Lynas Spanks One Out for Genetic Engineering, Again

It's good to read a simple article by a Kenyan in a Kenyan newspaper about staple crops rather than cash crops for export being the key to tackling poverty. Many people probably suspect that it is true, but we are constantly blasted with articles about luxury fruits and vegetables for the European market and cash crops that make Kenyan farmers very little money but sell well in the West.

The article refers to a study brief by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) called Strategies and Priorities for African Agriculture. The study concludes that "producing more staple crops such as maize, pulses, and roots and more livestock products tends to reduce poverty further than producing more export crops such as coffee or cut flowers". IFPRI is connected with some of the big bullies among the multinationals and some heavy handed Western governments, but they can still produce sensible research, it seems.

Unfortunately, all the mainstream media are taking an interest in Mark Lynas' supposed conversion from environmentalist to promoter of genetic engineering (GE). Lynas spanked one out in public for GE over 18 months ago. Perhaps the press weren't quite ready then for such a shocking conversion, or they had other things on their mind. But back in July 2011 Lynas claimed that Africa must embrace GM technology to abolish hunger and malnutrition.

Lynas would be well aware that his claims are utter rubbish, so one can only conclude that he is making them for reasons that don't relate to science or anything too academic. All the more surprising that he considers opposition to GE to be 'anti-scientific'. Even his own arguments are not primarily about the science of GE, but the economics; and his arguments are based on falsehoods.

Back then, Lynas said "One of the most pervasive myths about biotech crops is that they are part of a nefarious plot by multinational seed companies such as Monsanto to dominate the world food chain." But that's pretty much how Monsanto and other GE multinationals would describe themselves, albeit using a slightly different rhetoric. Any science involved is of little relevance, which means that even someone with as little grasp of science as Lynas has can still take part in the debate, as long as they come to realize what exactly the terms of the debate are.

The most astonishing thing about GE crops is that they are so unneeded. Conventional crops have developed at a pace that GE can not keep up with; costs are also far lower; the claimed advantages of GE crops, where they didn't turn out to be exaggerations and lies, turned out to be short lived. Lynas and the GE industry are well aware of this, hence the need to keep pumping out the party line. Conventionally bred staple crops are what poor people depend on for survival, not expensive high technologies that don't perform well, despite all the hype.

AgriSol in Tanzania: Land-Grabbing or Outright Theft?

Tanzanians and other Africans seem to be worrying a lot about reductions in foreign aid and what conditions will need to be met in order to receive whatever is available. But they don't seem to be paying much attention to the fact that land is being grabbed by foreign multinationals at a rate that involves far higher sums of money than foreign aid.

The Oakland Institute has investigated AgriSol's dirty deals in Tanzania and though they have been found wanting, they appear to be going ahead. Many Tanzanians suffer regular food shortages and poor diet but Agrisol intends to use huge tracts of land and substantial amounts of water to produce biofuels and genetically modified crops for export.

Aside from needing land and water to produce food and other things, Tanzania is not yet prepared for genetically modified organisms. Even if they have some kind of regulation, probably regulation that suits the likes of AgriSol more than it does Tanzanians, the country is unlikely to have the capacity to enforce appropriate regulation any time in the near future, which should suit the GM industry.

AgriSol and others involved in these land-grabs like to claim that the land is marginal and/or underutilized, even uninhabited, none of which are true. Biofuels and genetically modified crops, despite claims to the contrary, need water and fertile soil. So AgriSol want to bribe (or whatever the current nomenclature is) their way into 800,000 acres of fertile land which is inhabited by over 160,000 people.

Of course, AgriSol also claim they will be enriching Tanzania and the local communities who will be effectively dispossessed and displaced. AgriSol will not allow such matters to get between them and hundreds of millions of dollars profit. So they need the assistance of public relations experts, legal experts and, of course, political allies. And with that amount of money to be made, this assistance should be readily available.

The Oakland Institute have published eight myths they have identified about land-grabbing, and in particular about this current AgriSol intrigue. The first is that the land is not being used, which most land-grabbers claim. The land is inhabited by displaced Burundians, some of whom have been there for nearly 40 years, having been originally displaced by war.

AgriSol also claim they are not involved in the displacement of Burundians, which they say started independently of their efforts. This claim does not stand up to scrutiny. Their claims about cooperating fully, consultations, transparency and the like are also untrue. All the big land-grabbers claim that Africans will benefit, AgriSol being no exception, even taking steps to ensure that they can export food crops at times when there is a lack of food security in the country involved.

Indeed, AgriSol will be looking for a tax exemption and they will want to receive input subsidies that are currently destined for Tanzanians. So much for private enterprise eschewing subsidies! AgriSol go through the usual sanctimonious posturing about environmental responsibility, which simply doesn't add up for either biofuels or genetically modified organisms, which are both extremely destructive to the environment.

Very small numbers of people will be employed by AgriSol's scheme and fewer still are likely to be Tanzanians. And the amount of 'rent' they will be paying is a derisory one tenth of a dollar an acre for a 99 year lease. Good agricultural land costs in the region of millions of dollars, so it's not clear how rental revenue will even cover the costs of the paperwork.

The Oakland Institute unearths many disturbing things about AgriSol and the various well connected people involved, who seem to be more scrupulous about maximizing earnings than anything else. Sadly, there will be a few in Tanzania who will be able to pick up a nice fee for selling their friends and families. But Tanzania as a whole and ordinary Tanzanians will lose a lot more than they stand to receive in donor funds, no matter what conditions they agree to.

For GM Lobbyists like Lynas, East African Famine is Gap in Market

Mark Lynas, who used to be an environmentalist, has become a rabid pro-GMO commentator. The title of his recent article in Kenya's Nation newspaper is:'To abolish hunger and malnutrition, Africa must embrace GM technology'.

Firstly, Lynas should know that if the world wanted to abolish hunger and malnutrition, they would have done so by now. Hunger and malnutrition are caused by lack of access to affordable and nutritious food. Even East Africa, where there is such a serious lack of access to food, has produced more than enough food in recent years.

But another thing Lynas should be aware of are the various factors that are causing food prices to spiral beyond what poor people can afford, especially in the last four or five years. Rich speculators are betting on the price of food staples rising in a world where many other sources of easy profits are more risky right now.

Growing biofuels, which require viable agricultural land and water, other things many poor people don't have access to, is also increasing the cost of food. A number of food crops are actually used to produce fuel so that rich Westerners don't have to reduce their fuel consumption.

And one of the most pernicious factors of all, land grabbing, should be very familiar to Lynas, if he has paid the slightest attention to his history lessons. Much of the best agricultural land in developing countries is not owned by poor people. That's precisely why most of them are poor.

Big multinationals, various non-African countries, speculators, wealthy individuals, pension funds and the like are all speculating in land in African countries. And even without those malign influences, much of the best land was handed over to top politicians and their families at, or soon after, independence.

That's quite a few items on the agenda that could be discussed before genetically modified organisms need even raise their ugly head. And all these items are long term trends, not something that just cropped up recently. The very threat of drought, food shortages and even famine have been noted over and over again by agencies whose job it is to warn of such possibilities.

This claimed 'need' for GMOs didn't just arise in the last few weeks, since the big news agencies, who seem so anxious to interview Lynas the expert, started taking notice and raiding their photo archives for choice photographs of dying people in dry and dusty locations. There's a stink of news manufacturing here, and a very nasty smell that is.

Lynas seems to see the problem of aid agencies simply coming up with more unsustainable strategies to deal with hunger. But that's no reason for imposing GMOs, which represent the most unsustainable strategy yet. They cost phenomenal amounts of money when you take in the long term commitments they represent and what the farmer loses by embracing them.

Farmers will have to pay inflated prices for agricultural inputs, accept the huge risks that have destroyed so many farmers in India and other countries, face lower yields after the first few years, once resistance develops to the pesticides and the fertilizer has contaminated the land and reduced yields further. And they won't be selling their produce in Europe, either.

It's strange how specific Lynas is in mentioning what he sees as "myths about biotech crops" being "part of a nefarious plot by multinational seed companies such as Monsanto to dominate the world food chain." As a former anti-GM activist and current Monsanto backscratcher, he should be aware that Monsanto's entire GMO effort is to dominate the world food chain.

All multinationals aim to dominate their field or fields of interest. Monsanto is no different in that respect. They don't even make any secret or that, except to Lynas, it seems. Does he think that Monsanto has suddenly transformed itself into a great big philanthropy engine, a jolly green giant?

If Lynas wishes to let on to be so disingenuous, others are not convinced. The Tanzania Alliance for Biodiversity (TABIO), an alliance of organizations concerned with the conservation of agricultural biodiversity for livelihood security and food sovereignty, has sent a vigorous response to Lynas's prognostications to the English Times (though I don't think it has been published yet).

This feigned innocence in reporting the GMO line as if it were an honest weighing up of the arguments doesn't wash. Lynas is not unaware of the faultlines in his 'reasoning'. That doesn't explain why he should wish to put his name to such rubbish, or be so widely reported to be doing so. But it will take a bit more than classic greenwashing to sell GMOs to anyone who has taken the trouble to study the issues.

Biofuels: Stealing Land to Steal Food and Water from Africa

Western countries wring their hands and rush for their mobile phones to pledge money to whatever catastrophe happens to be fashionable enough to attract the attentions of some brainless celebrity. But they are not so interested when it's a matter of stopping their country from causing the next catastrophe.

Eight million Kenyans (out of a total of about 40 million) are currently short of food. They are not short of food because there isn't enough of it. They just can't afford the food that is produced in their own country. Europeans can afford to buy agricultural products that are grown in Kenya, even though they produce so much in Europe they have to dump a lot of it, sometimes in Kenya.

A number of factors have driven up the cost of basic foods in recent years. Food has been treated as a commodity that can be played with by speculators. Costs of agricultural inputs have become more and more under the control of a few multinationals. And rich countries have been buying up land in developing countries for a song so that biofuel crops destined for these rich countries can be grown there.

Despite what the landgrabbers say, they are not paying fair compensation for the land, the land is not marginal (if it was it would be of no use to them), the land is not unoccupied, nor virtually so, and large numbers of people are not being employed in producing biofuels. Nor is there any environmental payoff. In fact, environmental destruction on a massive scale is often required before these vast tracts of land can be used to produce biofuels, causing even more environmental damage.

According to an article in the English Guardian, British firms have been grabbing more land than any other country. This contrasts with their recent boasts about how they have increased aid spending and even improved the quality of foreign aid. Aid spending is a piffling amount compared to what can be extracted through biofuel and other forms of exploitation.

In addition to competing for land and water, and thus increasing the price of food, the type of farming involved is totally disempowering to local communities. Where once many families subsisted, now none do. Where once whole communities were employed, now a mere handful are. Instead of relatively harmless practices that allowed a healthy ecosystem to remain, biofuel production will destroy everything in its path, irreversibly.

It would be useful to contrast these disadvantages with some advantages, but there are none for the poor farmer. Whatever advantages there are accrue to the landgrabber alone. They are coming up with fancy brochures to impress investors but this is just the usual rose tinted excrescence that goes with foreign exploitation of all African resources, gold, uranium and other minerals, sugar, coffee, cocoa, anything that can be produced cheaply without those profiting having to leave much behind in the form of tax, royalties, skills, assets or even investment.

The last thing African countries need is to lose their rights to their land and water, given that these are among the means of production for food, to feed themselves and to export. Coupled with the current threat of genetically modified organisms (GMO) being imposed on the continent, rates of poverty, dispossession, endemic disease and starvation are only going to increase.

Not content with making our fat asses fatter, we're proposing burning the potential for growing food in our cars, at the expense of people who are dying for lack of food and water. So we needn't see ourselves as being so generous whenever another disaster hits the news, considering we're happy to allow even greater disasters to occur just so we can fulfil our consumerist dreams. There is enough food, but not if we use it all up on power games and car fuel.

Stealing People’s Land Can Only Impoverish Them Further

The World Bank, an institution devised to divert aid money on its way to developing countries back to the rich and powerful, seems to have woken up to the sort of negative impact that its policies have been having on developing countries. I wouldn’t get too excited, though, because the negative impacts they are concerned about follow from their policies, which they haven’t changed in any way. And no matter how they appear to equivocate, it’s always worth bearing in mind who ‘international’ financial (and other) institutions are intended to benefit.

Grabbing land goes back a long way, hundreds of years, as does using people and resources in developing countries for the enrichment of people in developed countries. The monumental disaster, the Tanganyika Groundnut Scheme, which started in the late 1940s and was abandoned in the early 1950s, is just one out of many examples.  Like all of today’s land grabs, the grabbers were quick to claim numerous advantages for those who were being dispossessed of their land; employment, food security, development, mechanization, efficiency, modernization, etc. Such terminologies have changed little since the 1950s!

The flaws of the Tanzanian scheme were many and obvious from very early on, but there were those who thought they would make a lot of money from it. So vast tracts of land were destroyed and lots of equipment and other resources were wasted. Someone did make a lot of money out of the scheme, though it’s not certain who. But the losers were Tanzanians, the Tanzanian economy and the Tanzanian environment.

Land grabbing schemes of the last few years have already appropriated tens of millions of hectares, at very low cost. It is difficult to estimate how many people have been displaced and dispossessed but the number affected by the process will be enormous. ‘Investors’ will not be counting those costs, that’s for sure. They are anxious that we think of ‘feeding the starving’, even though 80% of the land hasn’t yet been used for anything. Ultimately, much of it is destined for non-food crops and for export to rich countries, though. What else would it be used for?

The World Bank has been talking about how to protect people in developing countries and their land. But they have been talking about a lot of things throughout their history. International agreements about accountability and transparency are a great idea, even better if there is some guarantee that they are upheld. But we know that all sorts of agreements are discussed, fewer are made and hardly any are ever upheld.

Land grabbing on a scale that is taking place presently is not happening despite the existence of institutions like the World Bank. On the contrary, such institutions were set up by rich and powerful countries so that they could stay rich and powerful. So we need different institutions, not the same ones saying the right thing while continuing the policies that have brought developing countries to their knees. The institutions are doing what they were intended to do, that’s why the World Bank needs to be abolished and replaced by something that genuinely represents the interests of the world.

The kind of land grabbing that is occurring at the moment will further devastate the most vulnerable communities, economies and environments in the world. People in rich countries may not be able to witness these phenomena as they occur, and the corporations currently enriching themselves are certainly not going to record them or make them publicly available. But by the time a handful of sound bites and photo opportunities are considered to be newsworthy by the world’s media, it will already be too late to reverse the damage.

Mining, Biofuels and Other Forms of Abuse

I'd like to follow on from yesterday's theme about developing countries being used to provide wealthy countries with cheap raw materials and labour. These developing countries are never helped to or even allowed to produce their own higher value goods so that they can improve their economies. On the contrary, wealthy countries go out of their way to ensure that poor countries stay that way. Several recent articles discuss other ways in which developing countries are held back from developing.

The European Community (EC) has set a target to source 10% of its energy from renewable sources. Rather than look for genuinely renewable source, the EC has latched on to biofuels as a means of achieving this target. Warnings were raised about the dangers of biofuels as long ago as 2004 but no one was listening then and few are listening now. Biofuel prospecting has gone on, as predicted, to destroy vast tracts of land, increase the prices of fuel, dispossess people of their land and livelihood and cause numerous other social and economic problems.

Like the US, the EC preaches against the use of subsidies. Yet they subsidize biofuel production (and anything else that suits them). Growing biofuels cannot be sustainable, there just isn't enough land, even if everyone in Tanzania and other developing countries are thrown off their land to grow the crops. Growing, processing, transporting and using biofuels does not reduce carbon emissions, they increase it. So even the rich countries are not gaining much by their quest for biofuels. Somebody must be making money out of it but Tanzanians and people in other poor countries will suffer increased poverty and hunger as a result. And there will be global level losses too.

In addition to having a lot of land, which rich countries are busy grabbing right now, Tanzania also has a lot of minerals, especially gold. But various murky deals mean that the country makes very little money out of these resources. Most of the money is made by foreign owned companies, especially companies from Canada, South Africa and the UK. The royalties Tanzania gets are tiny whereas the profits the foreign companies make are huge and are amply enhanced by the privileges and tax incentives they receive at the expense of poor Tanzanians and even indigenous Tanzanian companies, who are unable to compete with the foreigners.

Despite mining companies having a deplorable human rights and corporate responsibility record, laws, neither Tanzanian nor international, do not adequately protect those who have to work for the industry. In particular, laws do not protect those who lose their land, those whose environment and water supply are contaminated and those who formerly made a living as artisanal miners. Tanzania has enough valuable resources to improve the living conditions for all Tanzanians but the revenue from these resources always seems to leave the country. All that ordinary Tanzanians get is the pollution, the industrial problems and the social problems, the majority remaining very poor.

In Kenya, similar things are happening. Land is being grabbed to be used to produce food and biofuels for rich countries. This viable land is currently occupied by Kenyans but is being sold as 'unoccupied' and 'marginal'. Whole ecologies are being destroyed to produce unsustainable crops for the benefit of non Kenyans, but at the expense of Kenyans. The Kenyan government appears to be doing little to protect its citizens and seems to be keen to promote the interests of this land grabbing. As if things were not bad enough in the worst affected area, the Tana River basin, Tiomin are going to do some kind of mining there, a Canadian company with a disgraceful record of wanton destruction.

The only good news is that a few hundred families in the Tana River basin have been awarded 2.55 million Kenyan shillings each as compensation for their land. Unfortunately, the people involved were displaced for environmental protection reasons. It seems unlikely that there will be any compensation for people displaced to make way for the miners and land grabbers. WTO rules tend to defend such land grabbing and resource exploitation, protecting only the interests of the very rich. Condemning vast populations to generations of poverty, disease, dependency and degradation is all in a day's work. It's been going on for a long time and it's not going to stop now, not as long as there is money to be made.

Tomorrow's Disasters Are Preventable Today

I think most people, if they saw their child playing near a fire or in some other dangerous situation, would do something about it before an accident occurred. They wouldn't just watch and then shell out the money for hospital fees once an accident had occurred. But donor money is usually spent on clearing up after a disaster has hit.

Many children (and quite a number of adults) in developing countries are severely burned because most cooking is done on open fires, close to the ground. Donor money is sometimes forthcoming for the expensive surgery and skin grafts required by people who have suffered burns. But it's not often you come across substantial projects to provide people with alternatives to cooking on open fires, using mainly wood or charcoal.

Burning wood and charcoal accounts for a very large proportion of the carbon emissions from developing countries. Forests are fast disappearing and wood is getting more expensive and less viable as a fuel source. The use of wood and charcoal is part of a massive environemntal disaster. There are cheaper alternatives, such as solar cooking, biogas and the use of fuel briquettes made from combustible materials.

There is a lot to be gained from not burning wood and charcoal. There are the environmental benefits and safety benefits to consider. Also, people in close proximity to wood and charcoal cookers suffer from respiratory problems, one of the top killers in developing countries. Alternative fuels are cheaper, even free. And their use can reduce the time and effort taken to collect wood and produce charcoal.

But rather than see aid money go into proejcts that have these multiple advantages, we continue to direct it to big disasters. The children that suffer terrible burns, that we wish to see treated, shouldn't have to suffer these burns in the first place. The plastic and reconstructive surgeons should be concentrating on people who are not suffering from preventable injuries.

Similarly, money for surgeons and health resources is spent on reconstructing the faces of children affected by noma, which affects children suffering from malnutrition. Food security and proper nutrition would prevent many other illnesses and health conditions, in addition to noma, and would also reduce deaths, especially among infants and young people. Those who don't die from illnesses arising from insufficient food and nutrition still suffer stunted growth and retarded mental development. These are all avoidable.

The current debate about land grabbing in developing countries, where greedy multinationals are buying up huge tracts of land to grow food for rich countries, is an idle exercise if it does not go any way towards reducing this phenomenon substantially. By the time this land has been ravaged by industrial scale farming and contaminated by genetically modified organisms, it will be too late. What is the point knowing now what the consequences will be if we are not going to do anything about it?

Much of the land being grabbed is destined for biofuel production. The ridiculousness of starving people producing crops to fuel the cars of well fed people, far away, seems to be lost on us. We, the people benefitting from the increasing impoverishment of the poor, may be willing to see our governments giving large sums of aid money to starving people in the future, but we don't seem to want to do anything to prevent the circumstances that will eventually leave people starving.

Land grabbing, especially for biofuel production, results in food, water and other vital resources being exported from poor countries to rich countries. If we prevent the land grabbing now, we won't have to send aid money later to the disaster we are so busy creating.

Will We Prevent the Next Genocide?

The land grabbing orgy currently taking place in developing countries is a lot more serious than I thought. There are some countries buying up or leasing land but the biggest buyers are actually corporations. Corporations have amply demonstrated in the past that they don't care anything for the lives or livelihoods of people, they only care about maximizing profits for their shareholders and other interested parties.

In addition to grabbing land and denying millions of subsistence farmers their only means of survival, this trend is part of what has been driving up the price of food, especially staple foods. These corporations can also indulge in some practices that would be more difficult or expensive or perhaps even totally illegal in other countries. For example, land in developing countries is seen as ideal for biofuel crops. It's also seen as a good place to grow genetically modified crops that have not been given the go ahead in other countries.

Everyone feels the effects of rising food prices, of course. But for people who were barely able to afford enough food to eat a couple of years ago, the rush to buy up or otherwise occupy land in developing countries will push many people well below the threshold of having enough food, however lacking in nutritional value, just to survive.

Developing countries are also presently experiencing severe water shortages. Rich countries growing their food in developing countries means that they are effectively exporting huge quantities of water from those who have least to those who have most.

Corporate nobs may talk of 'win-win' situations, or even 'solving world hunger' but it is only people who are now rich who have any chance of winning anything and those who are now poor who face starvation. There is nothing in this for development, it is purely motivated by the need to make big profits. In addition, land and water supplies will be contaminated by the large scale agricultural practices which are absolutely necessary for this sort of investment to be really profitable.

I realise that those driven purely by profit are not going to be interested in these questions: but what will people now on the brink of starvation do once they have been thrown off their land? And what will those now barely able to afford basic foods do when the price has gone just that little bit too high? What will the rest of the world do when most of the land and water that have been supplying them with food are contaminated to the extent that they are no longer productive?

Headline Grabbers and Land Grabbers

It's been a couple of years now since Bob Geldof made his injudicious pronouncements about biofuels. He should have known better and given the matter some thought. A little research wouldn't have done any harm either. Scepticism about biofuels didn't just appear recently. The environmentalist George Monbiot argued very cogently against biofuels nearly five years ago and has written many more articles on the subject since then.

But now the issue of land grabbing is being discussed more frequently and the part that biofuel production plays in land grabbing is clearly significant. Many of the claims about biofuel crops, such as jatropha, being productive even in marginal lands, turns out to be lies. Biofuel crops can be either non-food crops or food crops that are just not being used for human consumption but they all need good land and good growing conditions. So in the Tana River basin in the East of Kenya, sugar is being grown on an industrial scale in an area of great ecological importance while millions in the country starve. There is even a shortage of sugar in some areas!

Food prices have been rising for some time but producers of biofuels refuse to accept any responsibility for this trend. Good land is also in short supply here and in other developing countries. And many areas are facing drought, so growing crops that are subsequently used for biofuel production means the country is effectively exporting much of its scarce water supplies as well. It's not even as if poor Kenyans are benefiting from this, either. Many small farmers are displaced by the biofuel growers, who are all large-scale operators or connected with large-scale operators. They use factory scale production methods that require very few employees. People who formerly owned or farmed the grabbed land have either been bought off for a pittance or squeezed out some other way.

Governments of developing countries usually connive with the various multinationals and rich countries who are looking for cheap land. They are of little help when it comes to protecting ecologically important areas from being destroyed. And they seem happy to allow overuse of destructive artificial fertilizers as long as that gives big landowners and users increased crops, at least temporarily.

This land is also being destroyed because biodiversity is wiped out by large scale production. In the near future this land will simply be useless. If biofuels don't take off, the areas will probably be abandoned, as some operations already have been. And even when these multinationals and other parties use the huge tracts of land they 'purchase' for food production, it is produced for export, with bugger all in taxes or wages or anything else going to the developing countries. It's hard to estimate the numbers of people who have been displaced, dispossessed and otherwise abused by land grabbing, biofuel production and food production that is exclusively produced for export to rich countries.

Most farmers in developing countries are small farmers. They have never made a decent living from contributing small amounts of cash crops to big operators, and they never will. They need to concentrate on producing food for themselves, their families and the local market. People such as Geldof, with little or no knowledge of the conditions under which people in developing countries live, should do some research. The man has tens of millions of dollars, he could even afford to pay someone to do the research for him. I hope in the future he will admit his mistake and campaign against land grabbing in all its forms and especially against biofuel production.

Geldof and other 'philanthropists' may well boast about all the money they have raised for the developing world but they seem to have little idea of how much is being extracted from these countries. The money they claim to raise is puny compared to the amounts of money being extracted by food companies, biofuel producers, mining operations, pharmaceutical companies, healthcare companies, textile companies, sweat shops (or whatever they are now called) and just about any multinational you can name.

Instead of ranting on about things they don't understand, these people could try concentrating on some of the areas where vast amounts of wealth are stolen from developing countries by multinationals, rich governments and even some of the very people who think of themselves as philanthropists. It's time for some development by omission: development through reducing the exploitation of developing countries by the rich.

Leaders Nail their Colours to the Mau Forest

The Kenyan Government is to release the identities of some of the people involved in land grabbing in the Mau Forest. People may be shocked to hear that some of those involved were business leaders, political leaders and the Catholic church.

Of course, they may not be shocked. They may simply shrug their shoulders, because business, political and religious leaders have always been involved in the filthiest of excesses. There's never been much the electorate could do about that, except to shrug their shoulders.

Also implicated in the deals were former president Daniel Moi (it would be surprising if he were not involved in such a lucrative deal) and various other politicians, wealthy people and big businesses.

The amounts of land being discussed are only a fraction of the area of land that has been grabbed and if this is to be a typical story, the grabbers will be mainly wealthier people and organizations rather than poor people who have few other options for survival.

And just to make matters worse, Raila Odinga has tried to give the whole affair a tribal angle. Perhaps he's starting the next election campaign early.

Land Grabbers and the Pimps that Supply them

I'm trying to figure out if the Kenyan government is peopled by idiots or if they have genocidal tendencies. Perhaps both are true of them. Millions of Kenyans are facing food shortages, water shortages and all the longer term consequences that go with these catastrophes. Perhaps as many as one third of the population, maybe even more, do not have enough to eat or drink and they do not have the means to purchase enough food or drink for themselves or their dependents.

So what do the Kenyan government do? They lease a huge piece of land, said to be 40,000 hectares, to the Qatari government so they can grow food crops for Qataris. This is good fertile land; as to how many Kenyans will be displaced, with or without compensation, in order to accommodate the food security of a population that is neither starving nor poor, we are not told.

So, not only is the government leasing land where they could be growing food for Kenyans, but the industrial scale agricultural production that will be employed by the Qataris will require as much water as the area can provide, perhaps more. The two things, food and water, the lack of which is threatening the health and probably the lives of so many Kenyans, are being handed over to a country that should be well able to find an alternative solution for their own problems.

What is Kenya getting in return? A 2.5 billion dollar port in Lamu. The port in Mombasa is not even working to full capacity, the infrastructure surrounding it is in pieces but the Qatari government is offering a brand new port in Lamu. Lamu and the Tana River, where the industrial scale agriculture will take place, are areas of great natural beauty. They are also areas of great ecological importance. It seems hard to believe that a proper assessment has been made of the needs of Kenya's people and the impact that these two major projects will have.

If you look at the Tana River area and the island of Lamu on a map of Kenya you will notice how few roads there are in this region. Travelling overland from other parts of Kenya involves circuitous routes. Will the Qatari government funds also stretch to roads connecting the region to the rest of the country? It seems unlikely. But once these projects are underway, there may not be many reasons left to go to the areas anyway.

Already in the Tana River area, various countries lease land to grow things like sugar cane, to be used as a biofuel. These other countries are not even worried about producing food on Kenyan land, they just need something to stick in their car. Suddenly, people all over the world are 'helping Africans to develop their agricultural potential'. It's not as if Kenyans even gain anything from such projects. Large scale agricultural production is not labour intensive and most of the people living in these areas have been bought off for a pittance. The claims that significant numbers of jobs will be created are just the usual rubbish.

I don't want to sell Kenyan politicians short; they did appeal to international donors for food relief. I hope these donors will ask how deals like the one with the Qatari government will help alleviate starvation in Kenya. The country doesn't need food relief, it needs to use the assets it has got properly. Leasing them to a country that doesn't need them for an asset that Kenya doesn't need is hardly the answer.

People in the Kenyan government have denied that the deal has gone ahead and say it was only discussed. However, land is already being used in Kenya to produce biofuel crops for other countries, I have met people involved in biofuel crop production. The 40,000 hectare figure above is dwarfed by some of the other deals being discussed. Other large scale agricultural projects have been implemented by foreign operators and have caused large scale destruction, displacement of people, loss of livelihoods and other problems that are not reported in the foreign press. Only certain sorts of internal displacement are deemed worthy of note by the foreign press and instances where rich countries benefit can safely be ignored.

Countries other than Kenya have been involved in betraying their people in similar ways, Tanzania, Madagascar, Ethiopia, Sudan, Ghana and Mali, for example. No doubt, the respective political situations in some of those countries make it pretty easy to get land at knock down prices. And Qatar is not the only country to profit from such betrayal, the list also includes other Gulf States, the US, China and South Korea.

There are several questions that governments and others involved in such deals do not address. When large scale agricultural production obviates the need to employ most of the people who live in an area sold or leased out, where are these unemployed and landless people supposed to go? Cities already have far more people than they have housing, infrastructure, water, sanitation or food for. Rural unemployment in other areas is also very high and most people depend on some way of subsisting rather than having formal jobs. Where will they go and what will they do?

When these other countries have used up their 5 to 25 year lease, what will happen with the land then? Presumably it will be pretty useless. The ecologies of the areas being leased will have been destroyed, water tables will have been lowered, soil will have been leeched, both soil and water will have been poisoned by fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides and other pollutants. Unless it is redeveloped for some other purpose, it will be useless. Right now, areas like Lamu attract a lot of tourists (when the civil disturbances are not too numerous) but there will be little attractive about these places once the factory farmers have done their work.

It sounds as if Kenyans could end up with even less than they have now and for many, that's not a lot.