Collectif pour la défense des terres malgaches (TANY) et Solidarité des Intervenants sur le Foncier (SIF) | 11 June 2025Introduction
On May 25, 2025, the Secretary of State to the Presidency in charge of Food Sovereignty signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) in Tel Aviv with the Israeli LR Group for the creation of a 10,000-hectare agropole to grow rice, corn and soybeans. Unfortunately, very little information has been released about the content of this $90 million MoU.
Who is LR Group Ltd? And does this protocol contribute to the country's food sovereignty?
What does the memorandum of understanding cover?
According to an interview with the Secretary of State by the public TVM channel on June 2 (1), agropoles would be set up in the 4 regions of Analamanga, Vakinankaratra, Bongolava and Amoron'i Mania in central Madagascar. 5,000 hectares, or 50% of the land concerned, would be devoted to rice production using Chinese hybrid rice seeds.
According to a commonly accepted definition, an agropole is an area of high-potential agricultural land in which the public authorities wish to encourage the concentration of private investment. It includes research and training centers, and infrastructure to support the production, processing and marketing of agricultural raw materials (2).
The Secretary of State stressed that the land allocated to agropoles will remain in the hands of Malagasy farmers, who will benefit from the modern infrastructure to be installed and the support to be provided for agricultural production, livestock and processing.
Media reports that the rice to be grown would be Chinese hybrid rice, and that farmers would have to organize themselves into cooperatives, immediately raises the concern that farmers would not benefit from this (3).
Dependent farmers with no decision-making power?
Chinese hybrid rice is known for its high yield, which can exceed 8 tonnes/ha under optimal conditions, while the current average yield of Malagasy rice is around 2.5 tonnes/ha. Its main drawback lies in the fact that farmers are obliged to obtain seeds from specialized producers for each cropping season, as they cannot use part of the previous harvest as seed without seeing an immediate drop in yield. Some farmers have to buy hybrid rice seed on their own, which increases their costs. The government has also been organizing free seed distribution, but according to various sources, farmers who receive “donations” must give part of their harvest to a structure such as the Agricultural Service Centre in a commune of the Menabe region. In all cases, however, farmers become dependent on seed suppliers and are not self-sufficient.
Moreover, the reference to the organization of farmers into cooperatives suggests that the project will be based on the system of agricultural aggregation, which is the focus of a law in Madagascar strongly inspired by the Moroccan model (4). Initially, farmers in Morocco -who are “aggregated” - effectively keep their land, as Madame La Secrétaire d'Etat points out, and cultivate it themselves. But they are bound, under a contract with the “aggregator” company, to adhere strictly to production processes it imposes and to use the seeds, fertilizers and equipment it supplies. As these inputs are not given away, but loaned in the form of debt, they must be repaid at harvest time. The contract also obliges the farmers to sell their harvest exclusively to the aggregator, at a price often fixed at the start of the crop cycle, and as the company does not buy produce that does not meet its specified standards (“jauges” is the term often used in Madagascar). The Moroccan experience has shown that after a few years, the farmers find themselves in great difficulty and are obliged to sell their land to the aggregator company (5). As a result, after 10 years of implementing the Green Plan in Morocco, many impoverished small farmers have lost their land to investors and multinationals which have become the owners of a larger share of the country’s farmland.
The system, which initially appears to be “win-win”, gradually ruins farmers in the long term.
Farmers in the Menabe region were the first guinea pigs in the application of this concept in Madagascar, with the STOI company acting as their aggregator (6). Formal grouping into cooperatives is not yet a reality everywhere. Could farmers' current complaints about the low producer price in the Menabe be the first consequences of the application of this concept? The current Secretary of State for Food Sovereignty was previously Managing Director of the aggregator STOI.
The choice of Chinese hybrid rice, using imported seeds as well as seeds now produced in Madagascar (7), already runs counter to the objective of food sovereignty. While the quest to modernize farming techniques and improve yields is laudable, hybrid seeds pose a threat to farmers' ability to develop their own seeds for their own needs, and to safeguard Malagasy agricultural biodiversity. Local rice varieties will tend to disappear. The concomitant use of the concept of agricultural aggregation entails a deprivation of many of the rights recognized in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Others Working in Rural Areas (8), such as the right to
- multiply seeds according to their know-how and experience accumulated over generations,
- use their land according to their culture, their knowledge of the characteristics of the local environment and the preservation of biodiversity,and
- decide on the use of their agricultural production.
This scurrilous law on agricultural aggregation should be repealed, as it conceals and promotes a creeping monopolization of agricultural land.
According to an article by RFI (9), the project with LR Group is viewed with suspicion by the Malagasy people, given the desire of successive Israeli governments to monopolize Palestinian land.
What have we learned about the Israeli LR Group?
LR Group has been investigated by international NGOs and researchers. It is known to have been created in 1985 by retired Israeli soldiers wishing to invest in agriculture in Africa. As mentioned in the interview with the Secretary of State for Food Sovereignty, LR Group has already operated in several African countries, including Angola, where it has a 9,000hectare project called Aldeia Nova. There, “the company's agricultural activities have generated few benefits for the local population”(10). At the start of the project, the families living on the land in question were evacuated before LR Group began implementing the project on the ground. Subsequently, the families that were recruited for the project started production with a debt, as houses, inputs and livestock were provided in the form of financial loans. If the products delivered don't meet the standards set by those in charge, they are either under-priced or rejected outright, leaving many families unable to repay their debts. According to research by Ricardo Soares de Oliveira, when LR Group withdrew from the project in 2008 and handed it over to the Angolan state, the project was in dire straits. It remained highly dependent on the Israeli managers and needed “constant injections of cash to continue operating”. By 2011, Aldeia Nova was bankrupt and the local families hired by the company had not been paid for months.
The LR Group project in Madagascar
“The purpose of the strategic partnership between the two parties is to mobilize financing of around US$90 million to set up an agropole or integrated agricultural production center with an industrial vocation on the national territory,” according to the press release. The choice of words is not insignificant. The Group will not be investing in Madagascar. It will “mobilize financing” by arranging, via one of its subsidiaries, for example, a loan guaranteed by the government and therefore by the Malagasy people, on the model of what it did in Angola as part of a US$ 3 billion line of credit that LR Group provided to the Angolan state via its offshore subsidiary, Luminar Finance Ltd, and which was guaranteed by the Angolan national oil company (10).
Given the Secretary of State for Food Sovereignty's unconditional admiration for Israeli agricultural technology, and joining the Malagasy citizens who have expressed their reticence towards the planned agropole by evoking the case of the population of Gaza, we would like to share this quote from the NGO GRAIN : “The links between Israeli agro-industry and its military industry are deeply rooted. The country's agriculture is the product of decades of violent, militarized occupation of Palestinian land (...), and oppression of the Palestinian people by the Israeli army.” (10)
Agricultural aggregation and similar production models, such as the agropole to be created by LR Group, are therefore a sneaky and gradual form of land grabbing. Malagasy citizens are not wrong to be alarmed by invoking bad memories of the past, such as the Daewoo Logistics case, because Madagascar's National Agro-Business Strategy defined in 2018 called for the establishment of 4 million hectares of agropoles (11). This objective does not seem to have been lowered, as the May 25 press release reminds us that this is “President Andry Rajoelina's flagship project”.
Farmers currently living in the targeted areas therefore run a high risk of losing their land when the agropoles are set up, as do the farmers involved in the project due to the excessive debts incurred by the project. What's more, the huge sums of money required for the planned modernization of techniques and technology will probably cause the country to lose enormous wealth, in the form of land and natural resources such as minerals.
One crucial question remains unanswered, based on current information: Given the aggregator's focus on maximizing profit, will there be a way of prioritizing domestic needs over the international market?
What policy for genuine food sovereignty in Madagascar?
"Food sovereignty refers to the right of populations and their States (...) to define agricultural and food policy (...). Food sovereignty includes the priority given to local agricultural production to feed the population, access for peasants and the landless to land, water, seeds, credit (...), the participation of populations in agricultural policy choices, recognition of the rights of peasant women, who play a major role in agricultural production and food" (12).
Food sovereignty therefore mainly requires the involvement of Malagasy peasants, who make up the majority of the population, in decisions at all levels and stages of design, production, consumption, marketing and processing.
According to farmers' organizations, achieving food sovereignty in Madagascar currently requires, as a priority :
strengthening farmers' control over their land, as opposed to setting up projects to facilitate land grabbing,
major decisions to increase access to land for women, young people and vulnerable “landless” households, as promised by President Andry Rajoelina at the National Land Colloquium in June 2022, in order to increase the farmland available to family farmers, instead of reserving thousands or even millions of hectares for agribusiness,
the search for food self-sufficiency under decent working conditions and remuneration, rather than the imposition of methods that make farmers dependent and indebted,
the adoption by public authorities of measures to support farmers in the development of their heritage and know-how, by improving hydro-agricultural techniques and infrastructures, communication routes and outlets to improve marketing, and not the systematic destruction of what they already possess and master.
Conclusion
In light of these initial considerations, the memorandum of understanding signed on May 25, 2025 is dangerous for the Malagasy people, particularly for farmers. If its signing is not a definitive step, as the Secretary of State for Food Sovereignty seems to suggest, this MoU must be cancelled and the project with LR Group must be stopped, even if, according to the interview on TVM, some groups have been seduced even before obtaining sufficient information about the project and the partner.
Ensuring sufficient, healthy and sustainable food for the majority of the population must be the priority right now. Unfortunately, the entire current strategy of the Malagasy leadership involves a direct or more devious form of organized and legalized transfer of land from local communities to national and foreign companies in the agricultural, forestry, mining, tourism and real estate sectors. This strategy will not contribute to food sovereignty or self-sufficiency.
The latest publication by the NGO FIAN International notes “a global trend towards increasing inequality and concentration of wealth”, as well as (...) “the control of vast tracts of land by foreign companies, which undermines the sovereignty of states and the self-determination of peoples” (13) is a sad reality in Madagascar, where geostrategic stakes and the predation of resources by local oligarchs are aggravating the population's already precarious situation.
9 June 2025
Signing organizations:
Collectif pour la défense des terres malgaches – TANY
Solidarité des Intervenants sur le Foncier - SIF
References
(1)VAOVAO AN-TSARY 19H30 02 JUIN 2025 By TVM | Facebook : from minute 47
(2)https://www.iisd.org/projects/enfr-responsible-agricultural-growth-poles-and-corridors-africa-developing-legal-and) &https://www.iisd.org/articles/investissement-agricole-afrique
(3) Dépêche Informative TARATRA du 26 mai 2025 &https://midi-madagasikara.mg/madagascar-israel-un-financement-de-90-millions-usd-pour-la-mise-en-place-dun-agropole/
(4) la loi 2022-02 sur l’Agrégation Agricole adoptée en juin 2022
farmlandgrab.org | L’agrégation agricole dans la stratégie nationale de l’agribusiness à Madagascar
(5) Publication of ATTAC/ CADTM Maroc farmlandgrab.org | Pour la souveraineté alimentaire au Maroc, completed by an interview of the study coordinator performed by the Collectif TANY.
(6) https://midi-madagasikara.mg/agregation-agricole-engagement-du-groupe-stoi-a-partager-les-risques/
(7) Madagascar: Coopération - Appui de la Chine au développement du riz hybride - allAfrica.com
(10) GRAIN | Fermes, armes et agro-diplomatie israélienne
(11) Pire_que_le_projet_Daewoo,_la_stratégie_nationale_de_l_agribusiness.pdf
(12) La souveraineté alimentaire - Via Campesina : Résolution
