[세계 경제]글로벌 농지의 급등

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

The Global Farmland Rush

By MICHAEL KUGELMAN

Published: February 5, 2013

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/06/opinion/the-global-farmland-rush.html?ref=opinion&_r=0

OVER the last decade, as populations have grown, capital has flowed across borders and crop yields have leveled off, food-importing nations and private investors have been securing land abroad to use for agriculture. Poor governments have embraced these deals, but their people are in danger of losing their patrimony, not to mention their sources of food.

According to Oxfam, land equivalent to eight times the size of Britain was sold or leased worldwide in the last 10 years. In northern Mozambique, a Brazilian-Japanese venture plans to farm more than 54,000 square miles — an area comparable to Pennsylvania and New Jersey combined — for food exports. In 2009, a Libyan firm leased 386 square miles of land from Mali without consulting local communities that had long used it. In the Philippines, the government is so enthusiastic to promote agribusiness that it lets foreigners register partnerships with local investors as domestic corporations.

The commoditization of global agriculture has aggravated the destabilizing effects of these large-scale land grabs. Investors typically promise to create local jobs and say that better farming technologies will produce higher crop yields and improve food security.

However, few of these benefits materialize. For example, as The Economist reported, a Swiss company promised local farmers 2,000 new jobs when it acquired a 50-year lease to grow biofuel crops on 154 square miles in Makeni, Sierra Leone; in the first three years, it produced only 50.

Many investors, in fact, use their own labor force, not local workers, and few share their technology and expertise. Moreover, about two-thirds of foreign investors in developing countries expect to sell their harvests elsewhere. These exports may not even be for human consumption. In 2008 in Sudan, the United Arab Emirates was growing sorghum, a staple of the Sudanese diet, to feed camels back home.

Much of the land being acquired is in conflict-prone countries. One of the largest deals — the acquisition by investors led by the Saudi Binladin Group of some 4,600 square miles in Indonesia — was put on hold because the area, in Papua, was torn by strife.

The prospects for conflict are heightened by legal uncertainties. Often, an absence of authoritative land registration and titles makes it easy for foreign investors, with the connivance of host governments, to secure land that local communities have long depended upon, even if they cannot demonstrate formal ownership. About 500 million sub-Saharan Africans rely on such communally held land, and land sales can be devastating, as in Mali. Access to food is often cut off, livelihoods are shattered and communities are uprooted.

Not surprisingly, the land sales provoke protests and then repression. Last year, in Cambodia, where 55 percent of arable land has been acquired by domestic and foreign agribusiness interests, the authorities killed an activist, a journalist and a teenage girl facing eviction; jailed other activists, and harassed politically active Buddhist monks.

To be sure, financiers have invested in farmland for centuries: Ancient Romans acquired assets in North Africa, just as American fruit companies secured plantations in Central America a century ago. But today’s transactions are far bigger. Nearly 200 private equity firms are expected to have almost $30 billion in private capital invested by 2015.

Some speculators just sit on high-value land they have acquired without cultivating it. In many traditional communities, this feels like a desecration, a violation of land’s purpose and meaning. That kind of capitalist disregard can set the stage for pitched battles over land that investors see as uninhabited, but that local communities cherish as a source of food, water and medicine, or venerate as ancestral burial grounds.

The chief drivers of the global farmland race — population growth, food and energy demand, volatile commodity prices, land and water shortages — won’t slow anytime soon. Neither will extreme weather events and other effects of climate change on natural resources.

In theory, host countries could limit how much land can be acquired by foreigners, or require that a minimum portion of harvests be sold in local markets. Argentina and Brazil have announced measures to limit or ban new land concessions. But investors use their wealth and their own governments’ power to impede regulation. Host governments should establish better land registration practices and enact safeguards against the displacement of their citizens. The World Bank and other international entities must ensure that their development projects are free from the taint of exploitative practices.

Of course, this will be difficult because so many host governments are riddled with corruption and prioritize profit-making land deals over the needs of their populations. Cambodia, Laos and Sudan — all sites of transnational land purchases — are among the world’s 20 most corrupt nations, according to Transparency International.

“Buy land, they’re not making it anymore,” is a quotation often attributed to Mark Twain. These days, that advice is being heeded all too well.

Michael Kugelman, a senior program associate at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, is co-editor of “The Global Farms Race: Land Grabs, Agricultural Investment, and the Scramble for Food Security.”

요약

 지난 10년 동안 인구는 증가했고, 자본은 국경을 넘어 흘러 수확량은 안정됨에 따라, 식품 수입국과 개인 투자자들은 해외 토지를 확보하고 있다. 가난한 정부는 이러한 거래에 응하지만, 국민들은 식자원뿐만 아니라 재산을 잃을 위험에 처했다. Oxfam(극빈자 구제 기관)에 따르면, 지난 10년 간 전세계에서 영국 땅의 8배나 되는 토지가 거래되었다고 한다. 브라질리안 일본 벤처 기업은 식품 수출을 위해 평방 54,000이상 농사를 할 계획이고, 2009년에 한 리비아 기업은 오랫동안 사용했던 농지를 지역 사회와 상의없이 임대했다고 한다. 또한 필리핀 정부는 외국 기업이 현지 기업과 함께 농업 사업을 하도록 장려하고 있다.

글로벌 농업의 상품화는 대규모 토지 횡령의 불안을 가중시키고 있다. 투자자들은 전형적으로 일자리를 창출하고 더 나은 기술로 생산량을 향상시키고 식품 안전을 개선할 것이라고 약속한다. 그러나 실현된 것은 소수에 불과하다. 한 예로, 한 스위스 기업은 2000개의 일자리를 약속했지만 50개에 불과했다고 한다. 실제로 많은 투자자들은 현지 인력 보다는 그들의 인력을 활용하고, 기술과 전문지식을 공유하는 것은 드물다. 또한 인수되는 토지의 대부분은 분쟁 발생하기 쉬운 나라다. 종종 토지 등록과 명의의 부재는 외국 투자자들이 공식적인 소유권이 없음에도 불구하고 토지를 확보하기 쉽다. 따라서 토지의 판매는 시위를 유발시켰고 이를 억압했다. 지난 해 콜롬비아에서 경작할 수 있는 토지의 55%가 농업 산업에 인수되었고, 당국은 활동가, 언론인 등을 살해하고, 수감시켰다.

재력가들은 수 세기 동안 농지에 투자했다. 오늘날의 거래 규모는 더 커졌다. 2015년까지 민간 투자 자본이 거의 $300억가 될 것으로 기대된다. 자연 자원에 영향을 미치는 극단적인 날씨와 기후 변화로 인해 이러한 글로벌 농지에 대한 거래는 끊이지 않을 것이다. 이론적으로 정부는 외국인들에게 인수되는 것을 제한할 수 있지만 투자자들은 그들의 부와 권력을 사용한다. 농지의 주인 정부들은 더 나은 토지 등록 관행을 정립하고 시민의 변위에 대한 안전을 확립해야 한다. 물론 부패로 가득하고 국민의 요구보다는 이윤 획득을 우선시하여 거래하기 때문에 이는 어렵다.