Le Monde diplomatique | December 2013
Ethiopia's stolen land
Agnès Stienne
"You forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody."
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau (A Dissertation on the Origin and Foundation of the Inequality of Mankind, 1754)
Ethiopia is a fertile country, and yet it suffers from hunger. Most of its population of 90 million - 83% - live in rural areas and make their living mainly from family farming. The most fertile land - around 35% of the total - is suitable for crops or livestock, and 40% of this is used just for crops.
In the mid-1970s, land reform turned all agricultural land into "common property": effectively, it became the property of the state. Peasant farmers' associations could allocate a few acres to families that wanted land to farm, and usufructuary rights to further plots, not exceeding 10 hectares in total (cattle farmers, 12% of the population, were not included in this provision). Ethiopians also had a traditional right of access to common land for pasturing, hunting, fishing and the gathering of medicinal plants.
The 1995 constitution enshrined the status of land as "a common property of the Nations, Nationalities and Peoples of Ethiopia", which meant it could not be sold or exchanged. Crop and cattle farmers were given the right to free land, and protected from eviction. But the following year a measure was adopted in four of Ethiopia's regions - Gambella, Afar, Somali and Benishangul-Gumuz - permitting the renting and leasing of land. (The country's territory is divided into nine regions reflecting the geographical distribution of ethno-linguistic families.)
The peasant farmers did not get the 10 hectares they were entitled to. "In 2000, 87.4% of rural families had access to less than two hectares," says Samuel Gebreselassie of the Future Agricultures Consortium. "Of those families, 64.5% had less than one hectare, and 40.6% had half a hectare or less. And these very small farms are usually divided into two or three plots. Even a medium-sized farm can only generate about 50% of the minimum income a household needs to stay above the poverty line." In Ethiopia, you need at least two hectares to feed a family with four children properly, and more if you want to be able to sell any surplus you produce on the market (1).
Land grabbing
In the early 2000s Ethiopia's prime minister Meles Zenawi gave Ethiopia's Agricultural Investment Support Directorate (AISD), an agency of the agriculture ministry, the task of offering foreign investors the opportunity to rent large tracts of land. According to a detailed study by the Oakland Institute in 2011, at least 3.6m hectares - of which only 2m hectares have identified owners - have already been transferred to investors. This figure is confirmed by Human Rights Watch (HRW), which adds that 2.1m hectares of additional land have been placed at their disposition through the AISD, on highly attractive terms. The rent is derisory and there is plenty of water. Huge tracts have been ringed with high fences and are often guarded by the local police. Fleets of bulldozers are remodelling the landscape for agribusiness, with all that implies: plastic tunnel greenhouses as far as the eye can see, mechanisation and petrochemical inputs.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Bank define "land grabbing" as the acquisition of land with a total area of 1,000 hectares (10 sq km) or more - enough to ensure food self-sufficiency for 500 families. Land grabbing has been accompanied by wholesale resettlement of the local population. In total, 1.5 million people have been affected, including 500,000 in the Afar region, 500,000 in the Somali region, 225,000 in Benishangul-Gumuz and 225,000 in Gambella (2).
In Gambella, where 42% of farmland has been expropriated, local people have been told to go and pasture their livestock elsewhere. A first wave of villagisation started in 2010, aiming to resettle 45,000 Anuak and Nuer households over a three-year period. Communities were to be moved to more modern villages with better infrastructure (schools, health centres, roads, markets), and each household would receive three or four hectares of irrigable land.
All this looked good on paper but turned out to be disastrous. The plans failed to consider the most basic needs of livestock, such as water to drink. And no steps were taken to cover the gap between the time when the old fields and their crops were to be abandoned and the time when the new food-producing plots - after clearing, planting, irrigation and tending - yielded crops. In 2011 HRW observers recorded that, after turning down a development plan proposed by the region's governor, the inhabitants were forcibly evicted by the police and army. Three hundred were killed in the repression; villagers were arbitrarily imprisoned and many women were raped.
We know the rest - there were not enough flour mills and there was a shortage of potable water. Schools had no teachers and health centres were unstaffed because everyone had to work on the building sites to keep the resettlement project going. Even schoolchildren had to participate in the building if they wanted to take their exams. The only compensation families received was plots of land of between 0.25 and 0.5 of a hectare, not particularly fertile, which they had to clear without any tools.
An end to peasant culture
Popular anger has done nothing to change government policy. Among the foreign entities that have bought land are Saudi Star, a Saudi group, and the Indian trading company Karuturi. European, US and Israeli companies are also well represented, especially in the production of biofuel.
In answer to accusations that it has illegally expropriated some of the most vulnerable and discriminated-against (expropriation is prohibited except for "public interest" purposes), the government replies that the land handed over was lying idle. Its aim, in fact, is to put an end to peasant culture by relegating traditional agriculture and agropastoralism to the past.
These farming techniques could certainly benefit from modernisation to improve yield and reduce the amount of work involved. But Ethiopian government policy fails to take subsistence farming into account. A lack of knowhow among peasant farmers hinders the development of environmentally friendly small-scale farming capable of feeding the population. If every family had four or five hectares of good quality, well-irrigated arable land, Ethiopia could achieve food self-sufficiency. But the politicians and the economic powers have decided otherwise and, since 2006, imports of primary agricultural products (wheat, sorghum, palm oil) have soared. In 2010 Ethiopia imported 95% of its sorghum from the US.
The government justifies this state plunder on the grounds that it needs foreign currency to fund the building of infrastructure, vital for Ethiopia's development. But then why is farmland that would cost you $405 per hectare per year in Malaysia let for only $2 in Ethiopia?
(1) Future Agricultures Consortium, "Issues pour l'agriculture éthiopienne: options et scenarios" [PDF] (Issues for Ethiopian agriculture: options and scenarios), Point Info 002, January 2006.
(2) See Human Rights Watch, "Ethiopia: Forced Relocations Bring Hunger, Hardship", 18 January 2012.
Ethiopia's stolen land
Agnès Stienne
"You forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody."
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau (A Dissertation on the Origin and Foundation of the Inequality of Mankind, 1754)
Ethiopia is a fertile country, and yet it suffers from hunger. Most of its population of 90 million - 83% - live in rural areas and make their living mainly from family farming. The most fertile land - around 35% of the total - is suitable for crops or livestock, and 40% of this is used just for crops.
In the mid-1970s, land reform turned all agricultural land into "common property": effectively, it became the property of the state. Peasant farmers' associations could allocate a few acres to families that wanted land to farm, and usufructuary rights to further plots, not exceeding 10 hectares in total (cattle farmers, 12% of the population, were not included in this provision). Ethiopians also had a traditional right of access to common land for pasturing, hunting, fishing and the gathering of medicinal plants.
The 1995 constitution enshrined the status of land as "a common property of the Nations, Nationalities and Peoples of Ethiopia", which meant it could not be sold or exchanged. Crop and cattle farmers were given the right to free land, and protected from eviction. But the following year a measure was adopted in four of Ethiopia's regions - Gambella, Afar, Somali and Benishangul-Gumuz - permitting the renting and leasing of land. (The country's territory is divided into nine regions reflecting the geographical distribution of ethno-linguistic families.)
The peasant farmers did not get the 10 hectares they were entitled to. "In 2000, 87.4% of rural families had access to less than two hectares," says Samuel Gebreselassie of the Future Agricultures Consortium. "Of those families, 64.5% had less than one hectare, and 40.6% had half a hectare or less. And these very small farms are usually divided into two or three plots. Even a medium-sized farm can only generate about 50% of the minimum income a household needs to stay above the poverty line." In Ethiopia, you need at least two hectares to feed a family with four children properly, and more if you want to be able to sell any surplus you produce on the market (1).
Land grabbing
In the early 2000s Ethiopia's prime minister Meles Zenawi gave Ethiopia's Agricultural Investment Support Directorate (AISD), an agency of the agriculture ministry, the task of offering foreign investors the opportunity to rent large tracts of land. According to a detailed study by the Oakland Institute in 2011, at least 3.6m hectares - of which only 2m hectares have identified owners - have already been transferred to investors. This figure is confirmed by Human Rights Watch (HRW), which adds that 2.1m hectares of additional land have been placed at their disposition through the AISD, on highly attractive terms. The rent is derisory and there is plenty of water. Huge tracts have been ringed with high fences and are often guarded by the local police. Fleets of bulldozers are remodelling the landscape for agribusiness, with all that implies: plastic tunnel greenhouses as far as the eye can see, mechanisation and petrochemical inputs.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Bank define "land grabbing" as the acquisition of land with a total area of 1,000 hectares (10 sq km) or more - enough to ensure food self-sufficiency for 500 families. Land grabbing has been accompanied by wholesale resettlement of the local population. In total, 1.5 million people have been affected, including 500,000 in the Afar region, 500,000 in the Somali region, 225,000 in Benishangul-Gumuz and 225,000 in Gambella (2).
In Gambella, where 42% of farmland has been expropriated, local people have been told to go and pasture their livestock elsewhere. A first wave of villagisation started in 2010, aiming to resettle 45,000 Anuak and Nuer households over a three-year period. Communities were to be moved to more modern villages with better infrastructure (schools, health centres, roads, markets), and each household would receive three or four hectares of irrigable land.
All this looked good on paper but turned out to be disastrous. The plans failed to consider the most basic needs of livestock, such as water to drink. And no steps were taken to cover the gap between the time when the old fields and their crops were to be abandoned and the time when the new food-producing plots - after clearing, planting, irrigation and tending - yielded crops. In 2011 HRW observers recorded that, after turning down a development plan proposed by the region's governor, the inhabitants were forcibly evicted by the police and army. Three hundred were killed in the repression; villagers were arbitrarily imprisoned and many women were raped.
We know the rest - there were not enough flour mills and there was a shortage of potable water. Schools had no teachers and health centres were unstaffed because everyone had to work on the building sites to keep the resettlement project going. Even schoolchildren had to participate in the building if they wanted to take their exams. The only compensation families received was plots of land of between 0.25 and 0.5 of a hectare, not particularly fertile, which they had to clear without any tools.
An end to peasant culture
Popular anger has done nothing to change government policy. Among the foreign entities that have bought land are Saudi Star, a Saudi group, and the Indian trading company Karuturi. European, US and Israeli companies are also well represented, especially in the production of biofuel.
In answer to accusations that it has illegally expropriated some of the most vulnerable and discriminated-against (expropriation is prohibited except for "public interest" purposes), the government replies that the land handed over was lying idle. Its aim, in fact, is to put an end to peasant culture by relegating traditional agriculture and agropastoralism to the past.
These farming techniques could certainly benefit from modernisation to improve yield and reduce the amount of work involved. But Ethiopian government policy fails to take subsistence farming into account. A lack of knowhow among peasant farmers hinders the development of environmentally friendly small-scale farming capable of feeding the population. If every family had four or five hectares of good quality, well-irrigated arable land, Ethiopia could achieve food self-sufficiency. But the politicians and the economic powers have decided otherwise and, since 2006, imports of primary agricultural products (wheat, sorghum, palm oil) have soared. In 2010 Ethiopia imported 95% of its sorghum from the US.
The government justifies this state plunder on the grounds that it needs foreign currency to fund the building of infrastructure, vital for Ethiopia's development. But then why is farmland that would cost you $405 per hectare per year in Malaysia let for only $2 in Ethiopia?
(1) Future Agricultures Consortium, "Issues pour l'agriculture éthiopienne: options et scenarios" [PDF] (Issues for Ethiopian agriculture: options and scenarios), Point Info 002, January 2006.
(2) See Human Rights Watch, "Ethiopia: Forced Relocations Bring Hunger, Hardship", 18 January 2012.
