Tuesday, February 18, 2014
On 5:25 AM by Shambani Solutions No comments
Critics of New Alliance say private investment and improvements in rural infrastructure will not liberate people from poverty
Zitto Kabwe first
heard about the G8 initiative to transform the future of farming and food production in his
country when he opened a newspaper in 2012. The chairman of the Tanzanian
parliament's public accounts committee says he was critical of the scheme from
the start.
"Something
like this needs to go through parliament. The executive cannot just commit to
these changes," he said, poring over the list of projects and policy
changes his government has agreed to as part of the New Alliance
for Food Security and Nutrition, launched by Barack Obama two years
ago.
As part of the
initiative, Tanzania committed to changing its tax and seed policies. It
also said it would make it easier for investors to gain access to land. Under
the New Alliance, such commitments are deemed necessary to spur growth in
agriculture and lift millions of poor farmers out of poverty.
Kabwe, however,
believes his government's tax-related commitments will benefit companies rather
than small farmers, while proposed changes around seeds could pose serious
threats to rural communities.
"Anything
that involves facilitating seed importation is a threat," he said.
"It will be like colonialism. Farmers will not be able to farm until they
import, linking farmers to vulnerability of international prices. Big companies
will benefit. We should not allow that."
Doug Hertzler, a
senior policy analyst at ActionAid USA, echoed Kabwe's concerns, warning that
while not every New Alliance project will be bad "the overall emphasis is
in the wrong direction".
"It is all
about creating markets for the chemical and the seed companies that are owned
by the international companies rather than public services, which is the best
way for smallholders to grow and expand," he said, adding that big changes
in access to land, with more going to commercial firms, could create "unequal
land tenure patterns which will last for generations".
A go-to retort
from proponents of the G8 initiative has been that many of the companies
involved are not big multinationals, but small local firms. Tanzania's New Alliance
co-operation framework lists nine Tanzanian companies and 11 international
ones.
Kabwe says this is
not quite accurate. "Many of these are not Tanzanian companies. They may
be registered in Tanzania but owned by foreigners," he said, pointing to
the Tanzanian Horticultural Association as an example. This is just an
association of companies working in the country, and includes many big foreign
firms, he said.
Tanzania's
cooperation framework says the country is "a showcase for public-private
partnership in agricultural growth, exemplified by the development of its
Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor (SAGCOT)". Under SAGCOT, launched at
a World Economic Forum summit in 2010, the government has earmarked nearly a
third of the country for commercial farming projects, setting aside thousands
of hectares of the country's most fertile land for private investors.
Kabwe says the
government should be investing in small farmers instead. "With large-scale
farming, you are turning small farmers into mere labourers," he said.
"Yes there will be huge investment in the country. There may be
improvements in rural infrastructure. But this will not liberate people from
poverty."
Outgrower schemes,
under which companies buy produce from small farmers, are not enough on their
own, Kabwe said. "Who determines the contracts? The fear is at the end of
the day you have small-scale farmers being exploited. To prevent that you need
strong local organisations for farmers and led by farmers."
Companies, for
their part, say they still face major challenges to investment in the country
and need the government to revise its policies. Carter Coleman,
the CEO of the UK-based agribusiness Agrica, said his company's farm is at the
end of hundreds of kilometres of road which get "cut off from the rest of
the world every rainy season". Better infrastructure and changes to tax
rules are needed before further investments are made, he said, lamenting that
the New Alliance had so far yielded few tangible benefits.
Audax Rukonge, the
executive secretary of the Agriculture Non-State Actors Forum, said his biggest
fear was that the New Alliance would end before gains have been realised.
"This may lead the investors under the alliance to get discouraged because
they need to make profit since most of them borrowed money from banks to
invest," he said.
According to the
initiative's 2013 progress report, only three of Tanzania's 13 policy
commitments had been completed by May last year. For all his
concern, Kabwe is not ready to write the New Alliance off completely.
Agriculture, he says, is undeniably key to Tanzania's future. "The aim
should not be to stop this project. The aim should be to improve it," he
said. "This can be a starting point."
He insists that
small farmers need to be supported and involved in the process from the
beginning, given access to social security schemes such as pensions and health
insurance, and empowered to form strong local organisations which can defend
their rights in negotiations with companies. "That," he said,
"would be transformational."
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