Farewell!

It's come to the end of the module, and the blog... so I thought I could take this opportunity to pause and reflect on the whole process

Throughout the blog I grappled with competing visions for "development". This threw up serious and difficult questions to answer. Opting for the less compromising view of development, one where there is an absolute commitment to always reduce inequalities, also carried real risk. In the UK and most other developed countries, there are plenty of inequalities, and every day we engage with institutions and practices that are complicit in them. The NHS is not perfectly equal and London is not particularly sustainable, but surely we would not give either of those up? It is not then acceptable to hold the continent of Africa to such a standard that in the hopes for idyllic development, any improvement of circumstance, if at all flawed, is rejected.

When approaching the question of development in this way, an absolute resolve to not compromise becomes very uncomfortable. When accepting a degree of compromise, land acquisition deals and Green Revolutions become far more palatable. The arguments put forward by the literature against land acquisitions fail to stand up to the "Would I accept the compromise?" test. That is not to say that I agree to wholesale selling off of land in Africa to the highest bidder, but rather that a land acquisition deal, even one that displaces land users and has potentially unsustainable farming plans, can present an opportunity for net positive outcomes. Those positive outcomes however would be reliant on significant conditions and safeguards from the host nation - whether countries have the political strength to pull that off is yet to be seen. That setup however would still likely sustain, if not increase inequalities of income; whether that can still be called development, or whether "progress" is better, is down to individual preference.

On the question of sustainable farming, I am doubtful that there is a current, scalable model. From examples around the world, farming has consistently relied on a mix of subsidies, over cultivation and/or poor returns for farmers. Either one of those three conditions precludes a sustainable solution. If we accept that there is currently no model for agriculture that is sustainable and could feed Africa and beyond, then we must accept an unsustainable setup, and expect innovation to improve the situation going into the future.

I remain a fan of the big policies and doubtful of the chances of small, grassroots schemes being successful. Concepts such as IRBM have good intentions, but I'd contend that they are not viable approaches for large-scale development/progress. Even the success of the Green Revolution would not ensure the use of the IRBM framework. Of course, as Africa continues to develop, that all may change. Writing this blog has made it clear just how difficult it is to judge right and wrong and success and failure on the national and international level.

Hopefully you've enjoyed reading this blog, and if you'd like to leave a comment... please do - I'll still be around to reply!

Exploited - the big and the small

Many of the pressures, for farmers and the environment, exist in smallholder and agri-industrial scenarios alike. Last week's post on Panjab revealed the challenges faced in a smallholder setting. Whilst some of the challenges surrounding large scale land acquisitions have previously been discussed, De Schutter's (2011) exploration of acquisitions shows how similar the land ownership problems can be to smallholder settings.

Land deals, even when leasing, carry a considerable opportunity cost. By developing land in the vision of corporations, driven by shareholder pressures and strategies drawn up by faraway executives, poverty-reduction and responsible consumption of resources are not prioritised. Large-scale, agri-industrial developments are not necessarily the "progress" that communities and regions require. The binding contracts of these deals may also restrict political visions of future governments, introducing inflexibility that harms poverty reduction measures and sustainable water use.

Land deals may also facilitate the development of a market for land rights - and by proxy, water rights. 'Small farmers face structural disadvantages in the land market'; as prices for land increase, the small farmers are priced out of the market, and their primary source of credit are high-interest rate local money lenders. Land titling would see the exploitation of the small farmers, with their insecure and uncodified land claims. Despite this, multilateral organisations continue to call for land titling (Greco, 2013), as it makes foreign investment (and potentially removing land users from their land) much easier.

The exploitation of farmers is likely to be an ever-present threat regardless of whether it is small-scale farming, industrial farming or something in between. If there are individuals/organisations prepared to stretch resources further for greater returns, it is difficult to imagine that others would not follow suit (willingly or not). Strict state controls of resource usage are the only viable solution to ensure a free-for-all does not occur. This would however collaboration across Africa, or else businesses could easily move elsewhere, leaving farmers stranded.

Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa

Firstly, I hope you all had a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

On the back of my last post on Panjab, I thought this would be a nice video to post.

The positivity in the video is certainly infectious - it's tough not to get swept away by the promise of it all!

What stands out to me the most is the focus on tangible results, even with the simplest of innovations (like a standard mobile phone!). It's both encouraging and empowering

Panjab - lessons to be learnt

The state of Panjab, in Northern India, experienced a period of intense agricultural modernisation, for many years it was a success story of the Green Revolution. Panjab's agricultural scene is dominated by primarily small scale farmers, having not experienced the large scale land acquisitions that Africa faces. In recent decades however, the Green Revolution of Panjab has faced considerable backlash on several fronts: high levels of indebtedness, deterioration of water supply, rapidly lowering water table and soil degradation to name a few. The problems being experienced in Panjab could help guide mitigation strategies in Africa, or at the very least prepare farmers for the possible consequences of the Green Revolution.

The issues facing Panjab are legion. They cannot all be listed here, but the following provide a snapshot of what Panjab has been experiencing.

Owing to the existence of a land-owning caste in Panjab, land titling has been established, in some form, for a long time. This helped to facilitate the introduction of the Green Revolution, as land titling is encouraged to make countries more attractive to foreign investment (De Schutter, 2011). Panjabi farmers also have considerable access to credit, and routinely leverage their land to obtain it. However, they typically receive unfavourable terms and may still be forced to rely on non-institutional sources of credit (local lenders). The use of land for debt-financing by farmers has been identified as a serious problem in Panjab (Singh et al., 2014), with the consequences going so far as farmers committing suicide. Institutions such as the World Bank espouse the idea that a land market would see land reallocated to those most in need of it or who can make best use of it - this idea is naive. Land is and will be allocated to those with the greatest access to capital. A commercialising of the access to land and water is and has been to the detriment of traditional communities and livelihoods.

The ecology and personal health of farmers have also greatly suffered, as Vandana Shiva details in 'The Violence of the Green Revolution: Third World Agriculture, Ecology, and Politics' (2016). The intense use of fertilisers and pesticides, without the proper safety equipment, has seen significant leaching into water sources, including the groundwater reserves that are heavily relied upon for irrigation. The increase in toxicity also poses serious health concerns for humans and livestock, with dangerously elevated levels of fluorine, boron, selenium and aluminium (Rahman, 2015).

Conflicts over water are common, as demand continues to outstrip supply. The construction of dams has also been required in order to sustain water levels for irrigation, with such infrastructure potentially necessary in a "greened" Africa.

Pressures from loan repayments, increasing costs of living and low value of crops drive excessive cultivation of the land and over abstraction. The demand for fertile land for agriculture has perversely resulted in rapid land degradation, with 'land scarcity' accompanying the water scarcity.

The Green Revolution in Panjab has forced intense competition. Despite the lack of land acquisitions, Panjabi farming has still resulted in intense and unsustainable practices. Many of the attributes of the Green Revolution in Africa have helped to drive the situation in Panjab - access to credit, access to better farming technology, better seeds, increased farm yields. It follows therefore that we should avoid fetishizing smallholder farming as some sort of impermeable barrier to exploitation.

If more can be grown, more must be grown - this idea could very well transpire throughout Africa. If it cannot realistically be mitigated against, then Africans must decide whether it is an acceptable potential consequence.

Is Agriculture an Acceptable Platform for Development?

Irrigated land in Africa still only accounts for 6% of total cultivated land. The Green Revolution would look to change that, and it has steadily developed increasing support, especially within Africa itself. This gives it the required political momentum, but does not guarantee that it will be beneficial for most Africans, and nor does it guarantee that African nations will resist opportunities for even greater intensification. Indeed, there are already countries in Africa experiencing an intensification in agriculture.

The Green Revolution proposes transforming smallholder agriculture with improved technologies, better seeds, increased access to credit etc. The vision is for an African-centric, African-led initiative that guides agriculture in Africa. By removing foreign, for-profit, large scale actors that "take over" land, the Green Revolution attempts to better the chances of sustainable development. As the people working on and living the land are also the ones that make the decisions for it. This may sound delightfully idyllic, but a target should be.

This article from the Harvard Business Review is optimistic of the opportunities to come. Highlighting the 'inclusive growth' of current agricultural development in Africa, the article notes that the African Development Bank has grown to surpass the World Bank in 2008 as the biggest lender to Africa. The inclusive growth, a key point of the African Green Revolution video I posted, would see far greater returns for Africa than a simple intensification of agriculture without an overarching plan for the resultant revenue and goods. This would establish a better balance of returns for African countries and people than has been the case in previous decades (as discussed in previous posts).

Africa presents key issues that were not necessarily present in the same way in previous Green Revolutions however. Donald Larson of the World Bank contends that Africa presents a far more heterogeneous agricultural profile than Asia, where there were only two principle crops - rice and wheat. This complexity would undoubtedly make it harder to coordinate agricultural practices and development. Further, the groundwater profile of Africa is incomplete (MacDonald et al., 2013), and this may limit the scale or the sustainability of intensive agriculture.

In parts of Northern Africa, the groundwater dates back thousands of years, and so abstraction of water from those aquifers should be treated more akin to 'mining' the fossil water. Other parts of Africa however have decadal recharge timescales, and can be more easily monitored to track (over)abstraction. However, as Africa's population continues to increase, and urbanisation and increased living standards inevitably demand more water, the loss of large amounts of groundwater to intensive agriculture may present a serious problem. These groundwater reserves can act as 'buffers' against climatic variance (Calow et al., 2010), which is only expected to increase: and so increased stress on groundwater reserves would carry greater risk of water shortages, whilst perversely fuelling greater growth and thus demand.

Agriculture around the world is supported by state intervention, from EU and US subsidies to minimum support prices in India. There is consistent pressure to drive prices down, and as the purchasers of this food can pick from nations around the world, each country reliant on agriculture is forced to keep prices aggressively low. Kaplinsky (2005) highlights these 'declining terms of trade' for producers in the global supply chain. Africa is constantly picked out as an area of "under utilisation", a "final frontier" for agriculture. Once/If agriculture is intensified on a large scale across Africa, and the boom is over, might businesses flee before African economies have the chance to move on from agriculture?

There are many other risks and questions raised when allowing so much of the African economy to be linked to the Green Revolution. The manufacturing, services and technology sectors are all viewed in higher regard (for good reason) than agriculture. Would establishing Africa as the premier agricultural hub do much to elevate Africa to the levels of developing and developed parts of the world? Does this continue to hold Africa on the lower rungs of the global economy? This is touted as the necessary future of agriculture; could Africa adopt such an advanced image of agriculture with smallholder farmers, and if so, could it retain the necessary wealth to sustain inclusive growth, or would this hand power back to the developed nations? All of these questions require speculation, and there is little data, quantitative or qualitative, to make such predictions about the future.

Agriculture is by no means risk-free, but nor does it need to be. Intensive farming has obvious connotations of unsustainable farming, but the Green Revolution for Africa proposes a model where smallholder farmers are enabled and empowered. There is not the forced, intense pressure of intensive farming, with necessary overuse of water reserves. And if the gains from the Green Revolution can be internalised, it would help to provide some shelter to the continent from excessive foreign influence. There is indeed a vision of inclusive development and responsible water management that can be met by agriculture. 

Next week I'll be looking at an example of smallholder agriculture from Panjab. It provides an example of an agrarian economy that already has the land titling that is to be expected in Africa in the future.

Green Economy

I was suggested a book by Professor Taylor, the Handbook of Land and Water Grabs in Africa, you may have noticed I drew on sources from that book in my previous posts. I thoroughly recommend it for those interested in land acquisitions and, crucially, its implications for water security in Africa. There is one chapter in particular that has caught my interest, and it ties in well to the recent discussions on this blog: Land and water grabs and the green economy, by Martin Keulertz.

Keulertz argues that fundamentally the nature of current economic philosophy is not geared towards a green economy - that being the system of economic activities that result in improved human well-being over the long term without exposing future generations to significant environmental risks. Keulertz applies the theory of Kondratiev Waves (referred to as Kondratieff economic cycle theory in the chapter), claiming that we are in a current period of creative destruction, where excess and slow-moving companies are outpaced by innovation. With the view that neoliberal practises will mismanage water resources and force a change in paradigm, a green economy will be established where land rights may be properly respected and water properly managed.

I'd argue however that it presents an overly simplistic assessment of what is happening, and rather wishful in its hopes for the future. Whilst there may be changes in the neoliberal order, there is nothing to genuinely suggest that a green economy will be established. A green economy fundamentally requires a sustainable and long-term outlook, which empowers all actors to ensure well-being is improved. Such a shift in power, away from the economic and political elites, would require seismic change. Even if renewable energy becomes the norm and we reduce plastic consumption etc., there is nothing to suggest that such movements would begin to spread wealth away from banks, institutional investors (including pension funds) and the elite. There is little to suggest that companies will write-off investments and risk losing their shareholders to give the farmers of Africa a better deal with sustainable farming. The creative destruction that is referred to has been seen countless times, with the shift from CDs, to MP3 players to now streaming being a good example (Warf, 2013). But these instances of innovation have, ultimately, been guided (and funded) by the drive for more profit.

Once the premise of a change in the global order is accepted, the arguments put forth can be accepted and a green economy appears to be a reality - a rather pleasant one. But the premise does not stand, it merely bears the hallmarks of the countless theories that have proposed the imminent collapse of capitalism and the ushering in of a fairer world. I propose that it is more positive, and better for those in need, to deal with the reality of power imbalances and privileges at hand. I agree with Keulertz that there will come a point when decisions must be made that better manage water, but that does not mean they will necessarily conform to the ideals of the green economy, which sets a particularly high bar.


In my next post, I will move further from the topic of Land Acquisitions, and begin exploring agriculture, particularly in the context of managing water resources, and African position on the global political stage. 

Are the Land Acquisitions all about Water?

Much of the literature on Land Acquisitions have focused on the link to water, asserting that these acquisitions are intended to secure water for the investor-nation. Hall (2011: 194) states that 'China, India, South Korea and the Gulf States are among those at the forefront of this agricultural expansion, as they seek to produce food overseas for their growing populations'. These land deals are claimed to facilitate a virtual water trade, as countries try to manage their water consumption through outsourcing.

However, I came across this relatively recent study by Breu et al. (2016) which contends that in many cases, the investor countries engage in agricultural practises abroad that are less intensive than their domestic crop production. They also found that net global water use decreases when these land acquisitions are used. Conversely, the paper also notes that certain key investors, such as the US and Saudi Arabia (the only one of the Gulf states that shows this trait), are indeed 'externalising crop water consumption' through these land acquisitions. Crucially, the study found that water use intensity did increase in the host countries.

Whilst the study states that these findings suggest water is not always the key determinant behind land acquisitions, the fact that water use intensity was found to increase in the host nations still establishes the potentially negative consequences of land acquisitions. On a global scale, it may be a smart use of water resources, but on the African country scale, it does not necessarily bode well for development.