Kenya: Biofuel From Cotton Waste

Kenyan farmer Abel Mutie Mathoka thought it must be a joke when he was told he could irrigate his drought-hit crops more cheaply, cleanly and efficiently using a pump fuelled by cotton waste.

"Who could believe it's possible to make a fuel better than diesel from cotton seeds? I didn't!" laughed Mathoka, crouching down to inspect the watermelons on his 10-acre (four-hectare) shared plot in Ituri village in Kenya's southeast Kitui county.

"But it works," he said, walking over to a nearby tree and plucking a large green pawpaw. "Irrigation with this biodiesel water pump has helped me get higher yields, especially during drought periods."

Mathoka said his earnings had doubled in the two years he has been pumping water using biodiesel, which is both more efficient and 20 shillings ($0.20) per litre cheaper than regular diesel.

Unlike most biofuels, which are derived from crops such as maize, sugarcane, soybean, rapeseed and jatropha, it is made from a byproduct of the cotton-making process. That means that as well as being cleaner and cheaper than regular fuel, it is more sustainable than other biofuels because no extra land is needed to produce it.

From Brazil to Indonesia, the rush to cultivate biofuel crops has driven forest communities off their land and pushed farmers to switch from crops-for-food to more profitable crops-for-fuel - exacerbating food shortages.

"Our biodiesel comes from crushing cotton seeds left over as waste after ginning - the process of separating the seeds from raw cotton," said Taher Zavery, managing director of Zaynagro Industries Ltd, the Kitui-based company producing the biodiesel.

"We started producing and using it to power our cotton ginning factory in 2011. With increased production, we now use it for our trucks, sell it to the United Nations to run some of their buses - and also to local farmers for irrigation."

More than 1,200 farmers in Kitui have so far invested in biodiesel pumps for irrigation as part of an initiative launched by Zaynagro in 2015, said Zavery.

A small but growing number are shedding their burden of reliance on the weather - and investing in irrigation systems powered by Zaynagro's cotton seed biodiesel through a pay-as-you-go scheme launched more than three years ago.

Neighbouring farmers band together to invest in the irrigation system - which includes the biodiesel pump, 12 metres of pipes and 10 litres of biodiesel - at costs starting from 32,000 shillings (1US$=KES103; July 2019), depending on the size of the pump.

The farmers make an initial payment, then pay interest-free monthly instalments until the total is paid off. They buy the biodiesel to run the pumps from Zaynagro at Ksh80 ($0.8) a litre.

Full article...

Senegalese villagers vow to fight biofuels project over land claims

Villagers from northern Senegal vowed in August to fight a project by Senegalese and Italian investors to produce biofuels on their land, a venture already forced to relocate once by deadly protests.

"We will fight those who want to take our land. It is the land of our ancestors, an area of 26,000 hectares which houses villages, thousands of heads of cattle, mosques, cemeteries," Oumar Ba, a representative of a collective of affected villages, told journalists. "Whoever wants to take our land will first walk over our dead bodies," said Ba, who lives in the village of Ndiael in the region of the same name.

The Senegalese-Italian company Senethanol/Senhuile had recently announced it was moving the project from the village of Fanaye, where violent protests in October 2011 left two people dead, leading government to suspend the venture.

Senethanol/Senhuile wants to grow sweet potatoes for the production of biofuels, a renewable energy source which has soared in popularity as oil prices rise and concerns grow over emissions from traditional fuels.
But the organisation is again encountering resistance at its new project site.

The United States and Brazil are the biggest producers, but investors have been criticised for buying up large swathes of land in Africa to produce fuel to be exported to their nations.

Senethanol/Senhuile has denied its project is an example of land-grabbing, and last year described it as "an unquestionable interest in the improvement of the economic and social situation of the villages concerned and all Senegalese."
 
 "The case of Fanaye must serve as a lesson to authorities," said Marieme Sow of the NGO Enda Pronat, who denounced "land-grabbing in Senegal by multi-nationals." "We are making this appeal for government to realise that 60 percent of the population of this country is made up of farmers who need this land."

Senegalese rap group "Bidew Bou Bess" (New Star in the Wolof language) presented a song called "Don't Touch My Land" to journalists. "Let's block the road to those who want to plunder our land. Let's stop those who tear up our land. They want our land for profit. They are colonising us, they are using us," the song said.

PhysOrg

Jatropha boom goes bust

Once upon a time, way back in 2009, a certain person who wishes to remain anonymous attended a jatropha conference somewhere in West Africa. For several days one listened to many esteemed experts from all over the world giving impressive presentations about all the proof they had from their studies that jatropha was definitely the best thing since sliced bread.

Your man Anonymous also gave a presentation, but it went against the conference’s grain by cautioning that it was premature and misleading to tout benefits for which there simply wasn’t enough evidence. Poor Anonymous almost got laughed out of the room. At tea break he was almost accosted by a senior official of the host country’s government, which had invested heavily in jatropha cultivation with the support of its former colonial power. The official made it clear he was neither impressed nor amused by Anonymous’ presentation.

And now, at the end of 2012, a mere three years later but seemingly a lot longer in jatropha years? There seems to be an emerging consensus that jatropha is not what it was once cracked up to be. Anonymous has often wondered what the senior jatropha official of country X would say today about the prematurely heavy investment he confidently assured his government would quickly, handsomely pay off.

Among those to lose millions of dollars on the jatropha gamble have been once brilliant-sounding investors from Britain, Sweden and elsewhere. They were going to make clean, green, politically-correct jatropha biodiesel fortunes in countries as disparate as Ghana in West Africa and Tanzania in East Africa. Almost all these once highly, glowingly publicised investments have gone bust.

The main reason that these jatropha dreams collapsed is very simple- a failure to heed the lessons of a course every farmer has out of necessity taken in the field-Common Sense 101. Saying a crop is drought tolerant, hardy and can survive in harsh conditions is very different from saying that plant will produce optimally or profitably in those conditions. Incredibly, there were many entrepreneurs who were able to sweet talk normally hard-headed investors out of millions of dollars in capital for jatropha projects without asking the basic questions of Farming Common Sense 101.

Anonymous was so surprised and disillusioned by the jatropha recklessness that he has never been able to be as knee-jerkingly excited at news of any big new farming investment that it is claimed is going to easily, quickly make its promoters millionaires.

If only farming, business and life were that easy.

The article that prompted these jatropha musings is not a particularly deep treatment of the subject, but it is mildly interesting. And as it points out, the busting of the jatropha boom does not mean that the crop does not still have a useful future.

African Agriculture

Changing land laws, policies to suit needs of locals, investors

by Gerald Kitabu

When Tanzania, Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, South Africa and other Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) countries heard about the much-marketed biofuel in the early 2000s the governments in the region started inviting foreign companies to invest in different crops such as jatropha, sugar cane, maize and cassava to produce biofuel.

Increasing in biofuel markets follows a shift of energy demand for running machines from fossil fuel to bio energy in Developed countries, which in turn has accelerated an influx of investors from the Europe, Asia and the United States in search of land for productive and fertile lands.

Proponents of the biofuel investments in the SADC region say the investment will improve among other things, agricultural production, add value to local products and markets and improve social services such as roads infrastructures, health facilities, clean water supply and improve education.

In Mozambique, for example, there are some investors in biofuel; one of them is Altie Steenkamp, proprietor of Mozambique Biofuel Industries (MBFI) who decided to run his project at Mocuba district, Zambezia province, some 1800 kilometers from Maputo City.

Steenkamp’s project which is still under construction is designed to produce bio diesel and ethanol fuels from cultivation of Jatropha and Cassava. According to the investor, it is a project where the private sector will take hands with global partners to create a permanent solution to reduce abject poverty, improve education, train staff, empower communities and restore human dignity in Mozambique.

The MBFI proprietor says local communities would also benefit from selling their maize at his venture and become shareholders by forming small Associations.


He says he want to see not only local people involved in production but also employed. Apart from other benefits, he is expected to employ between two to three hundred local communities.

Not all investors are serious enough, committed and determined to this course. Others are well determined and they have done wonderful but others have ended up disappointing local communities and compromising food security in the region.

Forexample, the same promises given by Altie Steenkamp, proprietor of Mozambique Biofuel Industries (MBFI), are made by biofuel investors in Tanzania today and many other SADC countries such as Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe and already respective district authorities and investment promotional institutions or centres are struggling to attract biofuel investors to enhance development in their respective areas.

However, in the wake of such promises, many governments in the region forget that land laws and policies in their respective countries are not strong enough to grantee fast development as been promised by the investors.

In the region today especially in trans-boundary resources, a number of investors have already acquired big chunks of lands for biofuel investments and the villagers have been evacuated to leave space for quick development but there is very little evidence to prove their level of development in terms of social services or food sustainability among the local communities.

Contrary to the expectations, as more and more fertile lands and Rivers are increasingly becoming into the hands of few investors, some villagers have started experiencing food shortage, a situation which was not there before due to failure by the investors to fulfill their promises.

In Tanzania for example, most of biofuel investors in Kisarawe and Rufiji districts in coast region have proved failure and their promises such as individual and village compensation, improved infrastructures, reducing poverty and empowering local communities have all remained a myth.

Until 2008, a total of 37 foreign companies out of which five are joint ventures had already acquired fertile lands for the same purpose and within this very short time of their operations, there are already number of cases where the investors have closed up their projects leaving behind locals without lands for cultivation. A good example is African Green Oils of Rufiji district and Coast region and SAP Agricultural Limited.

Others have sold their shares to foreign companies and retrenched workers. There is also several land conflicts at the moment in Tanzania due to the fact that when the investor controls land, he indirectly controls water sources and other biodiversity which also supports surrounding local communities.

Advocate Harold Sungusia of Legal and Human Rights Centre (LHRC) says failure by respective governments to create an equitable balance between people’s interests’ vis-à-vis investors’ interests manifests itself into exclusion of public from decision making, unfair and inadequate compensation, low level of public knowledge on land issues and contracts and deliberate violation of the laws that safeguard land rights among many others.

At a regional workshop on biofuel organized by World Wild Fund (WWF) held recently in Mocuba, Zambezia province, in Mozambique, it was revealed that some countries in the region where such investments have taken place, have already started experiencing environmental, economic and social risks due to poor coordination of biofuels activities among government institutions and absence of a legislative framework to govern biofuels investment activities.

Head of Tanzania delegation to the workshop who is also programme Officer for Land Rights Research and Resources Institute (HAKIARDHI), Godfrey Elisius Massay said that the region’s land tenure system is currently granting a warm welcome to foreign investments companies in biofuel sector at the expense of poor local communities who have little knowledge on the investment.

Citing an example of Tanzania, he said the role of state machinery such as laws, institutions, resources have changed from protecting majority small producers interests as in 1970 and 80’s to facilitation of the few elite and foreign companies to acquire land from communities. Massay said potential land for food production such as Rufiji, Rukwa, Mbarali, Wami and Kisarawe districts have been identified and or allocated to biofuels companies. He explained that 4.5million hectares of land requested by biofuels investors out of Which 641,179 hectors have already been allocated to investors, and processes are going on.

“Apart from loss of livelihoods, and biodiversity, there is displacement of local communities around 10,000 in Kisarawe for jatropha farm, 1,000 rice farmers in Wami area,1,000 rice farmers in Ruipa village, 1,500 rice growers in Mbarali, 5,000 villagers in Namwawala Kilombero” Massay said.

Presenting a paper on behalf of Miombo eco-region team that comprises countries of Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe, the team leader Enos Shumba from Zimbabwe warned that without responsible investments through sound policy instruments, the opening up of new land or crop substitution for biofuel will lead to massive bio-diversity loss and displacements.

Citing Malawi as an example, he said, despite of having foreign investments in biofuel, the country’s National Development Strategy for 2006-2011 has no provision or strategies for bio-fuels sector and the process to develop the policy and strategy is underway.

Commenting about Zambia, he said although there is revised national energy policy that recognizes the potential of renewable energy sources in the country’s energy balance, there is no bio-fuel specific policy or strategy yet in place.

“In Zimbabwe, principles of bio-fuels development were adopted in 2007. World Wild Fund and environment Africa are now facilitating development of national policy and strategy” he said.

A senior lecturer of University of Dar es Salaam, Dr. Ngwanza Kamata says that the investors have both positive and negative impacts to the nations and local communities.

However, he says, experience shows that negative impacts outweighs positive ones because sometimes foreign investments in biofuel are not sustainable and the nature of their investments have very devastating effects on local production especially soil fertility, something which, if not well managed can trigger food insecurity and dependence.

Citing an example of Tanzania, the lecturer said due to weak land laws and policies, the investors are facilitated such that they become part of the decision making bodies during land acquisition process for their interests.

“In Tanzania from 2001 to date, the land laws have been changed eight times, for whose interest? He observes that the pressure must have been coming from donors” He says.

He suggests that apart from creating awareness among the villagers and the general public at large, there is a need to invest in small scale producers by empowering them because despite their small production unit, it is the ones who have been feeding the nations since independence.

If land laws and policies are left unchecked, there is a dangerous of creating, vagabonds and criminals in big cities such as Dar es Salaam, Johannesburg, Harare, Maputo, Harare, Kinshasa etc. due to influx of people whose farms would be taken away or grabbed by investors.

Their only option would be to rush to urban areas and big cities to find employment, a thing which may end up worsening the current unemployment situation and compromising food security in the SADC region.

So to say, unless land laws and policies are changed and respective governments in the SADC region creates an equitable balance between people’s interests’ vis-à-vis investors’ interests, most investments will end up manifesting into exclusion of public from decision making, unfair and inadequate compensation, low level of public knowledge on land issues, ghost contracts and deliberate violation of the laws that safeguard land rights among ordinary citizens.

IPP Media

Nigeria, China ink deal to invest $2.55 billion in biorefinery projects

by Jim Lane

In Nigeria, Bloomberg and several local outlets are reporting that the Nigerian government has signed a $2.55 billion development deal with Global Biofuels, to construct 15 integrated biorefineries throughout the West African nation. According to reports, the first pilot plant will be completed in Ilemeso, in Ekiti State by Q4 2012, and projects thereafter will be completed in Ondo, Osun, Kwara, Kogi,Benue, Gombe, Bauchi, Zamfara, Kano, Kaduna, Nasarawa and Plateau states. Project cost for the initial pilot plant is $108M, while full-scale plants are expected to cost $183 million each.

According to Global Biofuels, $1.78 billion, or 70 percent of the financing will come from the Chinese government. The remainder will come from NEXIM Bank, ECOWAS Bank for Investment and Development, Africa Finance Corporation; Fond Gari, and First Bank of Nigeria. The projects expect to generate 100 tons of total biomass per hectare, per yearn, using two cropping cycles per year, with total tonnage including tops, leaves, stalks and the primary crop. That equates to roughly 20 tons of total biomass per growing season, per acre.

But the massive Nigerian investment is just one of several announced in recent weeks and months in West Africa.
Nigerian Export-Import Bank:$695M

Just last week, the Nigerian Export-Import Bank gave $695 million to five companies investing in renewables including $12 million for a jatropha project and $56 million for a sorghum ethanol project.

The majority of the funding went to a sugarcane project that will include a bagasse co-generation component while the rest of the funding was for waste-to-energy projects.

Just before the US Thanksgiving holiday, the Ondo State Commissioner for Agriculture, Ademola Olorunfemi, said that the state would approve development of three sugarcane plantations and ethanol plants, with a focus on the production of biofuels and rural economic development. The Commissioner also said that the plants could provide materials for the bio-pharma industry.

The projects, whose goals center around industrialization and employment, indicate a new direction for the economy of this agriculture-heavy area of Nigeria.
Dangote Group, $7.7B

The same week, Aliko Dangote, the president of Dangote Group, announced an investment of $7.7 billion in Rivers Energy City, home of the budding $2 billion fertilizer and ethanol plant project put on by Indorama Eleme Petrochemical Company. His investment, says a top government source, will span into the methane and ethanol industries and provide thousands of jobs in the upcoming energy city.
Global Biofuels: $91M

In August, Global Biofuels has announced plans for ethanol plants across the West African region, with $91 million in sellers credit from COZA of Hong Kong and WEMET of China. The final project is expected to cost over $183 million, and produce 72 million liters of ethanol from 1.95 million tons of sorghum per year, and 216 gigawatts of electricity. Total land use as reported would be 65,000 ha in Nigeria and 32,500 ha in neighboring Economic Community of West African States member countries.

Also in August, Nosak Distilleries Ltd said it would raise production capacity at its Lagos facility to 540,000 liters per day from its current 350,000 liters per day. It also announced plans to commission a new 150,000 liter per day facility in Calabar, Cross River. Its first facility was commissioned in 2001 and together the company supplies about 70% of local ethanol demand.
The Bottom Line

Announcements of MOUs should be taken for what they are – an understanding that steel will go into the ground, as opposed to the actual construction of actual capacity. However, the trend is clear, scale is happening, project financing is becoming easier to source, especially overseas, and China is definitely expanding its ambitions with respect to countering the US lead in advanced biofuels technology, with a Chinese lead in actual gallons of renewable fuel.


Biofuels Digest

The messy link between agrofuels, land grabs and hunger

by Kanya D'Almeida

Part 1

While the United Nations climate talks in Durban continue their political feet-dragging, researchers and peasants around the world are busy connecting the dots between so- called "green climate solutions," industrialised agriculture and chronic hunger.

New research released by the U.S.-based Oakland Institute (OI) reveals the nexus between "false" fuel alternatives such as the development of agrofuels and agroforests and the massive land grab underway in Africa that is stripping thousands of peasants of their land and means of subsistence.

The research cites the hypocrisy of major industrialised actors like the U.S. and the European Union, as well the World Bank Group (WBG) and other development agencies for pouring money into assisting victims of famine and natural disasters, all the while making massive investments in schemes that heat the earth and stifle local development.

Industrialised agricultural practices currently produce 13.5 percent of all green house gas emissions, mostly methane and nitrous oxide. The latter is emitted in huge doses through the spraying of fertiliser, which is used 800 times more frequently today than it was 100 years ago.

The production of fertilisers themselves requires the burning up of fossil fuels, emitting up to 41 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) annually according to the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO).

On top of this, heavy farm machinery spits about 158 million tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere every year, while the water needed for industrial-style irrigation is pumped using fossil fuels that release another 369 million tonnes of C02 into the atmosphere.

And yet, powerful governments like the U.S. and various players from the eurozone, together with the WBG, continue to advocate for the proliferation of agrofuels, which employ the same dirty, large-scale farming techniques described above, as a "green solution" to the climate crisis.

In fact, the production of mono crop agrofuels guzzle thousands of gallons of freshwater, are processed into biodiesels – the very products that have overheated the planet to begin with – and create long, oil-thirsty transport chains to carry the product. The OI report estimates that the "conversion of rainforests and native grasslands into fields to produce agrofuel crops will release between 17 to 420 times more CO2 than the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that would be reduced following the replacement of fossil fuels with agrofuels. The increase in agrofuel use may release between 44 and 73 million additional tons of CO2 equivalent per year."

The U.S. alone has vowed to increase its use of agrofuels by 30 percent in the coming years.

According to OI's research, five million hectares of land throughout sub-Saharan Africa are currently under cultivation for agrofuel crops like palm trees and eucalyptus, in a multibillion dollar scheme that profits major transnational corporations and their government allies.

The Chinese government now owns eight million hectares of land in the Democratic Republic of Congo for palm oil production, while Crest Global Green, a British bioenergy giant, holds deeds to 900,000 hectares combined in Mali, Guinea, and Senegal.

"We were also shocked to find, during our research, several Scandinavian churches making land investments in countries like Mozambique, in schemes that involved thousands of hectares of illegally acquired land," Frederic Mousseau, the policy director of OI, told IPS.

"We have come to expect this from hedge funds, but not from churches," he added.

"The emergence of carbon trading and carbon markets has also been a major factor in the land grab, with carbon credits being touted as a green solution to the problem of carbon emissions," Mousseau added.

In fact, "the trade in carbon credits involves corporations and governments buying and selling credits in one part of the world in order to continue polluting domestically. Carbon trading not only assigns rights to developed countries and corporations to pollute, but also represents what some are calling "global climate malgovernance"," according to the report.

"Since this is a relatively new phenomenon, we have not yet seen all possible manifestations of the problem," Moussa told IPS. "All we know for sure are the immediate negative consequences of this practice such as investors planting non-native crops which destroy the local environment, replacing rich grasslands with mono crops and denying indigenous groups their rights to land and their traditional practices that respect biodiversity."

David Deng, research director of the South Sudan Law Society, told IPS, "In South Sudan, government officials rarely know what biofuels are, much less carbon credits. As a result, they are often willing to give away these rights for free."

"For the time being, the uncertainty of the transitional context has prevented companies from beginning operations but if these "green" deals (carbon credits and agrofuel projects) in the newly established South Sudan move forward, we will see a massive transfer of wealth from landowning communities in South Sudan to transnational companies in the global North," he added.

Meanwhile Green Resources Ltd, a Norwegian timber company, has embarked on a plan to replace nearly 7,000 hectares of natural Tanzanian grasslands with monocultures of pine and eucalyptus, destroying the local biodiversity, displacing smallholders and burying jobs.

The loss of local employment has been a particularly thorny issue in Sierra Leone, where investments by the Socfin Agricultural Company in the Pujenhun district have marginalized workers in the area.

"Older people who have lost their land are not employed and women have to leave their homes as early as 4:30am to queue for daily wage jobs, which they seldom get," Joseph Rahall, the director of Green Scenery in Sierra Leone, told IPS.

"Vast tracks of land are now being cleared to make way for oil palm monocultures, which cannot be compared to a biodiverse flora. Families from the upland farms used to grow multiple crops capable of absorbing the shocks of food scarcity but many of these families have stopped planting for fear that multinationals will occupy their land," he said.

"Community members who were peacefully protesting the illegal occupation of their land were arrested and are now facing trials in court. The Northern countries' preference for biofuels has deprived countries like ours of basic human security," he added.

IPS

Part 2

The forests in Africa absorb over 1.2 billion tonnes of carbon annually. With these diverse and natural forests, grasslands and prairie lands disappearing under investment schemes and the development of monoculture plantations for supposed "green" energy alternatives like agrofuels, not much else remains to absorb the shocks of hunger and climate change.

"Whether they are for energy or for exports on global markets, monocropping schemes are really testing the limits of the ecosystems," Olivier De Schutter, the U.N.'s special rapporteur on the right to food, told IPS. "They are thirsty in water, fail to regenerate the soils and often result in an overuse of pesticides because the natural defences of nature (thanks to the diversity of plants) are missing."

"Raising food production 70 percent by 2050 is a figure habitually wheeled out," he added.

"Fertiliser and pesticide-driven yield increases, coupled with the ploughing up of rainforests and other remaining carbon sinks, could just about squeeze the extra tonnage of food out of the earth before the self-sustaining capacities of ecosystems are fully saturated."

Any approach of this nature is a race against time that will eventually be lost, and through which we will only accelerate the onset of climate change and its potential to devastate harvests," he said.

In a report to the U.N. Human Rights Council back in 2010, De Schutter presented comprehensive data on the need for agroecology: traditional practices that enhance soil productivity and use beneficial trees, plants, animals and insects to ward off pests rather than relying on fertiliser.

"To date, agroecological projects have shown an average crop yield increase of 80 percent in 57 developing countries, with an average increase of 116 percent for all African projects," De Schutter said. "Recent projects conducted in 20 African countries demonstrated a doubling of crop yields over a period of three to 10 years."

"The tragedy of rushing headlong into a second 'green revolution', where industrial solutions are sought on a global scale, is that other solutions are literally right within our grasp," he told IPS.

Very little capital would be required to promote agroecological practices, but the land grab in Africa, fueled by the rush for carbon reducing alternatives, has been coupled with blanket tax holidays for the multinationals buying up the continents' land, effectively robbing many impoverished states of desperately needed domestic revenues that could be invested in local development schemes, critics say.

For example, the U.S.-based Oakland Institute found that the government of Mozambique is offering generous fiscal incentives to a firm called EmVest Asset Management, which is on the verge of swallowing 2,000 hectares of the country's land for crop and livestock production.

The company's exemption from income tax obligations between 2010 and 2015 represents a loss of public revenue amounting to a million dollars.

In a similar project, the company AgriSol negotiated tax breaks with the government of Tanzania for income earned on a 325,000 hectare plot, for which the agro-giant will likely net an annual profit of 275 million dollars. This sum surpasses the Tanzanian ministry of agriculture's total yearly budget.

A report by the East African NGO Uwazi estimates that "2009/10 tax exemptions in Tanzania amounted to 425 million dollars. That money could have financed 40 percent more resources for education or 72 percent more resources for health between 2009-2010."

Henry Saragih, the general coordinator of the international peasants' network La Via Campesina, which represents 200 million peasants and farmers worldwide, told IPS, "If we look back to the past, we see that one of the primary objectives of colonisation was to find and absorb from the colony all the resources needed by the coloniser. Oil, gas and mining came later. It was first land and food that was stolen."

"Not just in Africa, but also in Indonesia, Malaysia, Honduras and numerous other countries the peasantry and indigenous and local communities are fighting to take back their land and territory," he added.

Comparing the cost of land in Africa with its developed counterparts paints a picture of colonial acquisition. While the U.S. leases its land for 16,000 dollars per hectare for just one year, Ethiopia leased 10,000 hectares of land to the Saudi Star for free over a 60- year period, while Mali leased 100,000 hectares for free over a similar time period.

"Our research found that actors like the World Bank Group (WBG) and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) not only push governments to privatise land but also work to change local legal systems of land tenure," Frederic Mousseau, the policy director of the Oakland Institute, told IPS.

In numerous African countries, WBG officials work closely with national governments to quietly overturn the few flimsy laws that peasants and farmers had hitherto held as the only protection of their basic land rights.

Back in 2007, Susan Hume, the country manager for Mozambique, urged the government to reconsider its property rights, speed up VAT refunds for private firms and adopt a "guillotine" on land licenses, adding, "The World Bank would be pleased to assist the government in this process, through Technical Assistance and with help from the Foreign Investment Advisory Service."

"By publishing this research on the relationship between the land grab, climate change, energy policies and investment practices, we're trying to break the "silo" approach to development that looks at each issue independently of the other," Mousseau told IPS.

"We feel it's important to challenge the development paradigm that is 'marketing' and privatising land and we hope this research promotes the return to communally owned land," he said.

Activists echoing these sentiments have teamed up with grassroots networks and coalitions in Durban to draw together these ideas under the banner of ecosocialism, a nascent global movement that is agitating for economic transformation with earth rights as a central guiding principle.

Joel Kovel, co-founder of the U.S.-based Ecosocialist Horizons, told a convergence of hundreds of peasants and farm workers in Durban last week that capitalism began with the enclosure of the commons.

"Examples like the Occupy Wall Street movement in the U.S. is people's attempt to reclaim these commons and reassert control over the means of production," Kovel told IPS. "Capitalism cannot be reformed, nor can it be voted out of power. It can only be defeated by the creation and proliferation of autonomous zones of eco- socialist transformation and production, which have earth rights at their centre."

"This is what we need to build now. This is what we're building in the U.S. and South Africa, while the U.N. gambles away our collective future," he added.

"People on the streets of South Africa are calling the U.N. talks 'genocidal'," Quincy Saul, author of "Reflections of Crisis: The Great Depression in the 21st Century", told IPS.

Quoting Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Saul added, "By delaying a binding agreement on global warming to 2020, the U.N. is effectively condemning 100 million Africans to death by the end of the century."

"To the majority of people on this continent, the U.N. is no different from Wall Street: it is the one percent," he said.

IPS

Bank is committed to financing West African commerical agriculture, but not biofuels

Standard Chartered Bank says it will focus more resources to financing agriculture within countries in the West Africa sub-region with Ghana and Nigeria being prime targets but rule out any support for biofuel production.

“We are looking at and will devote some resources and shift to agriculture in West Africa but the banks policies are clear on biofuel and its effects on food security,” Mr Dan Mobley, Regional Head of Corporate Affairs, Stanchart said at a meeting with a cross-section of journalists to mark the end of his visit to Accra.

The bank, which has already devoted three billion dollars to financing agriculture, currently focuses its activities in countries in the Southern Africa region.

Mr Mobley said although the focus of operations would be on commercial farmers, the bank was exploring the possibility to partner governments to develop innovative schemes for small holder farmers to enhance food security.

He said it was an exciting time to explore opportunities in Africa as investors were more focused on the continent as forecast had shown that seven countries on the continent would be among the 10 fastest growing economies over the next years.

“This growth is not only driven by commodities but is broad based and sustainable,” he said.

Mr Mobley said key growth poles would be agriculture financing since a large percentage of the arable land is yet to be put under cultivation, infrastructure project and increasing demand of consumers for sophisticated financial services.

It is estimated that about 75 per cent of the continent’s growth will come from the agricultural sector.

However, Mr Mobley said, governments on the continent must do more to attract investment into agriculture through building the necessary linkages in infrastructure and undertaking reforms to help boost production.

He said the bank is also in a unique position to explore the explosive growth in trade between Africa and Asia, adding that the Asia-African trade corridor was important for growth.

Ghana is Stanchart’s second largest market in Africa.

Accra Mail

Biofuel policy needs rethink after initial over-enthusiasm, says UN expert

The UN special rapporteur on the right to food urged the EU for a rethink on biofuels, saying huge errors had been committed in the initial enthusiasm for an alternative to harmful fossil fuels.

"The more biofuels the EU produces, the more it will be forced to import vegetable oils from the rest of the world," said Olivier De Schutter.

As the European Commission prepares to release a report on the question early next year, the UN expert admitted it would be difficult to turn back given the huge investments made by farmers attracted by pledges of a booming biofuel market.

With the European Union committed to producing 10 percent of its energy in renewables by 2020, massive investments have also been made in buying land in Africa to produce sugar or sweet potatoes for biofuels.

"We may have to fundamentally rethink this policy," he said at a Brussels press conference.

Officials, experts and scientists were increasingly underlining errors made in the past few years in backing biofuels.

Headlined as a magic solution to global warming, it was now surfacing that biofuels "are not an efficient way of reducing greenhouse gases," he said.

AFP

Zimbabwe's sugarcane-derived biofuel goes on the market

Emerging African biofuel giant Green Fuel Limited of Zimbabwe has re-introduced locally made ethanol motor fuel blend that is 9 cents cheaper at the pump than gasoline.

The company has a US$600 million ethanol production and processing unit in Chisumbanje Estates, Manicaland province, The sugar cane-based fuel has been warmly received by motorists, according to a Green Fuel manager quoted by Newsday.

The pump price of the blend is US$1.36 a liter – 9 cents lower than straight gasoline.

In a statement, Green Fuel said that while the pricing structure needs to be competitive for sustainable production, the company anticipates a drop in local blend prices in reaction to its presence in the petroleum market.

The company said it has created thousands of jobs for local people among numerous other positive spinoffs from the project. “In the last three months, seven banks opened branches at the local growth point Checheche Business Center.”

Green Fuel said over 4,500 jobs have been generated around the ethanol plant, filled mostly by Zimbabweans returning home from the Southern African region.

Economist Eric Bloch said the biofuel project could create thousands of direct and downstream jobs, and reduce Zimbabwe's dependence on imported fuel.

But independent economist Bekithemba Mhlanga said that while the introduction of the ethanol-blended fuel is positive, its future is uncertain.

VOA

UK firm's failed biofuel dream wrecks lives of Tanzania villagers

by Damian Carrington

"People feel this is like the return of colonialism," says Athumani Mkambala, chairman of Mhaga village in rural Tanzania. "Colonialism in the form of investment."

A quarter of the village's land in Kisarawe district was acquired by a British biofuels company in 2008, with the promise of financial compensation, 700 jobs, water wells, improved schools, health clinics and roads. But the company has gone bust, leaving villagers not just jobless but landless as well. The same story is playing out across Africa, as foreign investors buy up land but leave some of the poorest people on Earth worse off when their plans fail.

The tale of London-based Sun Biofuels's misadventure in Kisarawe links the broken hopes of the villagers to offshore tax havens and mysterious new owners, tracked down by the Observer, and ultimately to petrol pumps in the UK and across Europe. The final link results from the mandatory blending of biofuels into European petrol and diesel. The aim is to reduce carbon emissions, but many say biofuels actually increase pollution. The G20 meeting next week will discuss the issue, following a stark report it received in June from the World Bank, World Trade Organisation, UN and others calling for biofuels subsidies to be abandoned.

"The situation in Kisarawe is heartbreaking, but the real tragedy is that it is far from unique. Communities across Africa and beyond are losing their land as a result of the massive biofuel targets set by our government," said Josie Cohen at development group ActionAid, which works in Kisarawe. "Like it or not, everyone who drives a car or catches a bus is involved in this problem, as all UK petrol and diesel is mixed with biofuels."

It was the promise of this lucrative export market that led Sun Biofuels to Africa to plant jatropha, the seeds of which can be processed into biodiesel. Mkambala's first contact with the company was in 2006 through the former Kisarawe MP, Athumani Janguo. "People trusted him. We thought all our problems would be solved," Mkambala told the Observer. He says no compensation has been paid for the land, on which villagers used to hunt animals, gather firewood, wild mushrooms and honey.

Mhaga has no electricity, and water has to be carried each day from a well several kilometres away, back to the small mud or concrete-block houses in which 1,000 people live. "Water is everything," says local activist Halima Ali, sitting with three of her children on the earth floor of their home. "Because they promised there would be water available, everyone was happy." There would be more time for farming and more time for her children to go to school, she says. But the company drilled only a 6in-wide hole in the village, despite having sunk a 100m well on the plantation. "We thought something very good had come to the village, to lift our standard of life, but now we are only crying," she says.

Sun Biofuels was the first company to come to the area and about 50 people in Mhaga rushed to take jobs at its plantation, some queueing for days for the £42-a-month salary. Saidi Abasi was one, but he was soon unhappy. He asked his employer why a promised pay rise failed to materialise. "The reply was 'if you want to work, work. If you don't, get out'," he says.

Abasi's job was spraying pesticides, but he claims he was initially given no protective equipment. "During spraying, we became like drunk people," he says. When his contract was terminated after Sun Biofuels went into administration, he says he was not paid the full severance pay due for his 18 months of service.

Mhaga's crowded school teaches 257 children and was promised new classrooms, books and materials, says teacher Rhamadani Lwinde, but all that appeared were a few portable blackboards. In addition to the village land, the company also took 670 hectares of Lwinde's family land, he says. He was offered 13m Tanzanian shillings (£4,835), which he says was not a good price, "but we were advised to accept it by the district authorities. If we had problems we would sort it out later, they said." In the end he says he was paid for just 85 hectares.

In the nearby village of Mtamba, villagers tell the same stories of broken promises and unpaid compensation. Tabu Koba says he was one of 11 people to lose land and one of nine who received no money at all. "We are very angry," he says. "My children have now left school but have nowhere to farm."

Sun Biofuels and two related companies went into administration in August, but their shares in a Tanzanian subsidiary – Sun Biofuels Tanzania, which did not go bust – were sold. The insolvency company directed the Observer to Christopher Egerton-Warburton and a company called Thirty Degrees East, based in the tax haven of Mauritius. Egerton-Warburton is a former Goldman Sachs banker and now a partner at the London-based merchant bank Lion's Head Global Partners. "We are part of a consortium that purchased the shares of Sun Biofuels Tanzania," he said. "Given that we are currently in the process of raising additional funds, I am not at liberty to discuss publicly or off the record about our long-term plans."

Egerton-Warburton said a site visit was not possible, but when the Observer went to the plantation it was able to interview farm manager Ambilikile Mwenisongole, who has worked there for four years and lives on site. He confirmed that fewer than 50 of the 700 workers remained and that the plantation was not operating due to the change of ownership. Mwenisongole said the progress on the water wells and other social services were "not on target because of the transition", but he denied that workers lacked tools or protective equipment and rejected claims that access to an ancestral graveyard had been blocked. He blamed the complaints on rumours spread by "lazy" villagers.

It was not possible for the villagers to get their land back, Mwenisongole said. "It is now owned by the government. The government was meant to compensate the land owners." In Tanzania, large land deals are done through the district government, which acquires the land and then leases it to companies. District officials have told villagers that Sun Biofuels did not pay all the money due, but refused to see the Observer.

Mwenisongole named Kenyan Alan Mayers as the new chief executive of Sun Biofuels Tanzania. Mayers said he could not comment on the previous owners' failure to provide wells and classrooms, but added: "We are looking into the matter and our community relations officer is in constant contact with the villages." Villagers say that there has been just one recent meeting.

Mayers said all compensation for land and all due severance pay had been paid, and that he was unaware of claims by ex-workers that national insurance payments were missing. He added: "We are focused on a positive, collaborative relationship with local people."

Yet Kisarawe MP Selemani Saidi Jafo said: "I am the MP and I am not yet informed there is a new owner. What is the secret behind it? I need investors to come to my district, especially to help bring employment for many people. I prefer a win-win project, but this is not a win-win." Why Sun Biofuels went bust is unknown, as attempts to contact the previous owners were unsuccessful. Whatever the reason, the company is far from alone. A large jatropha plantation created by a Dutch firm called Bioshape in the southern Tanzanian district of Kilwa has also gone bankrupt, leaving locals complaining of missing land payments. Also in Tanzania, a large ethanol biofuel project set up by Swedish company Sekab went bust. In both cases, the land has not been returned to its owners.

Further afield, in Ghana, a Norwegian-backed jatropha project has collapsed, while in Mozambique a UK-linked company called Procana, behind a huge ethanol project, has folded in acrimony. The Observer's investigations and those of journalist Stefano Valentino have identified at least 30 abandoned biofuels projects in 15 African countries.

The thirst for biofuels to meet the UK and EU's rising targets has led British companies to lead the charge into Africa. Half the 3.2m hectares of biofuel land identified is linked to 11 British companies, the biggest proportion of any country. ActionAid's estimate suggests that up to 6m hectares has been acquired. But with landowners frequently illiterate and unaware of their rights, the potential for exploitation is high.

In Kisarawe, the villagers do not know if the promises will ever be kept. They feel deeply betrayed and are increasingly angry as time passes without answers. "If we have not got our rights by December, we will slash the jatropha plants," says Mkambala. "That will be the clearest sign that we do not need this company here."

The Guardian

Two dead in Senegalese protest over Italian investor's disputed biofuel project

A disputed biofuels project in northern Senegal has triggered violent clashes between villagers, leaving two people dead and two seriously wounded, police said on October 27.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a police officer said residents of Fanaye village “fought with sticks and machetes” in disagreement over the project. 

Fanaye is situated in the Senegal River valley, near the Mauritanian border, one of the country's main areas of agricultural production. 

Local media explained that some villagers were angry that thousands of hectares of land had been given to an Italian to cultivate sweet potatoes for the production of biofuels, sparking fears over the loss of grazing land and displacement of villages. 

A local organisation defending land rights in the village said the project would lead to "displacement of villages, destruction of cattle and desecration of cemeteries and mosques."

Senegal has in recent years pushed the idea of using its land for biofuel production, with the backing of Brazil and fervent support of President Abdoulaye Wade.

Wade said he "deeply regrets" the deaths and wants an explanation. A cabinet statement said Wade had asked the ministers of agriculture, environment and decentralisation for "a detailed statement on this situation."

AFP

British biofuel company pulls out of Kenya

Conservationists have congratulated a British firm which has become the first to pull out of the race to exploit a wildlife haven in Kenya.

European renewable fuel targets mean the Tana River Delta in Kenya – a  key site for threatened bird species as well as Hippopotamus and rare primates – is being targeted by companies hoping to grow biofuel crops.

The RSPB and others have been fighting the proposals which will destroy one of the most important wetland wildlife sites in Africa. Now G4 Industries Limited, based near Cambridge, UK, have withdrawn their proposal for a 28,000 ha project at Tana, citing growing evidence of environmental issues.

Tim Stowe, RSPB Director of International Operations, said: “We congratulate G4 Industries on their wise decision. They have listened to all the evidence about the impact of plantations in the Tana Delta and have done the right thing. We hope other companies with similar proposals in the area will now start to follow suit and withdraw their plans. This is fantastic news for wildlife and people in the Tana River

Delta. It is a truly remarkable place and it must be protected from the rush for biofuels which will cause more damage to our planet than the fossil fuels they replace.’’

Mike Pond, Executive Director of G4 Industries, said: “We have become  increasingly concerned about the environmental implications of  operations in the Tana Delta and we have now decided to withdraw from the region.’’

‘‘Sustainable farming is key to the world’s development but it is essential that these operations are carried out in harmony with the environment and working hand in hand with local governments and environmental organisations. This means avoiding areas of wildlife habitat and green field sites where a natural balance cannot be maintained.’’

‘‘It is interesting to note that 90 per cent of African farming operations, particularly subsistence farming, are delivering less than 30 per cent of the yield that could be achieved. Much work is required to address this issue

Bedford Biofuels Inc, a Canadian company, recently started work on their own 10,000 ha project to grow the controversial biofuel crop Jatropha in the Delta. Although described as a ‘pilot’, the plan is Phase 1 of a project aims ultimately to see jatropha plantations on over 60,000 ha in the Delta and surrounding area. The plant has been

hailed as a miracle biofuel crop, but in fact, fully rigorous scientific evaluation is yet to be done.

Paul Matiku, Executive Director of Nature Kenya, said: “We call on Bedford Biofuels to follow the example of G4 and withdraw their project. Their assertion that the land in the delta is currently large and unutilised is simply not true: the land is used by pastoralist communities and in the dry season there can be as many as 1.5 million

animals there.’’

‘‘Indeed, in times of drought like this year there could be as many as 3 million animals there. We hope that Bedford reconsiders its plans for Tana and we will continue to raise the issue with the Kenyan authorities to ensure their proposals do not harm the area’s precious wildlife.”

Bird Watch

BioPalm plantation will lead to destruction of communities in Cameroon

The government of Cameroon has signed a MoU for the creation of a 200,000 ha palm oil plantation by BioPalm Energy Ltd (a subsidiary of the Singapore-based SIVA Group) in Ocean province, Cameroon. This project was launched on Wednesday 24th August 2011 – despite the indigenous Bagyeli people opposing the decision to allocate their customary lands to the BioPalm plantation.

Recent fieldwork by Forest Peoples Programme (FPP) has found that neither the project nor the state has secured the Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) of the Bagyeli, as required by the United Nations Declaration on Indigenous Peoples Rights, which Cameroon has ratified.

To establish the plantation, native trees will be cut down and replaced with a monoculture of oil palms, making hunting and fishing in these areas impossible. The Bagyeli mostly depend on hunting, fishing and collecting forest products for their livelihoods, regularly going for several days deep into the forest. They also use the forest for traditional medicine. It is clear that the plantation will be the end of their way of life.

The Bagyeli communities that FPP visited said that “the plantation is a way to make the Bagyeli disappear.” As well as making their traditional livelihoods impossible the plantation will also lead to the erosion and loss of their culture by preventing transmission of their forest knowledge. They asked, “How will we survive?” as several of their villages are even located within the planned plantation. It is unclear how the project plans to deal with them.
The project does not plan to provide any compensation for indigenous peoples and other local communities (Bagyeli and others). Communities have merely been informed that a 4km-wide strip along the road will be left to them for all their activities. Some of the other local communities are divided, as some are attracted to the project by the promise of “development,” such as schools, health centres and a good road that the government has failed to provide so far.

They are also hoping to benefit from employment in the company.

Nevertheless, many of these promised benefits are unlikely to materialise or to be short-lived as such concessions tend to employ people from much further afield, and any services that they establish need sustained investment in human resources. Moreover, the Bagyeli are already marginalized by dominant local communities, thus they are unlikely to see even short-term benefit from social schemes, employment or secure land for farming.

The felling of timber in the forest and the planting of palm trees has not yet begun. There is still an opportunity for the government to fulfill its role towards communities and respect its international obligations.

ForestPeoples.org  

UK-based Sun Biofuel's jatropha investment in Tanzania suspended

by Finnigan wa Simbeye

An ambitious biodiesel project which was allocated over 8,000 hectares of land by Kisarawe district (Tanzania) officials in 2008 is in trouble.

Employees and casual workers of Sun Biofuels Plc said that work at Kisarawe jatropha farm came to a halt in late September when managers informed over 300 of them to collect their terminal benefits and leave till further notice. Some workers of the British firm said they heard reports that the project has been sold but did not know who bought it.

Saidi Mohammed, an employee, said the management promised to rehire some of them once the project gets on firm footing as financial problems have forced management to suspend work at the site.

Several workers expressed disgust at the failing jatropha project which is the second time in less than five years for foreign firms to abandon their jatropha projects.

Netherlands based BioShape Holdings which acquired 34,000 hectares of land in Kilwa district of Lindi region, abandoned the farm in November 2009 blaming global recession. BioShape had employed over 100 people permanently while another 700 were casual labourers.

Efforts to get SBF Managing Director Richard Morgan comment on the latest development failed as he is reportedly outside the country. But an official with the company said activities have been temporarily suspended because of droughts.

“The trees have been so seriously affected by droughts that we cannot continue to keep people on the job and pay them salaries,” the official, who declined to identify himself, said while dismissing allegations that SBF has disposed of the project.

Sun Biofuels applied for 20,000 ha of land in the district but only managed to get close to 9,000ha from 11 villages with a population of over 11,200 people, according to local officials.

Initially, district officials had set the compensation mark at 800m/- after an Ardhi University expert evaluation of individual plots but at the end of the compensation process which drew some complaints, less than 300m/- had been paid.

Targeting to supply the European Union market, SBF planned to invest 20 million British pounds by 2012 to produce jatropha seeds for use as raw materials to manufacture biodiesel.

The decision by European Union countries to ensure that at least 20 percent of its energy comes from renewable sources attracted a lot of attention from investors. The EU lured many multinational energy companies such as SBF to invest in renewable energies in developing countries such Tanzania, where almost all such projects are on the verge of collapse or shut down.

Europe’s largest ethanol company, Sekab AB of Sweden is also struggling to sustain its Bagamoyo sugarcane plantations, targeted to produce ethanol for consumption in Europe.

Daily News

Philippine National Oil Company abandons 'unviable' jatropha plans

by Amy R. Remo

PNOC Alternative Fuels Corp, the biofuels arm of Philippine National Oil Company has abandoned plans to develop jatropha as a possible biofuel source.

The company, after undertaking initial studies, found that the plan was not viable. It now intends to use the remaining funds earmarked for jatropha in developing other possible fuel alternatives.

Energy Secretary Jose Rene D. Almendras said PNOC-AFC was now “out” of the agreements and contracts it previously signed for the development of jatropha.

The company is currently studying the viability of sorghum, kamoteng kahoy and other plants as possible biofuels feedstock.

For biodiesel, the government is considering algae as a possible alternative fuel. “But there will be no massive investment for now. We will first study our options,” Almendras said.

This means, the remaining P400 million from the P1 billion budget allocated for the development of jatropha back in 2009 will not be used unless the other possible raw materials for biofuels are already proven viable.

The passage of the Biofuels Law in 2006 prompted several companies to look into and develop jatropha as an alternative fuel. PNOC-AFC, as the biofuels arm of Philippine National Oil Co., was tasked to promote and accelerate the use of biofuels to reduce the country’s dependence on imported fuel.

Philippine Daily Inquirer

Biofuels land grab in Kenya's Tana Delta fuels talk of war

by Tracy McVeigh


Gamba Manyatta village is empty now... The people who were evicted took as much of their building materials as they could carry to start again and the land where their homes stood is now ploughed up.

Mohamed Abdi, 13, points out where his hut used to be. His was the last of the 427 families to leave. "They told us we would be burned out if we didn't go," he said. "They drove machinery round and round the village all day and all night to drive people out. No one understood why, as the village had been there for more than 25 years."

The eviction of the villagers to make way for a sugar cane plantation is part of a wider land grab going on in Kenya's Tana Delta that is not only pushing people off plots they have farmed for generations, stealing their water resources and raising tribal tensions that many fear will escalate into war, but also destroying a unique wetland habitat that is home to hundreds of rare and spectacular birds.

The irony is that most of the land is being taken for allegedly environmental reasons – to allow private companies to grow water-thirsty sugar cane and jatropha for the biofuels so much in demand in the west, where green legislation, designed to ease carbon dioxide emissions, is requiring they are mixed with petrol and diesel.

The delta, one of Kenya's last wildernesses and one of the most important bird habitats in Africa, is the flood plain of the Tana river, which flows 1,014km from Mount Kenya to the Indian Ocean.

Global warming and reduced rainfall has already hit the delta hard. "No proper research has been done into what wildlife is here, and now the habitat is disappearing there is no evidence of what we are losing," said Francis Kagema, of Nature Kenya, a conservation group.

Standing on the bank of a small lake that clearly was once much larger, he says, "You don't need to be a scientist to see the situation here is critical and the land grab is terrible. This is supposed to be the wet season. The elephants have already gone, the hippos are going, birds are less and less."

The delta's people are trying to fight their own government over the huge blocks of land being turned over to companies including the Canadian company, Bedford Biofuels, which was this year granted a licence by the Kenyan environmental regulator for a 10,000-hectare jatropha "pilot" project. A UK-based firm, G4 Industries Ltd, has been awarded a licence for 28,000 hectares.

At the site where the former villagers from Gamba Manyatta were told to relocate, elder Bule Gedi Darso, 57, shows the foul-smelling stream that they have to draw their water from. "This is not a good place. Children have died, we have typhoid and malaria now. We were healthy before and our children went to school. This river is the drainage and pesticides from all the big farms. The proper river has been diverted to irrigate them and now we just get their poison. When we were evicted they showed us the maps, and we saw many more villages who don't yet know they are to be evicted too. Where will they all go?"

It is a question worrying another village. Didewaride was once surrounded by wetland, only accessible by boat. Now it is stranded amid miles of brown earth with occasional pools of water. Omar Bocha Kofonde, an elder, says: "The hippos have gone, the fish, the birds, and the soil is salty. The goats and cattle have no grazing. The rivers used to flush out the sea water, now the sea is coming up on to our land because there is no river. Everything is in danger. People thought they owned the land, we have been here for hundreds of years. Now we will fight; we are ready to die, for what else is there?"

It is the same view coming from villagers all around the delta, Christian and Muslim, farmers and herdsmen from the Pokomo, Orma, Luo and other tribes. The village of Ozi has just discovered that two huge plots of its land were sold at auction in April – they do not know who sold it or who bought it.

"This land ownership is giving us a headache. We know there are people who have sold our land when it isn't theirs to sell. They are criminals and we will fight them, with guns and with sticks," said Ali Saidi Kichei of Ozi village, which last month sent a delegation to the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, to demand a meeting with the Kenyan minister for lands. "We lived in paradise, in peace," he said. "Now what? No water, only salty water, land thieves and water thieves, and children with empty stomachs."

Kagema says Nature Kenya is trying to support villagers to go to court. "These people have lived here for hundreds of years, but suddenly someone writes up a piece of paper and they are squatters on their own land. The delta is of international importance, yet they control the water and drain the wetlands and portions are parcelled off to private investors like the biofuel companies. Homes and lands are given away from under them. Nobody cares because nothing happens immediately, but it is coming. Tana Delta is in chaos. When everyone picks up their share with their bits of paperwork … it will be war. The day is coming."

The Guardian

Biofuel deal sparks land debate in Sierra Leone

Hailed as the biggest ever investment in Sierra Leone's agriculture, a plan to grow thousands of hectares of sugarcane to produce ethanol has raised fears over food security and land rights.

Swiss group Addax & Oryx announced on June 17 that it had signed a 258 million euro ($368 million) deal with seven European and African development banks to finance the bioenergy project near Makeni in the north of the country. The hot and rainy west African nation, recovering from a brutal civil war which ended in 2002, has the ideal climate to grow sugarcane, much like that of ethanol powerhouse Brazil which has led the way in using the crop for biofuel.

Sierra Leone's agriculture ministry says the company has leased 57,000 hectares (141,000 acres) of land for a period of 50 years...

The project, according to the Geneva-based Addax group, will include "development of a sugarcane plantation, the construction of an ethanol refinery and a biomass power station."

Construction is expected to begin this year, and operations are set to start in 2013, eventually employing up to 2,000 people.

Most of the ethanol -- which can be blended with gasoline and diesel to reduce dependence on harmful fossil fuels -- will be exported to European markets. The biomass power station is expected to eventually produce a fifth of Sierra Leone's electricity.

While Addax has outlined a raft of measures to boost food security and train farmers, some remain unconvinced and say farmers risk losing fertile land or have been caught up in dodgy land deals.

A study commissioned by Swiss group Bread for All released on June 15 said that "many farmers in project-affected communities have already lost their access to fertile lands."

While Addax provided alternative, often smaller farmland, their promises to plough and harrow the lands materialised too late in 2010. "This led to very low yield on these fields and local communities are reported to now face growing food insecurity and hunger," it added.

Beat Dietschy, who heads the NGO, said landowners "have given consent to Addax based on verbal promises which have not been realised."

Addax managing director Nikolai Germann said this study was a campaign of misinformation. "Not only is Addax Bioenergy bound to respect the laws of Sierra Leone, it has also signed agreements with seven European and African development banks which require the company to comply with the highest environmental and social standards," he said.

Addax, which plans to develop a plantation of 10,000 hectares of sugarcane, says large areas of land are available for communities to use as the project uses up less than a third of the total land leased. It has also set up a programme to help small farmers become self-sufficient, offering over 2,000 farmers a 30-week training course and has ploughed over 2,000 hectares of community fields. "This is today the largest food production programme in the country," said Germann.

However a group of landowners in Makeni say they are "angry over the deal"

"When Addax visited the area, they promised us schools, boreholes, hospitals because of the chemicals they would be using, and jobs," said Ali Bangura, a representative of the Landowners Committee of Makeni. "But nothing has materialised since 2008."

Germann said the company had taken care not to create unrealistic expectations and considered that "providing education and health services to the general public are the responsibility of the government and not of private investors." Two clinics have however been set up for local workers and their families.

Sierra Leone's Agriculture Minister Sam Sesay has defended the investment.

"Large scale investors are not the slash-and-burn type. What land they have they can make use of year round and for many years unlike the small holders who move here and there," he said. "So taking part of the land to give to large investors is worth doing."


Expatica

Can biofuels save Africa?

by Kyle Niemeyer

Biofuels offer the promise of carbon-neutral fuels to replace conventional fossil fuels, although some studies show that under some conditions, they can cause more climate problems than they solve. Critics also say that biofuel crops such as wheat and corn displace food crops and cause increased food prices.

On the other hand, according to two recent articles in a supplement of Nature, biofuels may be the savior of Africa through spurring agricultural development, job creation, and providing a source of electricity and possible exports.

The first paper presents the case of a small village in Mali, a landlocked country in western Africa, where a collective of farmers replaced their existing cotton crops with jatropha (Jatropha curcas), a plant that produces seed oil that can be converted into biodiesel. The resulting fuel is both being burned to power the previously un-electrified village and for transportation purposes.

The group that has helped organize the switch, Netherlands-based Fuels from Agriculture in Communal Technology (FACT) Foundation, is replicating the project in ten nearby villages and hopes to expand it across Africa in the future. However, while the pilot project is successful enough that the profits from electricity sales cover the operating expenses, the upfront costs are too high—the project could never have gotten started without external and governmental support.

This is a general trend. Most of the investments in African biofuels come from large foreign entities: ten companies invested an estimated $5.7 billion-6.7 billion in Africa, Asia, and South America from 2000-2009.

In particular, Ghana and Zambia saw 1.1 million and 0.6 million hectares of land bought to grow jatropha. However, these investments rarely benefit the local population, even when companies sign contracts to buy crops or strike deals for land for farming/processing jobs. Many companies reneged on contracts, and locals find themselves stuck in long (50 years in one case) leases with either no jobs or no buyers.

In both cases, more government attention may help. By funding local projects or regulating larger-scale industrial biofuel processing, African governments can ensure that their populations benefit from this opportunity.

The second paper tries to make the case that developing biofuels in Africa could actually improve food security, rather than increase prices and displace food crops for land. Well known biofuels based on crops like corn, wheat, and sugar cane (first-generation biofuels) compete with food, but second-generation biofuel crops such as jatropha and grasses can be grown on marginal land (land that can't be used for food crops). Supporting second-generation biofuel crops, the authors say, will build a valuable industry but also improve food security through badly needed agricultural infrastructure development. In addition, some grasses and other biofuel crops can regenerate degraded soil, another major obstacle to agricultural grown.

One issue the authors mention but don't adequately address is that biofuel crops like grasses and agave, which are particularly suited for marginal lands, don't have any well developed, inexpensive processing technology. Oil seeds from crops such as jatropha require relatively simple processing but are more expensive, yield less fuel per unit land, and need higher-quality land that may compete with land needed for food crops.

The development of biofuels in Africa may offer a way out of poverty and hunger, but the reality may never meet the hype. The articles suggest they'll face considerable technological and financial challenges, and they suggest that greater governmental and non-governmental support, funding, and regulation are necessary for the practical growth of biofuels. However, Africa has plenty of unused and underused land, so biofuel crops may just be the way to bring prosperity to more of the continent.

Nature, 2011. DOI: 10.1038/474S018a, 10.1038/474S020a (About DOIs).


Arstechnica

D1 Oils fails to win backing of its auditor over jatropha doubts

by Rowena Mason

Brian Myerson, the activist investor whose funds own 27pc of D1, quit as chairman last year after a failed boardroom coup. D1 said that his son, Nicholas, will be independent and not a representative for his father's funds.

The company will need to raise money this year and next to support the sale of jatropha plant as biodiesel. D1 Oils sold its technology business to two former directors last year.

Ernst & Young yesterday gave a "disclaimer of opinion" on whether the company could continue as a going concern. The auditor identified "significant uncertainties," including the "need to demonstrate that jatropha can deliver sustainable economics for both farmer and industry".

D1 is in the middle of a "business review" due by August. In a board shake-up, the current chairman, Barclay Forrest, will be replaced by Steven Rudofsky, an ex-Glencore trader, as executive chairman.
Martin Jarvis, the chief executive, will become chief operating officer. Brunswick, its longstanding public relations adviser, is no longer working with D1 Oils.

The Telegraph

G20 action plan addresses symptoms, not causes of food insecurity

by Olivier De Schutter

“The fact that the G20 Ministers of Agriculture arrived at an agreement in Paris is excellent news, and it shows that governments feel that business as usual is not an option anymore” said Olivier De Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food. “However, the action plan adopted today addresses the symptoms of price volatility on agricultural markets, but it fails to address the causes. Several points of the plan are insufficient.”

“The final declaration is particularly disappointing on the issue of biofuels”, said the UN expert. “There is a consensus among international agencies that biofuels production and especially the diversion of land to corn production has been a major factor in the price increases of basic food commodities over the past four years. That the G20 still insists on the need for more studies rather than on the need to remove distorting fiscal incentives and subsidies shows how commercial interests can trump the concern for food security. It is also troubling that biofuels are mentioned as a source of rural development, when in practice, up to now at least, the production of biofuels primarily benefits large agro-export companies and use the natural resources from the South to feed the thirst for renewable energies in the North.”

On the question of food reserves, the final declaration refers to a targeted system of humanitarian emergency food reserves. “This is of course an important tool for the World Food Programme, and it will allow the WFP to have access to food stocks on time to react to crises”, said De Schutter. “But at the same time, the issue of food stocks that could have a stabilizing effect on prices is studiously avoided. Yet, that question will necessarily reemerge when it will be asked how the emergency food reserves shall function: which farmers shall we buy from? Shall we turn to the local smallholders or shall these reserves be a means for US or EU farmers to deal with their surpluses? And shall we buy at a fair price, supporting the incomes of smallholders whom we shall source the supplies from?”

According to the UN Special Rapporteur, the chapter on financial regulation is welcome, but may miss the most important point. “The Agriculture Ministers strongly encouraged their Finance counterparts to allow authorities supervising the financial markets to impose position limits. However, speculation typically results not from the manipulation of prices by one single financial actor taking excessive positions, but from the combined actions of a large number of actors adopting a herding behaviour: it is this herding behaviour that is at the source of price bubbles.”

“Finally, it is important to provide countries and economic actors with instruments to hedge against volatility. Some developing countries like Malawi, Mexico or Ghana already use this instrument, either to secure imports of staples at affordable prices or to shield their export revenues. But this remains rather exceptional, and most developing countries -- and companies within these countries -- do not generally have access to such financial tools to hedge themselves against the risk of volatility. In order to rely on these instruments, such as the new fund established by the World Bank with the JP Morgan and Chase Bank, small farmers and cooperatives in developing countries shall need considerable capacity-building, and it is not clear whether they shall be able to benefit. It should also be noted that such instruments address the impacts of volatility, reducing their negative impacts for producers and consumers ; they of course are not a means to address the causes, which primarily result from a lack of investment in food production in a range of developing countries, from climate related events, from the increased competition for land between urban expansion and various agricultural uses, from the link between the food and the energy markets and from speculation.”


“At the end, the roots of the problem remain unaddressed in this action plan: food markets that are highly dependent on energy markets, irresponsible mandates to increase the production and use of biofuels, and speculation that cannot be reduced to some investors manipulating prices. And while more transparency about stocks should help reduce the attractiveness of speculation, it remains doubtful whether the private sector will have enough incentives to participate in the information-sharing system that is being set up. In fact, even some of the tools that seek to address the symptoms are deficient: financial instruments to allow producers to hedge against price volatility shall not in fact be available to most smallholders, and as they are currently conceived, the emergency food reserves to address humanitarian crises are unable, by themselves, to ensure stable incomes to producers or to shield poor households from price shocks.”


“The G20 action plan is a step in the right direction. But the current situation called for an ambitious jump forward," concluded the UN Food Expert.


Olivier De Schutter was appointed the Special Rapporteur on the right to food in May 2008 by the United Nations Human Rights Council. He is independent from any government or organization.

For more information on the mandate and work of the Special Rapporteur, visit: www.srfood.org or http://www2.ohchr.org/english/issues/food/index.htm