farmers. Only about 2.2 million acres are currently
unutilized, and those are the worst lands for farming.
“When you look at ProSavana, who is winning?” asks
Devlin Kuyek of GRAIN, the nonprofit that first focused the world’s
attention on corporate investments in farmland. “The land is currently
worked by small farmers, and [yet] the government is placing it in the
hands of corporations. I’m sure there are some companies with good
intentions. But they’re still profiting from low wages and low land
prices. Industrial agriculture will just lead to more exploitation.”
With the right policies, small farmers can be extremely
productive, Kuyek says, pointing to the rice farmers of Vietnam or the
small dairy farmers in Kenya, who supply more than 70 percent of the
nation’s milk. Simply providing women—who make up the majority of
African farmers—the same access to land, credit, and fertilizer as men
could boost food production by as much as 30 percent. The government of
Mozambique doesn’t see it that way. Though food production by small
farmers has improved over the past few years, 37 percent of the
population is undernourished, and the country’s southern region is
plagued by droughts and floods. Despite its mineral wealth, Mozambique
remains one of the hungriest nations in the world. The government thinks
bigger farms are the answer.
“I look at ProSavana along with the Zambezi Valley
region as the food store of the country,” says Raimundo Matule, the
national director of economics at the Ministry of Agriculture. “I don’t
envision huge farms like in Brazil, but more medium-size producers of
three to ten hectares [7 to 25 acres]. The Brazilians have knowledge,
technology, and equipment that we can adapt and transfer to medium-size
farms. If ProSavana doesn’t contribute to better food security, then it
will not have government support.”
Ajiem Ogalla, 11, scavenges for awieo,
an edible shrub, amid corn planted by the Indian firm Karuturi Global,
which holds part of a large agricultural lease in Ethiopia’s remote
Gambela region. After displacing villagers and cutting down native
forests, the company is deeply in debt and struggling to avoid
bankruptcy.
A few miles down a washboard
dirt road from Hoyo Hoyo, a soybean farm run by a retired schoolteacher
is an example of a productive middle path. Armando Afonso Catxava began
growing vegetables in his spare time on a small plot of land and over
the years has cobbled together about 64 acres. He now grows soybeans as
an “outgrower” under contract with a new company called African Century
Agriculture, which provides him with seeds and mechanical weeding. In
return he sells his soybeans to the company at an agreed-on price, minus
the cost of the services provided. So far both have profited from the
arrangement.
“I think middle-size farms are the secret,” Catxava
says. “Big farms take too much area, and there is nowhere for people to
live. If everybody had five hectares [12 acres] of soy, they would make
money and not lose their land.” Outgrower arrangements have been
successful with poultry and high-value crops like tobacco and even
organic baby corn grown for export to Europe. Now Mozambique’s farmers
are starting to raise soybeans for feed to supply the booming chicken
industry.
Rachel Grobbelaar is a tall, tough Zimbabwean who left a
good job in London’s financial district to run African Century, which
works with more than 900 outgrowers—a mix of smallholders and
medium-size growers—on nearly 2,500 acres. Farmers each get seven visits
a season from the company’s extension agents, who teach them the basics
of conservation agriculture and the use of inexpensive seed treatments,
instead of expensive fertilizer, to boost yields.
Suffering leprosy and
other hardships, Ariet Kwot was forcibly relocated to the community of
Thenyi, in the Gambela region of Ethiopia, under a controversial
“villagization” program. Officials claim the program provides basic
services; critics say it furthers the government’s goal of leasing
nearly half of Gambela to corporate farms.
“I was visiting one of our small farmers up on the
mountain yesterday, and he grew 2.4 tons per hectare [one ton per
acre],” Grobbelaar says, referring to last year’s harvest—more than
double the average yield. “He couldn’t believe it. He made 37,000
meticaies [about $1,200] profit. That’s a lot. I’m very supportive of
the outgrower model in Africa. Commercial farms may give them a job, but
it takes away their land and typically pays them bare-minimum salaries.
I honestly believe we can increase production this way.”
When done right, larger-scale farms can benefit locals
too. Dries Gouws, a former surgeon in Zambia, planted 30 acres of banana
trees on a bankrupt citrus farm outside of Maputo 14 years ago. He
slowly grew the operation into what he now calls Bananalandia. At 3,500
acres, it’s the largest banana farm in Mozambique and one of the
nation’s largest employers, with 2,800 year-round workers. During that
time Gouws’s farm helped turn Mozambique from a banana importer into a
banana exporter. As the farm grew, Gouws paved roads, built a school and
a clinic, dug wells, and ran 34 miles of electrical lines that not only
power his irrigation but also supply the surrounding villages where his
employees live. His lowest paid workers make 10 percent more than
minimum wage; his tractor drivers and plantation managers make more than
double that.
Gouws believes in a mix of big and little farms, with
small farmers raising cattle and tending plots of land as a safety net
and source of pride, and big farms like his bringing in roads, power,
and infrastructure that the government does not provide. Big farms
supply employment for some; other people make it on their own. The key
to corporate farms winning over local communities, he says, is simple:
Keep your word.
Fifty-year-old rubber
trees fall to make room for oil palms on a former B. F. Goodrich rubber
plantation, which was twice abandoned during Liberia’s civil wars. To
help build their nation’s economy, Liberian officials asked the
Malaysian company Sime Darby to replant a portion of a nearly
544,000-acre lease with palm and rubber trees, as well as another
109,000 acres that will be managed by small farmers.
“I built this power line for the village,” Gouws says,
as we follow a wire along a red-dirt path toward a cluster of huts amid
the banana fields. “I’ve never been asked to do it or expected to do it.
But at some point, not to get too philosophical about it, we want to
make the world a better place, don’t we? It can’t just be about the
money.”
Yet make no mistake, money—not some noble idea of
feeding the world—is driving the land rush in Africa. A recent
conference for agricultural investors in New York drew some 800
financial leaders from around the globe who manage nearly three trillion
dollars in investments. These included giant pension funds, life
insurance companies, hedge funds, private equity funds, and
sovereign-wealth funds, which currently have about 5 percent of their
combined assets allocated to investments in agriculture. That number is
expected to triple over the next decade. Such a massive infusion of
private cash, technology, and infrastructure is exactly what global
agriculture needs, according to FAO experts, who estimate we’ll need to
invest $83 billion a year in agriculture in developing countries to feed
two billion more people by 2050.
The key is leveraging that investment to yield benefits
for all, ensuring secure land rights, thriving markets, and increased
productivity on all farms, big and small. “If we could do that, we’d
have a triple win,” says Darryl Vhugen, a lawyer with Landesa, a
Seattle-based nonprofit that helps poor farmers in developing countries
defend their land rights. “Investors benefit, local communities benefit,
and nations benefit from jobs, infrastructure, food security. That’s
gold.”
A girl tends goats in the
mountains near Shiikh, Somaliland. Though big farms make headlines,
small farmers still produce most of the food in Africa. Both are crucial
for the continent to be able to feed its own growing population—much
less the rest of the world.
Berbera (left), where
these sheep and goats are being led to the ship bound for Saudi Arabia,
has been a key port for Arab traders since the second century. Saudi
Arabia imports 80 percent of its food, with meat consumption projected
to rise this decade—good news for Somaliland’s nomadic herders. Workers
herd livestock aboard a ship (right) in Berbera, Somaliland, that is
headed to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. In the three years after Saudi Arabia
ended its ban on Somali livestock, imports grew fivefold, to three
million animals in 2012.
On a long road in the heart
of the proposed ProSavana project, I stop at a mud-brick hut to talk
with Costa Ernesto, a 35-year-old farmer, and his wife, Cecilia Luis.
They have never heard of ProSavana. They are simply trying to feed their
family on two and a half acres of corn, and selling bamboo poles for
thatched roofs on the side. Their five children range in age from six
months to 11 years. The eldest, a shy girl named Esvalta, is pounding
corn with a wooden pestle as tall as she is, just as her mother and
grandmother and great-grandmother did before her. My guide, who has
worked in agricultural development for 20 years, says the children and
parents appear to be stunted from malnutrition. I ask Ernesto if he has
grown enough corn to eat that year. “Yes,” he says proudly. After some
prodding, Cecilia adds: “When we keep ahead of weeding, we produce
enough for the whole year.”
Two other men walk up during the conversation, and I ask
if they would give up their small farms for a job on a big farm. Given
their ragged clothing, their swollen bellies, their sod houses, their
obvious poverty, the question seems almost unfair. Yes, they say,
without the slightest hesitation.
“I have been praying that something like this would happen,” the oldest of the three men replies. “Because I really need a job.”
Whether Mozambique’s future farmers will look more like
industrial farmers in Iowa or the small but productive rice farmers of
Vietnam remains to be seen. But all sides agree on one thing: The status
quo is unacceptable.
Contributing writer Joel Bourne reported on the global food crisis in 2009. Robin Hammond covered Zimbabwe in our May 2013 issue.
The magazine thanks The Rockefeller
Foundation and members of the National Geographic Society for their
generous support of this series of articles.
Esther Nyirahabimana winnows
soybeans on a small farm in Rwanda, having been given seeds, fertilizer,
and training by the nonprofit One Acre Fund. Small farmers can produce
as much per acre as large farms if seeds and fertilizer are affordable.
Simply giving women the same access to loans, land, seeds, and
fertilizers as men could increase food production by as much 30 percent.
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