Africa: 'Land Rush' as Threats to Food Security Intensify(& biofuel boondoggle)

allAfrica.com ^ | 05/14/10 | Mae-Wan Ho

[TigerLikesRooster]

Africa: 'Land Rush' as Threats to Food Security Intensify

Mae-Wan Ho

14 May 2010

analysis

In the past three years, foreign governments and investment companies have been buying or leasing vast tracts of farmland in Africa and elsewhere for producing biofuels or food for their own use.[1]

This 'land rush' was triggered by the demand for biofuels, and accelerated [2] with the financial and food crisis of 2007/8 (see [3] Financing World Hunger, SiS 46).

Government policies promoting biofuels are based on the mistaken belief that fuels made from plants are 'carbon neutral', in that burning them would simply release the carbon dioxide fixed by photosynthesis and would not increase greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The European Union is aiming for 10 per cent of its transport to run on biofuels by 2020 [4] (Europe Unveils 2020 Plan for Reducing C Emissions, SiS 37). George W. Bush, for his part, proposed to cure the US' 'addiction to oil' by increasing the federal budget 22 per cent for research into clean fuel technologies including biofuels as substitutes for oil to power the country's cars [5] (Biofuels for Oil Addicts, SiS 30). The hope is to replace more than 70 per cent of oil imports from 'unstable parts of the world' - the Middle East - by 2025.

Meanwhile, the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) helpfully identified immense areas of 'spare land' in developing countries that could be used for planting 'bio-energy' crops to be turned into biofuels. The World Bank's recent report on the 2008 commodities price hike includes a diagram entitled [6] 'The stock of unused but potentially arable land is enormous', depicting more than 700 million hectares of 'unused' land in sub-Saharan Africa, and more than 800 million hectares in Latin America and the Caribbean.

[TigerLikesRooster]

P!

[Travis McGee]

I predict that there will be more Chinese than Africans living in Africa in 100 years.

[TigerLikesRooster]

Certainly they will take over southern Africa. ANC’s days could be numbered. The collapse of Chinese economy will simply accelerate this trend rather than stopping it. Tibet and Xinjiang may have a breather from Han Chinese influx as a result.

[dennisw]

I predict that there will be more Chinese than Africans living in Africa in 100 years>>>>>>>>

The immigration incentive will be you can have as many children as you want and no female infanticide allowed. Chinese are very good at farming and lots of Africa just needs good farming practices. The whites who did exactly this are being killed and driven out. When starvation sets in the Chinese will fill the vacuum

[gleeaikin]

They are also heavily “mining” the resources of Australia including lumber.