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Arabica Robusta

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Brazil president defends biofuels - 0 views

news.bbc.co.uk/...7351766.stm

biofuels brazil development food international lula security

shared by Arabica Robusta on 23 Apr 08 - Cached
  • Arabica Robusta on 23 Apr 08
     
    Food prices were going up, he said, because people in developing countries like China, India and Brazil itself were simply eating more as their economic conditions improved.
  • Arabica Robusta on 23 Apr 08
     
    Biofuel as an export crop: Lula says it is no problem
Arabica Robusta

ICTSD * US Attempt to Defund Brazil Cotton Institute May Reignite Trade Tensions - 0 views

ictsd.org/...109159

food security international development agriculture crisis agribusiness foodsecurity biofuels foreign aid

shared by Arabica Robusta on 02 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • The US$147.3 million annual payments were part of an agreement between the two countries that meant to hold Brazil back from imposing US$830 million in WTO-authorised countermeasures.
Arabica Robusta

BRAZIL: Agribusiness Driving Land Concentration - IPS ipsnews.net - 0 views

www.ipsnews.net/news.asp

brazil land corporate exploitation biofuels

shared by Arabica Robusta on 06 Oct 09 - Cached
  • Arabica Robusta on 06 Oct 09
     
    From the census figures by state, analysts observe that in areas like São Paulo, the planting of more sugarcane is associated with a 6.1 percent increase in land concentration compared to the previous census, thanks to incentives for the production of biofuels, like ethanol.\n\nThose responsible for the IBGE survey, presented Sept. 30, said the situation in the state of São Paulo shows that one of the main factors in the concentration of land ownership is the expansion of agribusiness and large monoculture crops for export, such as soybeans and maize.
Arabica Robusta

What's the new global source for fresh, shiny produce? Famine-ridden Ethiopia - 0 views

farmlandgrab.org/14917

food security international development crisis agriculture agribusiness foodsecurity ethiopia middle east

shared by Arabica Robusta on 21 Aug 10 - Cached
  • Every day, a workforce of 1,000 locals pick, pack and load hundreds of tons of fresh produce onto waiting trucks, including 30 tons of tomatoes alone. After reaching the capital, Addis Ababa, the produce is flown to a handful of Middle Eastern cities, entirely bypassing Ethiopia, one of the hungriest places on the planet. The trip from vine to store shelf takes less than 24 hours. It’s the latest project by Saudi oil and mining billionaire, Sheikh Mohammed Al Amoudi. And it may be the future of farming.
  • The controversial trend has been dubbed “outsourcing’s third wave”—following manufacturing and information technology (IT) in the ’80s and ’90s. The high cost of installing irrigation systems, and importing fertilizers, combines and tractors is no deterrent. Defenders of the new projects say they’re bringing desperately needed new technologies, seeds and investment to Africa. But opponents see the trend as a “land grab” that is forcing poor farmers off their land, and benefiting only the governments inking the deals.
  • The new scramble for Africa was triggered by a convergence of events: surging demand for biofuels, rising consumption patterns in China and India and the 2008 global food crisis, when the price of corn and wheat tripled, almost overnight. Responding to sudden hyperinflation, rioting and panic buying, at least 30 countries, including Argentina, Vietnam, Brazil, Cambodia and India, banned or sharply reduced food exports. In short order, Japan and South Korea, who import 70 per cent of their grains, joined a parade of countries turning to Africa to lock in means of production beyond their borders.
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  • When it emerged that Daewoo, the South Korean giant, had signed a 99-year lease granting it close to half of Madagascar’s arable land, protests broke out in Antananarivo, the country’s capital, eventually sinking both the deal, and the president.
  • as Heilberg told the German magazine Der Spiegel after closing the deal in Darfur, “When food becomes scarce, the investor needs a weak state that does not force him to abide by any rules.” Sudan, a dictatorship ranked among the five most corrupt countries on the planet, certainly qualifies. Heilberg’s deal was approved by the deputy commander of Sudan’s People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), the official army of semi-autonomous southern Sudan. “This is Africa,” he recently told Rolling Stone. “The whole place is like one big mafia. I’m like a mafia head. That’s the way it works.”
  • Some African intellectuals bridle at Western criticism of the play on Africa. “They’re here because we want them here,” says Teshome Gabre-Mariam, one of Ethiopia’s top lawyers. “We can’t ignore the development potential of this venture. We have everything to gain, nothing to lose.”
  • Arabica Robusta on 21 Aug 10
     
    Every day, a workforce of 1,000 locals pick, pack and load hundreds of tons of fresh produce onto waiting trucks, including 30 tons of tomatoes alone. After reaching the capital, Addis Ababa, the produce is flown to a handful of Middle Eastern cities, entirely bypassing Ethiopia, one of the hungriest places on the planet. The trip from vine to store shelf takes less than 24 hours. It's the latest project by Saudi oil and mining billionaire, Sheikh Mohammed Al Amoudi. And it may be the future of farming.
Arabica Robusta

Pambazuka - Biofuels and world hunger - 0 views

www.pambazuka.org/...68865

biofuels agribusiness development international agriculture foodsecurity security crisis food pambazuka

shared by Arabica Robusta on 05 Dec 10 - No Cached
  • Biofuels are conservatively estimated to have been responsible for at least 30 per cent of the global food price spike in 2008 that pushed 100 million people into poverty and drove some 30 million more into hunger, according to the report, Meals per gallon, released by the UK charity ActionAid in February 2010 [1]. The number of chronically hungry people now exceeds one billion.
  • If all global biofuels targets are to be met, food prices could rise by up to an additional 76 per cent by 2020 and starve an extra 600 million people.
  • While driving up food prices can create hunger, driving people off the land that they have traditionally cultivated deprives them of the last resort of growing their own food. This is happening all over the developing world. In Mozambique, farms are destroyed for industrial biofuels. Elisa Alimone Mongue, mother and farmer said: ‘I don't have a farm, I don't have a garden … the only land I have has been destroyed. We are just suffering with hunger … even if I go to look for another farm, they will just destroy it again.’
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  • Julio Ngoene is fighting to save his community and its way of life. He is the village chief of approximately 100 households of more than 1,000 people. A biofuel company is setting up a project near his village and has taken over 80 per cent of the village farmland without permission, and destroyed the crops. At the beginning of the project, the company promised to resettle the village, but two years later, Julio and the villagers have still heard nothing, and no one in the village has received compensation.
  • There have been warnings against jatropha biodiesel going back several years [3] (Jatropha Biodiesel Fever in India, SiS 36). Jatropha has been hyped as a miracle non-food biofuel crop that would simply grow in marginal areas not suitable for food crops. But there was clear evidence that it would only deliver anywhere near the promised 1,300 litres of oil per ha when grown in fertile land with plenty of water, and that's what companies have set their eyes on.
  • But this year I could not get much because of the trees that have been cut. Now they have destroyed the trees so we have lost a good source of income forever, yet we have not been paid anything in compensation. That is why I confronted the white man at the meeting.’
  • Brazil is the largest industrial biofuel producer in the developing world, where the sugar cane (ethanol) plantation industry is well established. However, working conditions are often poor. Of the one million cane workers, about half are employed as cutters, mostly done by hand, in intense heat for long hours; and a number of deaths have been reported.
  • Arabica Robusta on 05 Dec 10
     
    Biofuels are conservatively estimated to have been responsible for at least 30 per cent of the global food price spike in 2008 that pushed 100 million people into poverty and drove some 30 million more into hunger, according to the report, Meals per gallon, released by the UK charity ActionAid in February 2010 [1]. The number of chronically hungry people now exceeds one billion.
Arabica Robusta

Pambazuka - Successful African alternatives to corporate 'green revolutions' - 0 views

www.pambazuka.org/...71991

food security international development agriculture crisis agribusiness foodsecurity pambazuka biofuels biopiracy

shared by Arabica Robusta on 03 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • AGRA proposes exactly the kind of agriculture the panel of agricultural experts (from South Africa, Nigeria, Uganda, Morocco, Brazil, Mexico, Japan, China and more) rejected: Monoculture of one or two crops with the goal of increasing yields through the high use of fossil fuels, chemicals (fertilisers, pesticides) and biotechnology (patented genetically modified seeds).
  • As the demand for agrofuels seems to be insatiable, global corporations are noticing Africa for its extensive land masses, while not seeing the hungry. Calling Africa the ‘green OPEC’, they assert that 15 countries in Africa have a total combined land area greater than all of India ‘available’ for agrofuel production, not bothering to explain what ‘available land’ means in the context of a food deficit continent.[2]
  • the amount of plant material needed is massive. Lester Brown offers the comparison that the amount of grain required to fill the 90-litre petrol tank of a 4 × 4 vehicle once with maize ethanol could feed one person for a year. The grain it takes to fill the tank every two weeks over a year would feed 26 people.[3]
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  • Exporting crops for overseas consumption while Africans go hungry is a historical pattern all too familiar on the continent. It is certainly not the hope of 21st century African agriculture.
  • Both Namibia and South Africa are moving towards expropriation of land as a necessary means to correct this economic apartheid. Southern Africa is learning from the negative experience of land grabs in Zimbabwe, yet the commodity market approach can be similarly inequitable and destructive of livelihoods.
  • ‘Agroecology [sustainable mixed cropping] is a knowledge-intensive approach. It requires public policies supporting agricultural research and participative extension services. States and donors have a key role to play here. Private companies will not invest time and money in practices that cannot be rewarded by patents and which don’t open markets for chemical products or improved seeds.’[7]
  • There are about 18 recognised farming systems in Africa that can be grouped as a maize-dominated system, a cereal/root crop system, a root crop system and an agro-pastoral millet/sorghum system, all within overall mixed cropping. Part of Africa's food heritage, this genetic wealth offers important contributions towards making Africa a well-nourished continent.
  • Stories of stolen genetic treasures echo across the continent. Like traditional story tellers, when a botanist or agronomist ends his or her account of the latest theft, another joins in to give yet another account, often in voices of anguish and despair.
  • Today, the North American Tuli Association promotes the breed as follows: ‘NATA intends to expand their activities by spreading the benefits of the Tuli cattle to many countries within the Western hemisphere….the Tuli breed can provide the missing link to bridge the gap in cattle genetics, the gap being adaptation to heat and nutritional stress combined with carcass merit.’[10] Neither the government of Zimbabwe nor the foreign cattle associations consulted with the local communities or recognised their contribution in any way. NATA has even usurped the name of ‘tuli.’
  • A major discussion in the process of domesticating farmers' rights will be determining the relationship between individual rights of private property and social rights of farmers.
  • The WTO gives no recognition to social rights, only to private property rights, while the CBD, the ITPGRFA and the AU Model Legislation all recognise the rights of groups (farmers and communities) as equal to those of individuals (persons and corporations).
  • The AU model legislation also directly addresses the issue of biopiracy, such as the Tuli cattle case, by adopting the CBD principle of prior informed consent (PIC)
  • Because the wealth of the existing biodiversity is the basis for the future of agricultural Africa, it is essential that those who care about this wealth, and work toward improving its potential for use, are acknowledged.
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