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Land Grab - A Response
 

This guest blog comes from Tom, a supporter of the Global Poverty Project who works in east Africa on a 'land grab' project, writing in his personal capacity in response to our recent post Land Grab – Problem or Chance at Development.

The term “land grab” might be appropriate from an outsider’s point of view, but when you have immersed yourself in a company the term really has no meaning, nor any truth.

I’m currently working in Africa on one of these “land grab” farms. Yes, they have expatriates working in senior management roles, yes they are selling their produce on the global market, and yes the company is trying to make money. If people are only looking at the situation from the outside, this is all they’ll see.

What they don’t see, or what they might not know, is that before the company acquired this land, the last irrigated crop was in 1982. The amount of land the farmers were farming in 2008 was under 2000 acres, and the local village people had to walk a minimum of 3km to get water. With the current drought here in east Africa, the crop that the farmers were able to harvest did not yield enough to feed them for the long dry period. There are 82,000 locals living on this farm and there already is a shortage of food here.

Since the company has been in Africa, we have cultivated the land for our own farming practices, but we have also delivered water to over 40,000 people who did not have water at their villages, increased the local irrigated farming land to 10,000 acres and outsourced all the labor to local workers.

With the new irrigated land the farmers are able to plant and grow good yielding crops under the guidance of a council that is made up of experts in the agriculture field as well as local farmers. This is also another means of income for the locals that would not otherwise be available.

We have cotton that is being harvested at the moment, and we have employed around 1800-2000 locals per day. This is money that is paid to the locals, and in return spent locally, boosting the fragile economy and providing money for food.

As this project along with the local infrastructure are expanding, there will be more irrigated land that is going to be given back to the local people, more water available to the local villages and more employment opportunities for the locals.

Don’t get me wrong, there are big companies that have bought land here in Africa and who are not farming or trying to improve the local infrastructure, but sitting on the land hoping that there might be some capital gain.

There are locals who see us as taking their land, but the efforts that the company is making to ensure that the locals are well looked after are huge. We balance water ensuring that the locals get water when they need it, and we have put the council together to help improve the farming practices of the locals and ensure that they can sell their crops if it’s a cash crop.

Being able to watch 500 local people sitting on the edge of a new channel bank while water is flowing past their village for the first time in over 25 years gives me a great sense of accomplishment. I see myself as a visitor in their country and have been given an opportunity to be able to help enhance their country, for which I am grateful.
Posted by Tom in Poverty for column Issue Analysis on Dec 26th 2011, 13:09
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