The ICCO Alliance (IA) members involved in Sustainable Fair Economic Development have formed a Dutch reference group. Issues, trends, positions taken by the IA can be discussed here between IA representatives and knowledgeable members from the Dutch Business sector, the academe and other interested groups or individuals.

 

The function of the group is described in the (MS Word-)document Referentiegroep DREO taakomschrijving 070530.doc

 

External Trends to watch 

 

Landgrabbing 

IFPRI raises the alarm: http://www.ifpri.org/pubs/bp/bp013.asp

(see http://africanagriculture.blogspot.com/search/label/land%20management )

 

Sudan, which has received some of the biggest foreign investments in agriculture in Africa, dismissed notions of the emergence of a new form of colonialism.

Abdeldafi Fadlalla Ali, the Federal Agriculture Commissioner at the Sudanese Ministry of Investment, told IRIN that they always ensured local interests were taken care of in the deals - the produce was sold locally and local people "become the highest beneficiaries".

Sudan, Ali said, has 84 million hectares of arable land, of which only 20 percent is under cultivation, and had registered 75 deals worth $3.5 billion in eight years. Almost $930 million of this was already invested. Eight countries, including Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Egypt, Jordan, China and India are involved.

Ali reasoned that in the face of limited domestic capital, foreign investment seemed to be a "better strategy" to achieve agricultural targets, and expected that produce from the deals would be exported in future.

Millions of Sudanese require food aid, according to the UN. However, Ali claimed food insecurity was more related to transport and marketing than absolute production shortfalls.

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Rwanda recently announced a new programme to identify "unexploited" arable land for foreign investors. On the other hand, the Republic of Congo announced it would lease 10 million hectares of farmland to individual foreign farmers to boost its food security.

 

See also: http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?topic_id=1462&fuseaction=topics.event&event_id=517903

And

http://www.wilsoncenter.org/events/docs/land%20acquisition%20conference%20May%205%final%20-%20compatible.ppt#278,26

http://www.bonaberi.com/ar,cameroun_la_chine_exploite_le_riz,4204.html (french langauge report on 10.000 ha. chinese run farm in Cameroun)

http://www.grain.org/briefings_files/landgrab-2008-en.pdf (briefing by GRAIN, 2008) 

 

Biofuels 

http://ictsd.net/downloads/2009/05/biofuelswebready.pdf

 

Globalization of food and agriculture

http://www.ifpri.org/pubs/ib/ib52.pdf

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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