You can trust neither the rainy season sky nor babies’ bottoms. [Ethiopia] 

Ethiopians have been farming for millennia. They have also faced severe food shortages for about as long. Reliance on natural rainfall for farming is at times similar to gambling in a casino – except with literally deadly consequences when one loses. This begs the question of why these people who have historically innovated in all manners of technology have not been able to simply copy modern agricultural methods from others to achieve food security in recent times. 

If you haven’t heard already they are about to do so. Well sort of; they are going to start by using their land and labor to achieve food security for the Saudi’s first. They are not alone. Since 2004, 2.5 million hectares of African land has been snapped up by the wealthy of our world. That is equivalent to 138 farms the size of the largest one in the world located in north western Canada. The pace of land acquisition is accelerating in 2009 and the scramble is on. But who are the combatants and what do they really want? 

In a community of beggars, stealing and not begging, is considered a crime. [Ghana] 

Kofi Annan has a new job. He is leading AGRA, The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa. He has recently used that pulpit to denounce the African land grab by urging consultation with small farmers before African governments sign deals that may increase poverty. On its shiny website AGRA claims to be an ‘African led partnership to help millions of small scale farmers lift themselves out of poverty and hunger’. So his position is logical and virtuous. But before embarking on a lifelong commitment to the project it is only wise for us to investigate the essence of AGRA. 

Literally speaking, an African led partnership means an African lead – Kofi – with his partners – the Rockefellers and the Gates [through their point man Robert Horsch of Monsanto]. The privatization of Africa’s food security program in the care of two rich families and their African face wouldn’t be so shocking if the history of such programs was promising. It is true that the Rockefellers, through the first green revolution, discovered the key ingredients to solving the ‘threat’ of independent agricultural development by newer poor nations after World War II. They did this by tying Mexico then India to large agro-chemical industries through the introduction of intensive fertilizer/pesticide based farming, thereby reducing food shortage and thus the political upheaval that so often ends in such ‘undesirable’ agro policy independence. 

At that time the Rockefellers saw little need to do this in Africa because the threat of ‘real’ independence in the continent was so remote. Eventually however a more potent tool was to be developed for Africa by catering to the output end of the industry. Modern Agro-Industry has two arms that represent the input and output ends of food production – Agro-chemical [DuPonts and Monsantos] and Agro-distribution [Cargills and ADMs]. A kindly Minnesotan by the name of Hubert Humphrey had refurbished a policy framework called public Law 480 [he renamed it to Food for Peace] to in Eisenhower’s words “…lay the basis for a permanent expansion of exports of agricultural products…”. The use of Titles 2 and 3 of this policy eventually helped cut African agricultural output and kill any chance of domestic revival. If Mexico and India were relegated to environmentally unsustainable food security in their green revolutions, Africa was literally starved and reduced to begging by permanent food aid. 

Control oil and you control nations; control food and you control people. [H. Kissinger] 

Kissinger, who was patronized to eternal power by Nelson Rockefeller, was insightful enough to know that power in the future lay not in nuclear bombs but in control of the global food supply. In the face of a growing population, rising consumption and collapsing nations, his prediction is being realized. With stagnating yield, the only possible future appears to be requisition of more land for cultivation and/or genetically modified miracle seeds. The latter has shown little promise in raising yield but great promise in tightening control of seeds by a few corporations. The prior on the other hand is in short supply but viable. The only cultivable lands left fallow are in the Amazon, Africa and Eastern Europe. And of these only Africa appears to have the potential for easy access with little political and economic cost for developers. Therefore controlling African lands and agriculture is of utmost importance to any power that aspires to control developing regions. 

But there is another force at play here. The 20th century has been brutal to aristocracy – the form of governance where a select few control resources and rule a majority with hereditary entitlement. Economic growth, democracy and wars played havoc with it in literally every corner of the world. With unprecedented concentration of wealth today, the tendency to secure aristocratic rule has come back with a vengeance. With commodity and financial asset values in unpredictable flux, land is left as the only viable method of transferring wealth. Of course this has always been the sole secure method of wealth retention. The only nation to escape the last century with its aristocracy somewhat intact, Great Britain, never really allowed non-aristocrats to acquire land in its territory. Arab aristocrats in the gulf have abandoned their nomadic ways and are following this principle by gobbling up African land. 

A lion does not eat its own cubs. [Kenya] 

Obama has come down on the side of western aristocracy and agro business. His recent declaration [through Carson] that his primary African policy focus would be on Agricultural expansion will bring much state support to the AGRA initiative and other similar projects. Violent opposition by peasants will be crashed by AFRICOM. With such a consensus developed, the mainstream western media has recently ratcheted up the criticism of the African land grab by the lesser aristocrats of the East. But achieving success in this regard will not be easy. The recent financial crisis has exposed the fragility of the global food markets and supply chain. With food price inflation out of control, most food producers simply refused to export their grain without first quieting their hungry populations. And so the Arabs who live on deserts panicked. With all their oil and money in place, they were coming close to starving. Thus they will continue to buy African land. 

With all these powerful strategic combatant interests at play pitfalls for Africa’s food production future are many. First and foremost, the memory of agriculture based colonialism is still fresh in eastern and southern Africa’s memory. For instance, Madagascar’s recent attempt to lease half its arable land to South Korea’s Daewoo created great turmoil until the deal was destroyed. Zimbabwe, Kenya, South Africa and Namibia are other excellent examples of political change that can result from semi-colonial land policies. The west is worried about a collapse of its agricultural policy in Africa as a result of the upheaval that could result from the land grab by the East. This explains the recent UN screams in opposition to the land deals, while the UN itself supported [or sat by] three decades of African agricultural collapse. 

Moreover, the irony of Saudis investing 100 million dollars to raise wheat, barley and rice in Ethiopia – and repatriate the whole production without paying a cent in tax – while the WFP spends 116 million dollars to buy [probably western subsidized] food aid for Ethiopia between 2007 and 2011 is not lost on those who care. Only the worst form of cynical reasoning can allow acceptance of this arrangement as ‘normal’ or ‘encouraging’. The global food supply regime has essentially made the possibility of sustainable small scale farming based on organic input impossible for Ethiopian farmers. They either have to farm flowers and grains for others, or wait for food handouts. Kofi Annan’s goal “…to help millions of small scale farmers lift themselves out of poverty and hunger…” is unlikely to materialize with this formula. He will continue to be what Lenin calls a ‘useful fool’ for the powerful of our world. 

Do not laugh at a snake because it walks on its belly. [South Africa] 

While the Gates, Sauds and Woo-Jungs compete for global supremacy, a billion Africans can not be considered collateral damage. Africans have the diversity and ingenuity to solve their own food supply debacle. Most elites in Africa say the same thing but then add that outside help is necessary to achieve this. That is the fallacy of Africa’s managers who have mistaken themselves for African leaders. They are in power because they manage seed, fertilizer and pesticide supply chains and not because they have built viable communities that have put them in power. This arrangement is in the process of exploding and can only result in more domestic control of African agriculture. 

Many astute non African observers have realized that African control of African agricultural policy is the only arrangement that will solve the deadly competition that is hurling us in the direction of greater risks. Massive mono-crop plantations with toxic effluents, combined with extreme urban poverty are not worth striving for. Africans invented farming and have the capacity to define what the future of sustainable farming should be. Modern slavery used Africans not because they were physically closest to the New World but because only they knew how to farm productively. Similarly modern agro bio-technology is almost exclusively based on copying the bio diversity of African seeds that have been developed and stored in community seed-banks for thousands of years. It is time to give Africans the space for innovation without having to go to war over it.