Agrofuels in Africa: African States squeezed between foreign interests and local food sovereignty

With the advent of agrofuel blending mandates in the US and EU, investors from Europe and United States are currently looking to Africa to help sate the global economy's thirst for energy-and driving many African farmers off their land. More than 80 percent of all land allocated for agrofuel production in Africa is located in productive farmlands and forests that would otherwise be used to grow or gather food. The agrofuels boom is simultaneously leading to farmer evictions, raising land prices and driving farmers deeper into poverty.

When confronted with these facts, agrofuel proponents and investors will counter that they are primarily produced on unused "marginal lands." Jatropha is hailed as a miracle plant that can produce fuel oil on parched land, but studies have shown that yields from jatropha are not very high in these soils,[i] which means that while it can be grown in poor soils jatropha growers will seek same the prime agricultural lands used for food crops. Similarly, sugar cane and palm oil plantations do best in prime land for rice production. But even if these crops were grown on "marginal lands" the problem becomes one of definition. Africa is not brimming with unused land, and its characterization as "marginal" or "unused" is far from neutral. Land may be labeled "unused" because it is not currently growing crops, and yet its natural biomass (vegetation) is vital to pastoralists who exploit open grasslands. Pastoralists, subsistence farmers and indigenous peoples have been using ‘marginal' land for generations, but often have no verifiable legal claim.

In addition, the water, energy and nutrient requirements of producing agrofuels are often underestimated. Without large-scale irrigation, argue Schlecht and Buekert in a recent study, it is unlikely that any fuel-crop plantation could be productive on low-fertility ‘wasteland.' The water usage per unit of energy gained is particularly high when one considers the water required for "processing steps such as fermentation and waste removal in ethanol production or evaporative cooling in power plants."[ii] Thus, the "marginal lands" argument masks a number of hidden costs, not least being the escalation of conflicts over land and resources.

It is difficult to imagine how any industrial agrofuels crop can be considered "sustainable" when they require large-scale monocrop plantations. Since 2004, close to 2.5 million hectares have been appropriated by foreign agrofuel investors in Mali, Ghana, Sudan, Ethiopia and Madagascar. By taking these lands out of food production, agrofuels contribute to higher food prices, which are devastating for the poor (especially the urban poor) who spend upwards of 60-80 percent of their income on food. Peasant farmers make up 70% of Africa's workforce, 85% of women depend on agriculture for survival, and small-scale farmers produce most of Africa's food. When these people lose their land, they end up in Africa's ballooning urban centers and outer slums becoming a strain on urban infrastructure and services rather than producing food and other vital goods.

While it is tempting to lay the blame for these land grabs only on the governments who open the doors to these foreign investments, it is important to recognize that the dynamics have been structured by a long history of debt and aid dependence. Throughout Africa in the 1960s and 1970s, post-independence governments pursued top-down development strategies planned and financed by the World Bank. After the 1973 oil crisis, however, cheap loans turned into heavy debt burdens, leaving African states at the mercy of the World Bank's and IMF's "conditions" for further lending. These Structural Adjustment Policies (SAPs) were purportedly aimed at jump starting moribund economies by lowering foreign investment barriers and import tariffs, privatizing national industries, and reducing farmer support mechanisms, among other things. In actuality they opened the doors to what has become a bonanza for Northern corporations and investment capital. Agrofuels are just the latest turn on a lucrative strategy for gaining access to Africa's raw materials.

TANZANIA

Tanzania provides a prime example of the dynamics at work. SAPs have weakened
the Tanzanian economy just as the country is struggling to pay back IMF and World Bank loans, which they inherited from debt crisis in the 1970s (which was precipitated by the US and Europe) and have struggled to pay back ever since. In 2000, the IMF and the World Bank gave $181 million and 291 million, respectively, to the government of Tanzania. The country has been struggling to garner hard currency to pay these (and earlier) loans while pursuing mandated free market reforms. The Tanzania Investment Centre (TIC) has thus opened the doors to mining and petroleum investments. In 2006 a Biofuels Task Force in the Ministry of Energy and Minerals identified a "land bank" of 2.5 million hectares suitable for agrofuel projects. The TIC supported foreign investors with economic incentives, which led to thousands of Tanzanian corn and rice farmers being evicted from fertile, arable land. One Swedish firm was given 400,000 hectares of prime rice growing land to turn into sugar plantations at Wami River in Coast region. A recent news report found that 5,000 farmers across the country, including more than 1,000 rice farmers in Wami Basin and 1,000 rice farmers in the Ruipa, Mtwara region, would be displaced to pave the way for sugar cane and palm oil plantations. The protests from farmers and environmentalists led the government-which claimed to have no knowledge of the proposed displacements-to suspend millions of dollars in foreign investments; a move that is likely to run up against a brick wall at the IMF and the World Bank. Time will tell if these farmers will keep their livelihoods or be forced off their land indefinitely.

Farming accounts for 85% of employment and 60% of the GDP in Tanzania. Land holdings average
0.2 to 2 hectares per household. Structural Adjustments have led the country to auction off these finite agricultural resources as a mechanism to promote growth, threatening local food security, destroying livelihoods, damaging the environment, and pushing up food prices. This is precisely the wrong approach to the problems the country faces. When finite agricultural resources are exhausted on non-food, export commodities like agrofuels the results not only serve to prop up the myth that Africa cannot feed itself; they make matters worse by exacerbating existing agricultural problems, such as soil erosion and deforestation, that will affect future generations of Tanzanians.

Local control of peasant agriculture-including territory, land, grazing, water, seed varieties, livestock breeds, biodiversity and fish populations-is crucial to food sovereignty and stable rural and urban communities in Africa. If international actors are truly interested in helping the poor, they need to strengthen African agriculture by supporting peasant farmers with regulations on global investors, land reforms that keep farmers on their land, and truly sustainable low-input agriculture that puts the future in the hands of African farmers. This is the ground on which Africa must build.

[i]
Rajagopal, D. 2007. Rethinking Current Strategies for Biofuel Production in India. University of California, Berkeley

[ii] Schlecht, E. and A. Buekert. 2009.
The Biofuel Debate - Status Quo and Research Needs to Meet Multiple Goals of Food, Fuel and Ecosystem Services in the Tropics and Subtropics. Journal for Agriculture and Rural Development in the Tropics and Subtropics, Vol. 110, No.
1. 2009.